“A
faithful man shall abound with blessings:”
Proverbs 28:20.
We have
just had a great Thanksgiving dinner and now there are the leftovers to
contend with. Later this month we’ll be celebrating
our Lords birth and coincidently another great dinner is on the way. These
are wonderful blessings and of course God gets the glory for all the
blessings we receive.
I was
wondering, though, how much of each of God’s blessings do we actually allow
to bless us. What I mean is that there may be more to what God blesses us
with than meets the eye. For example, my wife cooks a great
big turkey for Thanksgiving dinner along with all the fixing’s. After a few
days of eating leftovers they soon all but disappear from the refrigerator
and are miraculously transformed to inches around my waist line. All that’s
left is the turkey carcass, but it too disappears. Actually some time just
after Thanksgiving she gets that carcass cooking. Now some of you may
already know what I’m getting at but there may be some who’ve never looked
at that turkey carcass as an additional blessing from God.
My wife
boils down that carcass and after discarding the bones turns that boiled
concoction into the best turkey soup one could ever imagine. The turkey
soup, another of God’s wonderful blessings, takes care of our meals for a
few more days. God blesses each of us with so much, that if we handle it
correctly we can increase the blessing, or in other words receive the full
measure of each blessing God supplies. In my case God blessed me with a
wonderful wife who knows the value of each blessing we receive. Her cooking
abilities are surpassed by none, and she continually proves it year after
year. Sometimes by the end of the month there isn’t much in the cupboard but
it never stops her from creating a great meal. God’s blessings abound.
Americans
are now beginning to face some tough times as far as finances go, and as
such it is a good idea to make use of the full measure of every blessing God
provides. God’s blessings include, along with our finances, and our food,
everything else we receive. “… for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye
have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these
things shall be added unto you,” Matthew 6:31-33.
Solomon
writes about a faithful man and how he shall abound with blessings. That’s
just the first part of that verse, he goes on to say that “but he that
maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent,” Proverbs 28:20b.
Many today are stuck in the mode of overabundance. They strive to be rich
neglecting God altogether. They will be held accountable. Many don’t even
believe there is a God so how can they see His blessings let alone give Him
thanks for what they’ve received? Jesus tells us in
Matthew’s Gospel that “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on
the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust,” Matthew
5:45. Even those who don’t believe are receiving His blessings, for now.
God says to
trust Him and He will supply our every need. Nowhere in the
scriptures are we to depend on God for our every want. There is a
mindset that says, through our government and its social programs we can get
what we want. Those programs have become as an albatross around the necks of
Americans. Tax payer programs managed by our federal government are being
manipulated by the dishonest, it’s like saying the “fix is in”. We can get
anything we want through our ability to scheme and manipulate our government
programs, anyway they owe it to us don’t they? We deserve everything we can
get. God might agree with that last statement,
thankfully He doesn’t give us what we deserve.
This country looks to be poised for a big fall;and when that happens the first
thing to go will be our government social programs. With the elimination of
those government programs, many Americans will be thrust into extreme
poverty. Some of these social programs actually contribute to the greed of
Americans, Instead of a helping hand they become a crutch, and a lifestyle,
passed on from generation to generation. Chaos will be the order of the day,
when those government programs pass away.
The government has
been moving into the supply area of our lives for years now and very soon we
shall see a demand coming from that same government –
a demand to regulate every aspect of our meager
lives. This, folks, won’t be a blessing from God, but it might just be one
of His judgments.
Blessings
from God are dependable and continually forthcoming, but “blessings” from
our government are nonexistent. No matter what comes from the
government, even if it seems as if the government is blessing us, it is
always God who sends those blessings our way. And why does He bless us?
Because He loves us.He loves us so much He
sent His only begotten Son to die for us. There is no greater love than
that. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for his friends.” John 15:13. Is Jesus
your friend?
