*a fictitious account*
March 2008 - Tori has waited all day for this. After getting fired from her job at the end of a long, hard Tuesday, she could hardly hold herself together during the 24 hours following her dismissal. She cried, prayed, drank, sulked, and cried again when thinking about the anguish of losing another job in a little less than 5 months. The pain of having to again go through the embarrassing begging with creditors to keep her accounts active and to keep her utilities on seemed to much on Tuesday. But today is Wednesday. The great day where her church has a testimony period during the service--and she had hers more that ready. So when the reverend of the church asked if there were any testimonies from any members, she leaped out of her seat before he could finish talking.
"I...(slight chuckle)...I lost my job yesterday," Tori said with a half-smile on her face, "and to go along with that I got a letter in the mail this afternoon saying they were going to repossess my car." There was a hush over the congregation; as well as some low murmuring--seemingly because a few people had an idea of what statement was coming next from Tori. "But Pastor teaches us that you can't get down when you're knocked down because when the devil attacks you it means your blessing is right around the corner!" Most of the congregation broke out into cheers and hallelujahs while some just watched. A now sobbing, but smiling Tori walked towards the reverends wife, who was welcoming her with a warm embrace, and handed her the microphone.
"Tori," the first lady said, "you know that the Lord knew that you were going to be fired."
"Yes He did!", Tori shouted. And the first lady went on about how God knew because He was trying to move her to a better place. Tori was indeed correct; God did in fact know that she was going to be fired. Because with Tori being late to work at least once a week, often being seen behaving unprofessionally when on the job, and getting into a shouting match with another employee, all since only being at the company less than 5 months; everyone knew Tori was going to get fired. However, none of Tori's actions resonated with her, as she just listened to her pastor's wife affirm repetitive issue of job instability due to immature behavior.
While manipulation of the Word of God is nothing new, many of us (particularly those just getting started with Jesus) are being fooled into believing that the more you suffer the better your chances of getting blessed are. This probably comes from either people not interpreting correctly what is being said by the minister (most likely), or preachers are blatantly saying that any hardships are direct correlations to success (somewhat likely). Whichever way it happens, several dangers exist in these situations while the realities and actual messages from scripture are being overlooked.
First, we each must at some point get real with ourselves and realize that more times than not the devil isn't riding our back to make us do evil--unless we count ourselves as the devil. Second, those of us who are born again are not just playing by a different set of rules, but a different game all together. One of the rules in this awesome game is what I would call the law of the immediate blessing--referencing Galatians 3:5-8; which references Genesis 22:18 (please read both).
If you look back at the story in Genesis, suffering wasn't what allowed Abraham to be in the position to receive the blessing. On the unpopular contrary, faith and obedience is what released an unprecedented promise for him and us. I say 'unpopular' because somehow the church has glorified sin (or the dreadful results of sin) to where the common Christian assumes that these results, which are usually associated with some sort of suffering, is what unlocks blessings. Also, I say 'us' because God was referring to Jesus when he spoke of a Abraham's seed. But what is far too often hidden for some reason is that once you accept Jesus Christ you are already blessed. With this being true, why do the Tori's of the world disobey God's laws and other earthly rules; and then 'testify' that they are being blessed because they have earned the spoils of functioning out of order? How did we confuse suffering for His Name with suffering for coming to work late after a night of hanging out? If you pay attention to the climate of church memberships, the answers are obvious. But even still, most of us Holy Rollers have made conscious choices to suffer before we were tapped out; hence getting us to the point to accept Jesus. I'm willing to bet that less than 5% of us followed Jesus on the first revelation we had. Just imagine what pitfalls we may have avoided if we were practical enough to just have faith and be obedient.
Pain is overrated....
Peace
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