While I love your zealousness and I see you have a heart for the poor.
(I assume you're practicing what you're preaching?)
I have been involved in a ministry that raises money for some foreign orphans.
they have a few meals a week (seriously) and no parents .. etc.
Recently I attended a fund raiser and I know of many programs trying
to get money to this people.
I was very much determined to do my part to make this thing rock and roll,
when a couple of weeks ago, the Lord spoke to me and let me know that
this problem cannot be solved by money.
It's a SPIRITUAL problem and so therefore needs to be fought 'spiritually"
So while we should certainly help to feed the hungry and house the homeless.
JEsus said that the remedy for poverty was.............. the gospel.
THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME,
BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR.
HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES,
AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND,
TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED...
.
Yes, I did read your post Sunlover, and appreciated it! I was still chewing on some of what you said.
The solution to poverty is the gospel? Hmmm. That sounds like something a Prosperity Preacher would say!
But if we strip away the greed and excess that typically comes to mind with this type of preaching, then what you said may be the core truth to this situation.
Consider a little comparative religion: The Gnostic heresy stated that God is a Spirit, but that the physical world was created by a lessor god. Therefore, physical pleasures were a distraction from the True God. They believed that Jesus could not have incarnated into a real body, but must have just appeared to have done so. This is why the biblical test against this heresy was to ask if Jesus had really come in the flesh or not. For them, flesh was evil.
But in actuality God shows His mastery over both the spiritual realm and the physical. The Gospel is about healing and deliverance, both physical and spiritual.
Aesthetics are people who have learned to be content no matter what their circumstances are in the physical. Buddhism teaches that lust and desire lead to suffering. The simple solution is to simply change your inner desires, and stop wanting all this stuff we spend so much effort to produce in Western society.
Satanist oth believe that enlightenment comes through experiencing everything that life has to offer. We cringe at the very thought of their "religion", but it is very similar in ways to what Solomon did in the book of Ecclesiastes. He sampled everything, and came to the conclusion that God's way is better.
IMO God is Lord over both the physical and the spiritual. He knows we are living here in the physical, and is fully capable of taking care of us here where we are. But His blessings are also spiritual. If we look too closely at just the physical, we can loose perspective over what He is doing for us in the spiritual.
Those who make Mammon their god, will make all their decisions based upon what is financially prosperous. They will pick a job they hate over one they love, simply because it makes more money. They will ignore the spiritual blessings of God, because it gets in the way of their ultimate goal, which is physical wealth.
But those who follow God will experience blessings both in the spiritual as well as the physical. There is no set standard of equality that applies to everyone in this, either. Some receive their healings with very little effort, others find wealth. Some get both, while others appear to get neither. IDK why. I can only imagine that God knows what He's doing.
It very well could be that blessing us is not His primary goal. Yes, He wants to do it, but it is secondary to either what He needs to teach us, or what He desires us to accomplish for the Kingdom.
