Producing wealth
I had only been working my professional job for just a few years, when we were in a mild recession and wages were frozen. My instructor, who trained all the new service representatives, was taking on a new position and his job was now open. Even though I didn’t have the time or experience at the company, I applied for the position anyway. They told me to forget about it, they had other people who had been with the company for 10 years or more and who were in line for work.
A few months later they told me that other people had turned down the position and that if I wanted it, the job was mine! At a time when no one was getting raises, due to the job change to a much higher paying position, I received a 20% raise!
You can say to yourself: “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, because he is the one who gives you the ability to produce wealth (Deuteronomy 8:17, 18 NIV).
Wealth could be the clothing worn in the desert for forty years that does not wear out. Or the manna that came every morning. Or the water that was provided in the desert with hard rock. Wealth is not needing anything.
In my life, God provided the jobs, the people I came in contact with, the solutions to the problems I faced and I didn’t need anything. I’d say I’m rich! Sometimes we count wealth as the amount of money we have in the bank. But when do we have enough to say that we are rich? How much money do we need to be rich? If we measure wealth by the amount of money we have, we will always be looking for more. But if we can say that all of our needs have been met, then we can say that we are really rich.
When our parents needed health insurance, God provided an inheritance that, when invested, provided benefits that more than covered the cost of insurance and medications. Our needs and your needs were met before we even realized the problem.
Earning wealth is very misleading, we earn money, not wealth. Wealth is much more than money, it is everything, a state of mind, it is something that cannot be measured. Someone recently told me that if I only had one car it would be a man. I think what he was really telling me was that he would be rich. I prayed that God would give him a car. If we were to walk or take a taxi or ask someone to drive us every time we were going somewhere, having a car would make us feel really rich!
When do we have enough money to be rich? When all our needs are met. At that time we are rich, the more we are the richer. When we have more than we need, we can help others meet their needs and then they too become rich.
Wealth can come in strange packages. We had been thinking about getting a dog for several years, but we put it off knowing all the problems that a pet can be at times. It would have to be the right type of dog, as we have two people in our 90-year-old household. We looked at some, but we always found some reason to wait, money was not an issue, we were willing to pay a good price for the right dog.
A lady who loved puppies but gave them away when they grew up was looking for a good home for a Yorkshire so we said we would be interested. The dog was more than we could have wished for. It was perfect for the family, old enough not to cause much trouble, easy to train, and best of all a pleasure for our two older parents. The dog was free, except for the normal expenses of keeping a pet. The pleasure we have had with the new dog is a wealth that cannot be measured, and we did nothing to obtain it.
We may think that we are in control and that through our power and strength we produce wealth, but if we think about the circumstances, we will see that nothing that happens to us is possible without God’s help.
And why does it do this for us? To confirm your covenant, you swore to our ancestors. However, there is a strong warning for those who forget the Lord and follow other gods. They will be destroyed! So if we want to be rich, we just need to obey the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ron and Joy own a nice house in Florida. They have wanted to move north for several years and Ron’s job was in jeopardy due to the downturn in the housing market. They tried to sell for a year without success. Last week my wife prayed with them that God would send someone to buy their house. Tonight we got a call, a lady from Canada knocked on the door and was asking about the house next door that was in the market. While Joy was telling her about the house, her daughter-in-law spoke up and said that this house is for sale. The lady explained that she had just flown for the week to find two houses for herself and her friend and that they liked both houses.
How rich we are to have a Father who answers our prayers and quickly meets our needs.
