Does God want people to be rich? I can’t simply say yes or no, so let me explain it like this: God wants His people to have everything they can handle and keep Him first in their lives, be a blessing to other people and keep a good attitude.
So do I believe God wants people to have possessions and material wealth? Yes, if they can handle it. So you can challenge me and ask: “What do you tell the housewife whose husband has left her with three kids, a broken refrigerator, busted car and she doesn’t have my life? What do I tell her?”
I tell her to do the same thing I did: Don’t quit and don’t give up. Persevere and keep doing what God is telling you to do and, little by little , you will get where you want to be. We descend into a list of troubles a little bit at a time, not all at once. We get into messes in our lives through years of making bad choices. And we can’t expect to get our lives straightened out overnight.
Yes, God is a miracle-working God, and He can fix our problems in a moment if He wants to. But it usually doesn’t happen that way.
It wouldn’t be good for us if He just waved a magic wand over us and fixed our messes instantaneously. If He did, we wouldn’t learn anything and would just make the same mistakes over and over again.
The way we get out of trouble is through learning how to make right choices. And if we make wise decisions and do what God tells us to do, we’ll have what He says we can have.
Now the blessings are not just stuff. The world is full of people who have a lot of money, yet they’re miserable anyway. God wants to bless His children so we can have the abundant life Jesus died to give us and so we can be a blessing to others—not just so we can have stuff.
Deuteronomy 30:19 has a simple message: Do what God tells you to do and you’ll be blessed. Don’t do what He tells you to do and you won’t be blessed.
I want you to really hear what I’m saying: The promises of God are for “whosoever will” and not just a select group of people. If you will obey God’s direction for your life and trust Him, you will have what God says you can have.
In His Service, Pastor Curtis & Migdalia Terry