infinite state of mind.

There's a lot of things that modern Christianity is obsessed with. Last week we talked about how we're infatuated with relationships; this week we're talking about how we are infatuated with prosperity. It is mind-boggling to me the way that we are so obsessed with prosperity and comfortability ( and by prosperity, I mean WORLDLY prosperity; we will forever prosper in Jesus). We not only see church leaders flaunting wealth and prosperity, we see influencers thriving in worldly prosperity and equating that to a healthy relationship with Jesus; intentionally AND unintentionally. 

Prosperity is multifaceted. 

I think that the fault of this falls in different places. The first of them being that we have a warped view of prosperity. As followers of Jesus, we are now called into eternal life. We are NOW called; not when we die, but when we accept and follow Jesus. This detail is important because I think so often we have this assumption that eternal life is something that happens in the future rather than in this moment. This life with Jesus, this eternal life we get to live with Jesus, is the life we are living right now. Therefore, our prosperity is found in the eternal presence of God.  

How can we spend our time boasting worldly prosperity when we can boast in our eternal life in Jesus?

The second fault is that we start to view our relationship with God as transactional and finite when in reality, it is relational and infinite. 1 John 3:1 reads:
"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."
You and I: we are CHILDREN OF GOD! (you better be saying Amen through the screen). 
God exists to create, to love, to guide, to comfort, to bless, and to nurture His children. When we follow Him, we're not there to say thank you and move on. God wants a relationship with His children, so why do we treat Him like our CEO instead of our Heavenly Father?
​When reading through scripture, it may look like if we do A, B, and C, we get a nice end result. However, like we stated before, the end result is eternal life with Jesus. So if our end result is eternal life with Jesus, our pursuit of our goals never end. We never stop following God's instruction and we never stop trusting in His sovereignty. 

To view prosperity eternally, we have to get out of a finite state of mind. ​

The last fault is simply this (thank you Dad for this one):
Jesus came to present the Gospel of GIVING, not collection. 
sheesh. 
Worldly prosperity is purely rooted in collection and reservation, while eternal prosperity thrives off of generosity WITHOUT reservation: the ultimate sacrifice. 
At the end of the day, the Gospel is a story of ultimate sacrifice. Not only did God sacrifice His one and only Son for His children to experience abundant life with Him, our abundant life with Jesus consists of sacrifice. When you're done reading this, take a quick look at the video I included. The story of Job is one that we use a LOT within Christianity, and for good reasons too. Job's story highlights an important facet of our faith that is relevant to prosperity:
Abundant life with God does not look like worldly prosperity. 
Abundance in Christ is not measurable in the slightest, and I'm so grateful that it isn't. 
It's a gift that we could never repay and a life that is so gracious, it seems too good to be true. 
Let's stop trying to compare our prosperity as a way to measure our trust in Jesus. Our prosperity is immeasurable because our wealth in Christ is immeasurable. God intended for it to be this way from the beginning, and praise Him that it will reign true forever.