When your Affluence is weighed

I love to be secure and perhaps secure others; this kind of love evokes working hard and long. We are taught by any kind of wisdom to work hard and take care of people under us. In fact, the bible makes one of the sharpest statements I know, if anyone is not able to take care of there household, they are worse off than non-believers. ‘Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever,’ 1 Timothy 5:8.

The feeling of a farmer who spends hours of sweat tilling the land, planting the crops and when the plants are showing all signs of a great harvest, without warning, a bad weather shows up and destroys all the crops. Some businesses are looking just like that farmer in the middle of this pandemic. All other merchandise suddenly are labelled non-essentials and cannot be traded now to avoid unnecessary crowding.

Affluence and Prosperity walk a slippery road, I do not advise anyone to stop aspiring for prosperity because I personally will not. I however need to redefine them and anchor them.

The man Zephaniah uses very interesting words when he is talking about God’s judgment. God’s judgment in his case was to make sure there is no complacency or a stagnant spirit. the people were not to settle into affluence and be comforted by prosperity. They were to be a people on a move allowing to be disturbed and shaken so they can taste better.

Zephaniah compares the people to wine in bottles that should not settle on its dregs. Dregs are false indicators of ‘all is well’, they keep to the bottom of a container while wine floats above them. The better way would be to shake the wine, let the dregs mix up, then filter that wine into the next bottle, do the same process until you have no dregs in the wine. At that time, I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish those who are complacent, who are like wine left on its dregs, who think, ‘The Lord will do nothing, either good or bad.’ Zephaniah 1:12

I get a feeling, in my pursuit to secure myself and others, God is called for this game to go into ‘time out’ He searches us with a lamp and is checking for areas of complacency, and is shaking the dregs to rise up so that I can filter them out of my life and be a great bottle of wine fit for the master.

Eugene 14/04/2020