The Prosperity Gospel – Does God
Want Me to be Rich?
The Short Answer
Yes.
God wants you to be rich in His Spirit. He wants to make you rich in
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and
self-control. He wants to give you so much of those things that you
literally won't be able to keep them to yourself. It's going to pour
out of you, all over your life. He wants to bless you with a mature
heart and a strong character.
Here
is the thing though, this wealth he wants to give you is in money. It's in spirit. It's also not free.
It's going to cost you. And I mean more than your Sunday mornings. I
mean more than tithe. I mean everything. The price is everything.
God
wants you to manage what you do have well. The word in “Christianese”
is Stewardship. It
means He wants you to cut waste and make the best use of what you
have.
The
Long Answer
No,
of course God doesn't want to make you rich.
I
don't even know where to begin. Maybe take a look at the lives of the
twelve Disciples. Only one of them died a natural death. The rest...
Well, it was pretty brutal. Or maybe just look at John 13:66. The
verse begins: “In this life you will have trouble...”
God
does want to bless you. The word bless does not mean “give you a
bunch of money.” It means the He wants to do something great and
creative in your life. It means He wants to make you into something
else. Think Malachi 3:3. “He
will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the
Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have
men who will bring offerings in righteousness,” (Someday I'll go
into why “Levites” in the context means you and me.)
Do
you know to refine silver? I don't. Here's a video about how.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-YsiFnJ1I
This
is how God wants to bless you. Doesn't seem like a lot of fun for the
silver.
Here
is another example of God's blessing. The whole story is in Act
16:16-38, but here is core of it:
“The
crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the
magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After
they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the
jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these
orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the
stocks.
About
midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and
the other prisoners were listening to them.”
Did
you catch that?
Stripped and beaten and thrown in jail, but still
singing praise. That is the type of blessing God gives His disciples.
He wants to give you a joy that is better than a bank account. He
wants to give you a peace that is stronger than circumstances in your
life.
Things
will be bad at times. Things will be hard at times. You'll be poor.
You'll be broken. You'll be loved by your Heavenly Father. If you let
Him, you'll be blessed. You'll be refined like silver. You'll find
that love, joy, and peace stuff.
Do
you need more about how life is hard, and being a Christian is
supposed to be hard? Probably not. Look at your life, your
experiences, your friend's and family's lives, and you'll see that
I'm right. If you do need more, look up 2 Corinthians 11:24-29.
Romans 5:3-5. 1 John 3:13. That's just off the top of my head. There
is a lot more, but you get the picture.
The
Theology Behind the Issue
Well,
it looks to me like there are two things going on with this Theology.
Number one, it looks like some "pastors" are making a lot of money out
of it. I'm not their judge, but I really worry for those people. I
don't where their heart is, but they teach this anti-gospel and steal
the money that should be going to real ministry. When somebody writes
a check to one of these hucksters, that's money that isn't going to
the mission field, it isn't going to the local Church, and it isn't
doing any good. That's not their only crime; this thing there teaching is not the true, real Gospel. Every time someone listens to someone tell them this nonsense, that is an opportunity to hear the gospel wasted.
Then
there are people who are genuinely confused by verses like 2
Corinthians 8:9 — “Though He was rich, yet for your sake he
became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.” If
you take this verse out of context, it might seem like God wants to
make it rain dollar bills. However, in context, this is talking about
Jesus' death on the cross. Jesus didn't die so you could buy a
Mercedes, He died to save your soul.
