IaLP

Don’t cuss, bro.

And you have missed the point of the entire blog post.

Okay, I get why you don’t like the prosperity gospel, duh, you can’t promise people something just for believing in God. But, I’m trying to understand John Piper when he says that only suffering can bring about the glory of God. I think that through suffering many people are brought to God, through their pain and misery, I was, but I don’t know if I think that is the only way to be brought to God. By the way, I never all of your background, and how bad it really was for you as a child. I wish I had know that when we were in highschool, not that it would have changed how I acted around you, but maybe I could have helped a little.

I don’t think he makes the argument for suffering being the only thing that gives glory to God.

It is like this: if you are going to come up with a theology (study of the nature of God), then you have to deal with suffering. Don’t you? If your theology is all about everything being easy peasy and totally comfortable, then in real life, how is that working out for you.

The fact is that in either joy or pain, peace or suffering, blessings or trials, that my God is more than enough. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21

No matter what happens, God is all sufficient for my joy, my pleasure and my treasure. No matter what happens.

How glorious is this not such a mere promise but a fact for all those who would believe and trust in Him: “You have set for me the path of life. In your presence is the fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Psalm 16:11

As far as knowing my background when we were younger: like I said, I strived my hardest to appear normal as though anything in my past never affected me. It was only by the grace and mercy of God that healed me. All the bitterness, anger, rage, lust that laid in my heart as a cancer, God came in and did the work that only He could have done. Under my own power, I would still be very content to remove my dad’s head from his shoulders with my bare hands or continue to lash out at my ex-wife every single time I saw her and find new ways to reduce her into a pile of ashes.

I think the prosperity message is trying to relay something seen commonly in the old testament. When the Israelite’s obeyed, they prospered, when they didn’t, they sure as heck suffered for it. Didn’t God say that a lot before, warning them? For example, Solomon, supposedly the “fruit” of David who (was after God’s own heart)…he asked for things that pleased God and ultimately prospered him for his whole life. BUT!!! He dis-obeyed God in having relations with woman of other religions and brought in their idols to worship where only GOD wanted to dwell.

1 Kings 11:1-11

1BUT KING Solomon [defiantly] loved many foreign women–the [a]daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites.

2They were of the very nations of whom the Lord said to the Israelites, You shall not mingle with them, neither shall they mingle with you, for surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods. Yet Solomon clung to these in love.(A)

3He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart from God.

4For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not perfect (complete and whole) with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.

5For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abominable idol of the Ammonites!(B)

6Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as David his father did.

7Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abominable idol of Moab, on the hill opposite Jerusalem, and for Molech the abominable idol of the Ammonites.

8And he did so [b]for all of his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

9And the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned from the Lord, the God of Israel, Who had appeared to him twice,

10And had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods, but he did not do what the Lord commanded.

11Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, Because you are doing this and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely rend the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant!

So if Solomon would of followed after God’s word in obedience, not getting involved with those women, and worshiping those idols. I wonder if Solomon would prospered even more then he had.

Really, my point is that we need relationship with God our father through Jesus and the holy spirit which resides in our temples (our bodies). Then God can give us the instruction and calling that He already knows about each of us, and we then have the choice to obey, or to rebel. Obeying brings forth the prosperity, and dis-obeying brings forth punishment, or suffering.

It’s as simple as this I believe, because I have witnessed this in my own life.

Then define prosperity.

Surely, in the realm of God’s Kingdom, it cannot be contained to temporal things?

The Prosperity bad-news is this: Believe, trust in God and he will provide you riches, good health and safety.

Nowhere in the Bible does it state that.

If that was the case, then how do we explain John the Baptist which Jesus Christ called “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11) yet gets his head chopped at the whim of a old pervert who got turned on at the sight of his half-naked, pre-teenaged niece.

Bartholomew: skinned

John: Boiled alive

Peter: crucified upside down

Andrew: crucified upon an X

Paul: greatest missionary known to man, beheaded

We can go throughout the Bible and throughout church history like this. Prosperity gospel is horrible because it doesn’t deal with suffering which God promises that we will suffer if we are children of God (Romans 8:17).

So what is true prosperity? That we are been given wealth, righteous and unrighteous, and health in order to advance the kingdom of God for His glory. Everything else gets burned up in the end.

Please note that I am not advocating poverty gospel either. Father shines the sun on the good and evil and rains upon the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45). Likewise, Jesus wishes that we were so shrewd in dealing with others and using unrighteous wealth in order to make friends in hopes of sharing the love of Christ (Luke 16:8-9).