Thursday, January 7, 2010

Name it and claim it all you want

I was listening to Joel Osteen the other day. He was talking about the importance of keeping the vision God gave you in front of you. He talked about how when God spoke to Abraham, He had him come out of his tent and He said to him, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, ... So shall your offspring be" (Gen 15:5). The point was that God gave him Abraham a picture of what was to come. Likewise, when God gives us a vision, we need to keep it in front of us regardless of our present reality.

I agree with him, but I feel that Osteen didn’t really tell the whole story. Keeping the vision before you IS important, but WORKING toward that vision is equally important. So often I hear preachers talk about believing God for this or that. The truth is that I can believe God for many things, but if I don’t work towards it, it’s not happening.

For example, he went on to say that if you are in debt keep the vision of financial prosperity in front of you. That’s great, but if you don’t STOP spending and running up your credit cards, and living above your means, it ain’t happening! There is something to say about STEWARDSHIP. You can believe God for good health, but if you smoke, drink and eat like a horse, odds are you’re going to have health problems. It’s called CONSEQUENCES.

Bottom line is that God does want to bless and prosper His children, but he is more concerned with your CHARACTER then your bank account. His goal is that we become more like Jesus, not just live an easy life hear on earth.

Let me know what you think.

Posted by at Thursday, January 07, 2010

1 comments:

  1. I agree wholeheartedly. I just finished reading through most of Genesis 1-20, and analyzed some of Abraham's deficiencies. God's call to Abraham was clear. Not only was it clear, it was redundantly clear. To be exact the same promise was given to Abraham at least 6 times(Gen. 12:7; 15:4, 13; 17:2, 7, 16). Yet somehow Abraham didn't grasp this vision. He still had some ulterior motive. Like giving up his wife to an Egyptian Pharoah (Gen. 12:10-20) and Abimelech (Genesis 20). He could've screwed it all up. Then he listened to Sarai about sleeping with her servant, AFTER what Abraham heard in Gen. 12:7 and Gen. 15:4. What was he thinking? I am absolutely certain that these passages were to pinpoint the frailty of main, and magnify the sovereignty of God. If He didn't step out in several occassions on Abraham's behalf, like afflicting the Pharoah, appearing before Abimelech, and Abraham there will be no offspring, and no offspring means no "New Covenant". It just goes to show that God is over all things and it is He who is the catalyst for godly vision. It suprises me that God appears before Abraham, Abimelech, Lot, and even Hagar, but never Sarah. I wondered about that.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)