Food is
abundant here in the U.S.,
for now anyway,but
in many parts of the world there remains a huge lack of food and
consequently it’s very difficult to sustain life in those countries. Many
Americans, on the other hand, grow fat on overabundance. Does God get the
thanks for the provisions that He supplies and that we encounter each day at
the dinner table? Shouldn’t we, taking into consideration the people that
are starving in many other countries, be ever so much more thankful to God
for His wonderful blessings on us here in America? Seeing so much starvation
and suffering in the world I can’t but utter those famous words of John
Bradford. “There but by the grace of God go I”.
I can smell
the turkey soup cooking now.
Something
else that will certainly be curtailed in the very near future is this
obsession with materialism. Clearly we see what’s happening with many large
corporations that supply consumers with goods of every fashion. Many are
failing falling off into obscurity. Recently there was an article online
which made the statement that black Friday was a
success in that the total sales for that day had increased over the previous
year by three percent. Then it went on to say that it wasn’t actually
anything we could look to as a future indicator of a robust economy because
people only purchased the products that had been “deeply discounted”. Hence
this year’s new term for black Friday is affirmed as bleak Friday.
Reading the
news from that bleak Friday,all
I could picture was a bunch of crazed hungry mobs greedily pushing through
others even to the point of trampling the less fortunate underfoot to get
the last loaf of bread. Actually they were so filled with greed that the
death of the man who opened the door of that Wal-Mart store on that fateful
day was a small price to pay so they could fulfill their lust for the
ultimate low priced gadget. It’s certainly a prophetic picture of how the
folks who are left behind after the rapture of Christ’s Church will act as
they are pushed deeper and deeper into a situation of disparity.
In a
post-rapture world the love in men’s hearts will be nonexistent as they
fight over the last crumb of food. We got a glimpse of the future when we
read about the two men who shot it out and eventually killedone
another over the last of that special gadget that
they both had to have. Apparently it was so priceless that they determined
to die for it. Greed is the motivator which leads to lust which leads to a
cold heart and hatred of our fellow man. Look around, we’re becoming a
society of kill or be killed.
Looking to
our God given blessings for our sustenance will truly be the test for all
folks, not just Christians, as we move ever closer to the end of the end
times. Jesus will remove His Church and those left behind will no longer
receive blessings from God. Those folks who believe they alone are
responsible for those wonderfully full food pantries all through their own
self-reliant living will surely be confronted with a depressing surprise.
For now, though, God’s blessings fall on the
just and the unjust, but as someone said more recently “change” is
coming.
The United States of America has morphed
into a huge day care facility for all the tiny tots that scream bloody
murder when they begin to see their wonderful overabundance drifting away.
I’m speaking of adults acting as spoiledsqualling
brats, with no one to actually tell them “No, you can’t have that”. This
mindset encompasses a wide range of adolescent behavior from those who we
call neighbors to those huge Corporations begging for all the wonderful
bailout billions available from our benevolent government bank. We all know
the government has a bottomless pit of money stashed away, right?
How can the people in this country continue rushing toward fulfillment
of their greedy materialistic desires when all the time the government is
pilling on mountains of debt? Our government debt is now in therange
of trillions of dollars. People, living right here in the good ‘ol US of A,
at sometime in the very near future, will be forced to pay that debt. That
will not be a blessing from God, but again it may be a judgment.
Jesus is returning very soon by the look of the world situation. I
wonder how many professing followers of Christ today would even recognize
their Messiah if He suddenly appeared on the world scene. Oh yeah, I forgot,
he arrived on November 4th. Well we should all be quite content
now that our new messiah has arrived. I can hear the huge sigh of relief as
I read news articles of how great things are shaping up under this new
rapidly forming administration. Many believe our President elect’s arrival
on the scene was an answer to prayers, that he willsave
them from the current state of affairs (calamity) that’s taking shape in
this country. Personally, I believe that before too
much longer I’ll be saying “I told you so” and rightly so, to many of my
brothers and sisters in Christ who have placed their misguided faith in a
man as their financial messiah. What? You don’t think God is judging
America?
Soups done!
God bless
you all,
Ron Graham
