Listless Passivity

When hope is gone, both life and death seem to have no meaning. As the saying goes, “You haven’t begun to live until you’ve lost it all.” In Christ, we must die to live. When it all slips away and there’s nothing left to hold us down, God steps in and lifts us up. He changes everything.

Thus saith the LORD, “Behold I do a new thing.”

Set Your affections on things above, and by all means, minimize your involvement with this world. Come out from it as much as is humanly possible, trusting that the Lord himself will bring you the rest of the way. Scale down and travel light. These are the last days and we must redeem the time. The day is approaching when we will give account for our lives. How did we spend it.

Buried in debt is no way to live. Jesus said “He who the Son sets free, is free indeed.” What can this world possibly have to offer compared to the peace that can only be found in Jesus Christ. To the church I wonder, where is your heart? To the world, I already know where their heart is at, but unfortunately the church has become much like the world.

The Bible says to “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21).

The Holy Spirit is calling out to Christians everywhere, in all the earth, to deny themselves, take up the cross, and follow Jesus. It may be that for some, their cross to bear is to generate wealth for the kingdom of God. Your business, your investments and all that you have are for the glory of God. At every level, rich or poor, God is calling each of us to be an important part of His last call.

Some Christians are selling everything while other Christians are buying and multiplying material things. We are all a part of what God is doing when we do all that we do unto Him. God blesses us to multiply the things we have so He can multiply for others the things we give. He supplies the seed, but we must sow the seed in order to reap. The more we give, the more God gives us to give.

When Jesus fed the five thousand, He didn’t create, He multiplied. He took existing materials and by the grace of God expanded them to make enough for everyone. It was a shared blessing because someone among them was willing to share what they had, even though it was not enough to go around. They could have had the attitude ‘I can’t save the world’ and kept what they had for themselves but they didn’t, they gave the Lord something to work with and there was plenty.

The prosperity message is absolutely true when it is in your heart to prosper others. The problem with the prosperity message comes in when we allow our brothers and sisters in Christ to go without while storing up for ourselves. The love of money is a carnal motivation that God will never bless. He may allow it, but in the end it’s not worth it. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul” (Mark 8:36).

Pastor Tilson Shumate
Evangelistic Missionary