By Mark Andrew Beach
So for those of us who are hanging out in the confusion of whether you should even consider wealth as a part of your life, my purpose in this article is to emphasize today that it is really ‘OK’ with God that we build wealth, if fact, it really is His will for each of His children that they become wealthy like He is. After all, is not everything we see around us His? I mean, if we acknowledge that everything is God’s, then doesn’t that make Him the richest person in the Universe? What I am going to explain here is…I am going to share some my experience(s) and struggles with coming to grips with this concept.
As I said, I wrestled with this concept of wealth for many years. I was confused by what I read in the scriptures, you know, money being the root of all evil and rich men getting into heaven, etc. versus what I was being taught by some of the greatest teachers, many of whom are devout Christians and who also lived and taught from the same bible I read.
From the first time I read Og Mandino, Zig Ziglar or Napoleon Hill, I had a pretty good intellectual grasp of what they were trying to teach me. For the most part I understood it, I got it, and I began consciously putting the principles to work in my life. I even saw the greater spiritual applications for me in their teachings. However, when I did not experience success as fast or as much as I thought I should, I began to have my doubts.
Now let me clarify here. My doubts were not like the doubts of so many others who might say…”Oh, this stuff doesn’t work!”, I am much more into self-blame and self-pity to be victimized by an esoteric set of rules that may or may not work. No, instead of saying “these rules don’t work,” I went to “great!”… “Here we have the greatest secrets to success in the Universe and for some reason, which God has not manifest to me, I am just not supposed to be wealthy. Its God’s will for me.”
“Maybe this is God’s way of keeping me humble and righteous…” How’s that for some twisted logic? That no matter how hard I might try to become wealthy, it will be ‘OK’ for others to have wealth, but not ‘OK’ for me.
However, one of God’s immutable laws always came back to haunt me. He says:
“There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated… And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.”
So the converse of this statement, while implied, must also be true according to God’s law, and that is if I abide by certain laws, then the “blessing” or outcome is guaranteed. In other words, God is no respecter of persons, nor is he arbitrary and capricious in determining who gets blessed for living a law and who doesn’t. Boy have I wrestled with that! Because I was not getting the desired blessings or results.
Somehow, I still could not get past the idea that maybe God had a different ‘mission’ for me and so I was somehow exempt from receiving these results. And then God taught me another important truth. God’s will for us, will never violate our own ‘free will’. In other words, in a universe where everything is God’s, the one thing that is not His, the one thing he will not take from us is our ‘free will’. That the only we can offer Him in return for all that with which He blesses us is our own ‘free will’.
I knew that He had a plan for me and His will for me, but I also knew that I had to surrender my will to His if I was going to be ultimately reconciled to Him….I went round and round and round on this with God as I continued my twisted struggle. What was His will for me? Then one day as I was reading, meditating and praying, it hit me like a ton of bricks. God is my Heavenly Father and I am His son. As any loving parent, God wants the very best for me, he wants me to be happy, he wants me to learn how to be like Him and he wants me to be a ‘faithful’ and ‘profitable’ servant. Since all this is true, He wants me to learn how to create like He creates. Suddenly, all of the laws of success, abundance and prosperity fell into place and made perfect sense to me at a deeply spiritual level.
I stood convicted and accountable before my Maker for the wasted time I spent on this planet not living to my full potential. I realized that this struggling with this false belief only supported me in hiding out in my other limiting beliefs about myself, money, and wealth in general. Needless to say, it has turned my life and my wealth around significantly. Sometimes coming to grips with this stark reality is all a person needs to turn their life around. I know, that’s how it was with me.
For more on this topic, click here to read Hidden Treasures: Heaven’s Astonishing Help with Your Money Matters FREE.
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- I Got Confused - January 11, 2012
- Get a Creed - January 11, 2012
- Get to Work! - January 2, 2012
