So if God gives wealth then if someone is rich it's from God and if one is poor maybe they deserve it? I mean, just sayin' [since Glenn says that alot], is wealth the sign of God's blessing? I don't think that's what you are saying...and if it is, then is the opposite true? Is poverty a sign of God's punishment?
Actually you're showing OUR warped/corrupted view of money,
not so much God's perspective of it.
Wealth is actually a curse to many people -
it's easier for a camel to pass
thru the eye of a needle than to make it into heaven.
When I read about wealth in the bible, it has more pitfalls, negatives and harm attached to it than most anything.
It's US who finds it so alluring and positive. And then at judgment
time, the rich get to answer to God for what they spent it all on.
To whom much is given, much is required; that includes finances
they wasted on self.
So actually I find that this is more of our own warped sense of having lots
of money as being "blessing", not necessarily God's. Does God bless
everyone equally?
Do you think God WANTS everyone to be rich? If He did, He certainly
didn't set alot of people up in life to be able to attain it.
Are people in Darfur all capable of getting rich? How about N. Koreans?
& if everyone can get rich of their own power when it's NOT God's will for them, how much harm is coming to them when God knows they can't handle money and it will be their spiritual demise? God is helpless and powerless to keep them from attaining riches that will ruin them?
People pray for wealth and never get it, why not if it's God's will
that they get rich?
James 4:2-4 (New King James Version)
2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Who gave Job double what he had after he lost everything thru his trial?
Who gave King Solomon & Abraham all they had?
1 Kings 3 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings%203:10-15;&version=50;
13 And I have also given you what you have not asked: both riches and honor, so that there shall not be anyone like you among the kings all your days.
Deuteronomy 8:16-19 (New King James Version)
16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end—
17 then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’
18 “And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
19 Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish.
They weren't to take credit for attaining their own wealth,
all credit & glory was to to be given to God for Giving them
any wealth.
Otherwise, all glory goes to self not God.