Episode 17 - Abound and Abase

Can you lose God faster in abundance than  in suffering?

Transcript

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You know something I've realized? Some people actually lose connection with God faster when they are in seasons of abundance than when they are in seasons of dryness or difficulty or suffering. A lot of us wonder whether God can trust us in difficult seasons, you know, whether he can trust us when we're suffering to be faithful, you know, whether he can trust us to still be loyal, to still be prayerful, to still be faithful. Um, when we are in situations, let's say that we are overlooked or we're in when we have prayers that are unanswered. And as much as that's important, another question that we should also ask is whether God can trust us when we receive the answers to our prayers, when life becomes good, when we begin to live in abundance, in influence, in success, in answered prayers. You know, can we still stay close to God? Because it's one thing to be close to God when you're in a season where you know you're trying to survive and things are challenging, but in seasons where you are prospering, there's a possibility and a tendency to drift away, you know, to be carried away by the ease of life. You know, when life begins to get busy with the blessings that God has given to you, is your secret place now going to totally disappear? You know, is your intimacy going to decrease? Are you going to become less dependent on God? And I also believe that sometimes some of the delay that we experience in receiving our blessings may not be that God is being um unkind or that God is withholding blessings from us or that God is trying to punish us. But I believe that sometimes it can be that he's trying to get us to develop a heart that can receive his blessings without forgetting him, a heart that is able to prosper without becoming distracted and without worshiping the blessings that he has given them. And you know, a heart that essentially can remain anchored in God. Now, Paul said in Philippians 4 12, I know how to abuse and I know how to abound. And in saying this, he's basically talking about a certain level of maturity, the things of God. So he's not just surviving in difficult seasons, he's also surviving in good ones. And by surviving, I mean his life in Christ is thriving, both when he's experiencing challenges and when he's experiencing ease. But success has a way of testing people, you know, in a way that suffering really can't. And so while some of us are maybe in a season of waiting and a season of you know being prayerful and insisting on God um to bless us with the desires of our hearts, it's a good time to also cultivate a consistency in the things of God, you know. Learn to seek God now, learn to be grounded in him, learn to love him beyond the blessings and beyond the gifts that he gives. Because essentially, the goal is not to just arrive at the blessing, the goal is also to get there and still belong to God completely and still love God completely and still serve him completely and not to lose the blesser simply because of the blessing. Thank you so much for listening. This is Guided Fire. Stay guided, stay grounded, and stay on fire.