I will get back to my series that will help us to avoid our adversary, called, “No More Sympathy for the Devil” after the 1st of the year. I wanted to end the year with some good news but also with a reasonable warning.
Jesus was and is many things but one thing I think we miss about Him is that He understood politics. It’s not every day we think of the Rabbi, miracle-working preacher, Son of God as a political scientist but absolutely He was and is. And He understood economics and principles to bless the whole of a society and the world at large. I would encourage many of you politicians, economists, think-tank researchers, academics and clergy to reread the New Testament and the Torah with that in mind. You will be amazed at the things that pop off the pages as you do!
But these are revolutionary ideas. Jesus’ political and economic concepts were/are based in The Absolute Truth and would be quite radical in our culture to implement. Ideas like, “Loving your enemies” would not go over very well in the President’s P.E.O.C., among the Joint-Chiefs. Telling some of our hawkish Israeli or DC diplomats to “turn the other cheek” might not be the answer they were looking for. But Jesus saw/sees the big picture – we tend to live with great limitation and lack.
Lack was never God’s idea, ever. Our enemy still tries to convince us, “There is not enough to go around” and that simple mistruth remains one of the greatest problems on earth. The more our leaders agree that there is not enough, the more warring and strife we will see among the nations. The more our leaders refuse to love instead of fear, the more division we will see throughout the earth. How to resolve conflict without understanding one’s enemy? And how to understand one’s enemy without empathy? And how to empathize without love??? The deception of lack has been destroying our work since the beginning.
We can apply “There is not enough to go around”, this deception, to our relationships. For instance, we think, “What if I love her and it doesn’t work?” Trying to save his marriage, a man might come to the incorrect conclusion, “What if I give her all the love and forgiveness I have and she still leaves me and worse yet, seeks to destroy me?” This too is lack showing up in our lives, we determine we do not have enough (love) to give, as if we are going to run out and so we with-hold (of our love) and simply give up far too easily. But what if we thought differently? What if we believed in an abundance of God’s love!?
Jesus was always trying to break us out of our limitations, the often, self-imposed limitations, the limitations we have come to believe in and trust – but Jesus said, “I have come that you might have Life and that you might live it more abundantly!” (my Paraphrase of John 10:10). We have bought into the lies and propaganda of our enemy, and it’s the same since the beginning, “Did God really say?” The enemy plants this doubt into our minds and we receive it in our hearts, these and other lies penetrate into the deepest parts of our soul and they come to rule our lives. Doubt. Unbelief. Fear. Those ruling politicians, business-titans, academics, etc., How many of them have believed in the lies for four or five decades and rule us now with terrible misunderstanding and a heart or spirit of lack?
I read a book years ago about economics, called, “God wants you to be rich” (by Paul Zane Piltzer). The title was catchy but I wish it had had a different title, honestly. What was within the book was wonderful, it was full of God’s truths applied to economic theory. I read it when I was 18 years old – what a blessing these truths were to a young man who ended up becoming an entrepreneur!! But the concepts of abundance and lack apply to much more than economic theory – what we choose to believe about God’s kingdom and His ways are going to permeate every area of our lives, everything within our culture, our nation, our politics and yes, even our economics.
I will let someone else write the article about fear and greed – and how they unfortunately dictate much of the rising and falling of our economy. But brothers and sisters, this should not be so. We should not be so reactionary. We react to someone else’s riches and then we chase after them, almost mindlessly pursuing more, and more. But then we also react to someone else’s losses and then we shut-down and hoard, in fear. Our debt-based, often global economy has caused us to react rather than act in faith. Without all the debt, the rapid and almost chaotic rising and falling of our economy simply would never happen. I will save those thoughts for the economists.
Jesus was not a reactionary. He was (and is) always ahead of the news, even outside of the prevailing tide, as if the world around Him had no power to sway His thoughts, vision or intention. He was bringing His kingdom to the earth, period – and Nothing was (or is) going to stop Him. He will love, regardless of what they do to Him – He will give and serve with the utmost, almost reckless-abandon – And nothing of this world will get Him off mission. He see’s the end from the beginning and He knows that these truths are the only thing that will set men free – therefore is He unwavering, resolute and uncompromising.
We, one the other hand, hear the rumors, take off and run, we hide at the mere perception of something going wrong. We bury our talents in the earth because we believe in the lack - we don’t trust in God’s Truth but trust in the deceptions of our adversary and so we live enslaved, generation after generation. Consider all the ways we bury our gifts from God in the sand, instead of sharing them freely. There is an economics of fear and then there is an economics of the kingdom of heaven. “I was afraid to use what you gave me, Lord, and so I hid it in the earth…” Is that what we will say to the Lord when we finally meet Him? God forbid.
The truth is, the earth is exceptionally huge! abundant doesn’t even begin to describe the earth and the seas and the fullness therein. But we/men are ruining everything. We don’t believe in the truth of His abundance and so we go to war against His creation, believing that it needs improving. Transhumanism, genetically-modified foods, merging man and machine, going to the stars, searching for a better creation, etc. all these concepts and more are born out of men choosing to trust in lack rather than God’s abundant kingdom. But there is hope in Jesus. Certainly, He knew what the future of the world would look like. None of these times are coming as a shock to our God. We have been lied to. We have an enemy who is taking the abundance of God’s earth, the fullness, and turning it into desolation. Brothers and sisters, we must not go along with His deception any longer.
We must have a lifeline. Where does your hope originate from? From where do you receive power and strength for the day, to persevere against the prevailing winds of such deception and propoganda!? We need a direct conduit to life and life more abundantly. We need to be daily, hourly, moment by moment “plugged-in” to the source of all life, who is our Savior, our Messiah. He said, “I am the way, the truth and The Life. No man will come to the Father but thru me.” There is false hope, temporal hope, fleeting hope and then there is the True Power that plants us on a rock and makes us immovable – the Spirit which comes from knowing Jesus Christ and Him knowing us.
All of this abundant life begins and remains found in Him.
As the year comes to its conclusion: my hope and prayer for us all is that we believe, like never before, and literally bring the kingdom of heaven to earth in 2023. “His reward is with Him and His work is before Him” (Isaiah). There is plenty of work to do. Plenty to hope in. Shut your ears to all the bad news and open your hearts to the word of God. From out of a man’s heart the mouth speaks, in the hearts of men are all sorts of iniquity but there is no such thing within our God. Soften your hearts. Open them up to receiving something new. Our work this year could produce Gold and Silver ( to be refined) or it could produce wood, hay and stubble which is destined to be burnt up by the fire.
There is a time to be still and know He is God
And then there is a time to take the kingdom!!
All these things are revealed in Him
By the One who speaks only the Truth
2023: It could be the best of times It could be the worst of times?
Our obedience to the word of God will determine these things for each household. There is Great Hope up ahead
Can we discern it?? In our Messiah it is discerned
May the Lord bless you and keep you this New Year,
May the Lord’s face shine upon you and give you peace.
Amen. With the Greatest love from the Father of Life,
To the saints I write, Robert Anthony
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