Responding to Joyce Meyer
Upon swiping through good ol Facebook, I noticed a short clip posted by Joyce Meyer Ministries. Here's a great example of how subtle the prosperity gospel can be for those interested. The idea being, "You just need to do it!" A video posted today on ideas about behavior modification from Joyce Meyer with the ultimate wrap around being, what it usually wraps around to, money. She talks about these actual good things we should be to doing like forgiveness, and not eating sugar...? and and wraps it all up with being generous and giving to "finance the gospel" and not waiting until we get a raise or get out of debt. She concludes with, "Chances are you won't ever get that raise or won't ever get out of debt, if you don't start doing it now." Typical prosperity gospel theology. You won't get UNTIL you give, and when you give, you WILL get. When she says "the gospel", she means this prosperity stuff. The gospel of you giving money to her ministry to receive financial and physical blessings from God in return, but please understand, it's not true.
Our hope is found in Christ, and we hope for things unseen. We don't labor and work to do the right things just because we know we're supposed to! It doesn't save us anyway. We follow Christ's commands because he said that's what we do if we love him. As Christians, we read his Word. We tether ourselves to it for the rest of our lives and grow in it because that's what Christ wants from us. We don't distance ourselves from it, pick small parts out about how God is for us, ignore what we are truly commanded to do. I don't just remember to stay away from sugar and get my finances in order and forgive here and there. It's also not sewing up insurance with God for a rainy day. Do you see how even the subtle nature of this can remove your focus from what God truly wants? It actually enslaves you to worry. You now wait and groan over perceived blessings that should be on the way, or danger that you hope God saves you from, so you toil. You give. You worry. You don't read the Word. You forget God's true heart. What's it all really about? It's living a life devoted to Christ whatever the circumstances believing that in the end, he WILL be faithful.
"...because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2nd Corinthians 4:14-18
