The increase of his house shall depart, And his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath. This is the portion of a wicked man from God, And the heritage appointed unto him by God. Job 20:28-29 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/job.20.28-29.KJV
But, what about those who don’t follow God and seem to be blessed beyond measure? God may be testing them to see if they will acknowledge Him and the blessings that they have. It is also possible that the devil is making sure that they get their “wants” in this life so that they might not seek God for His blessings. There is always a struggle in this world between our needs and our ideas of what we “need” to have. One of those is an actual need and the other is just something that we think we need.
When you are following God’s precepts and His wisdom, He will supply all of your real needs if you are depending on Him for your provision. But…for many people, Christians or not, truly depending on God for your daily needs is not as easy as it sounds. Most people don’t wake up thanking God for giving them another day to be in this world. Many don’t even give any thought to Him until something in their life goes wrong or turns in a direction that they weren’t expecting. Then many of them blame Him for whatever is going wrong!
If you don’t know God or Jesus as your Savior, why would you blame Him for whatever is going wrong in your life? He doesn’t punish you for things that aren’t going your way just because you haven’t heard His voice in your spirit/heart that you need Him. Many times that small voice may not show up in your “spiritual ears” until He gives you a seed of faith that will allow you to hear it and sometimes it takes a bad diagnosis or some other problem in your life that will get your attention!
When you hear Him and decide that you need Him as your Savior, I’m loathed to tell you this but this is when the devil puts a target on you and your life. Why? Because now you have gone over to the enemy’s camp. While you are living your life without Jesus as your Savior, the devil doesn’t really care what you do. But when you give your heart and your life to Him then you become a problem in his eyes. You will have trouble in the world even after you’ve given your heart to Jesus and possibly even more than you had before but now you have Him to lean on for strength and protection.
She was into witchcraft until she got to college and her Christian roommate asked her to go to a sermon. Then something wonderful happened!
Teach me, and I will hold my tongue: And cause me to understand wherein I have erred. How forcible are right words! But what doth your arguing reprove? Job 6:24-25 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/job.6.24-25.KJV
When we hear the call of Jesus in our hearts and choose to follow Him our faith is the drip that becomes, or should become, a roar in our lives. God uses the Holy Spirit to touch our hearts and plant a seed that will grow into a new creation. It is our responsibility to help that seed to grow by watering it with the Living Water of God’s Word.
Some people tend toward watering it occasionally, like once or twice every year. Some who feel God leading them into a deeper relationship will water it a few times every month. Those who demand to be His disciples and want an intimate relationship with Him will water that seed every day regardless of what is going on in their lives. On the drive to work, while they are at work they will listen to Bible readings when they can. They will listen to praise and worship music and be in the spirit of worship on their way home.
I’m sure there are some different people who fit into a category in between those that I spoke about in the paragraph above and there are a few who dive deeper into the Scriptures than the disciples I spoke about as well. My point is that we, as Christian believers, fall into all sorts of slots and categories. Some are deeply involved in the mission field, some teach classes at the church, some lead Bible study sessions/classes at their homes and then there are some who have received Jesus and are confused about their role so they don’t do anything with it except attend church…sometimes.
There were people in all of these areas even in the early church but not many. Why do I say this? Because, most of the people in that early church just fifty to one hundred years after Jesus was taken up to Heaven were Jewish converts to Christianity. They had the Scriptures that were taught in their synagogues and had learned to have faith in God from their history and the prophets and had been persuaded that their Messiah was Jesus Christ! While it was true that there were also many pagans who had come to know Jesus as their Savior, a good percentage of the early church were, like Paul, converts from Judaism. Their faith was built on the Old Testament and what they had heard from the disciples and Paul himself. Most of them had unshakable faith.
The church today has become more “flexible” in their teachings and in their faith which can be a good thing but in some areas of the “message” flexibility can be a bad thing. Because it can lead many to believe that they can live like a Christian and not commit deeply to it. Being “like a Christian” is like being “sorta pregnant”, it doesn’t work that way! You either are or you’re not!
