“Lord, while I live I would like to know one individual personally who made a lot of money—and gave it away—and it is reflected in the car he drives and the house he lives in.”<\/p>\n
I’ve shared that prayer a number of times over the years, because it would be real, visible proof of a rich person’s heart that is truly surrendered to the Lord.\u00a0 It seems to me that when a person keeps more money and stuff than he needs, it means he is also keeping part of his heart from God’s ownership.<\/p>\n
This morning a new thought came concerning the above prayer. What if someone is praying that prayer who has almost no possessions, and that person is watching me.<\/p>\n
Now, my prayer includes the following (high stakes prayer):<\/p>\n
“Lord, what else do\u00a0I<\/span> have to lose<\/span> to gain<\/span> the perspective that Paul had, writing letters of encouragement, from prison?”<\/p>\n Where in the Bible do we find instruction to pursue our own things, our own happiness, our own comfort?\u00a0 Yet I constantly hear this equally from Christians and non-Christians alike:\u00a0 “You have to take care of yourself first, or you can’t help anybody else.”<\/p>\n Perhaps self-centered, materialistic Christianity in America is not the Biblical norm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Lord, while I live I would like to know one individual personally who made a lot of money—and gave it away—and it is reflected in the car he drives and the house he lives in.” I’ve shared that prayer a number of times over the years, because it would be real, visible proof of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith_based","category-financial","category-inspire_lifter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2228,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions\/2228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}