Then the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah son of Jehoiada the priest. He stood before the people and said, “This is what God says: Why do you disobey the LORD’s commands and keep yourselves from prospering? You have abandoned the LORD, and now he has abandoned you!” [2 Chronicles 24.20]
God's pleasure upon His people yields prosperity in every way.
There is no account in the Bible that God's pleasure is demonstrated on His people through suffering and loss.
Why in the world would God-fearing people ever conclude that their sufferings are anything less than indicators of the need for repentance?
When we abandon God, He abandons us! Jesus didn't change that! Jesus couldn't change that! He couldn't change it because faith IS obedience. To refuse faith (in Christ and all He did) is to reject (abandon) God. To abandon God qualifies us then to be abandoned by God and therefore keeps us from prospering.
Where did man ever get the idea that Jesus did away with our responsibility to obey? Regardless of the answer to this question, the thing that is most damning to us is that we have misinterpreted "bad things" in our lives to be no indication of God's having abandoned us. In other words, we think bad things happen to good people - but nothing could be further from the truth!
The "bad things happen to good people" idea has been one of Satan's most successful tactics in disarming the Church of any power in the earth today. It has done so by negating the need for repentance. When we embrace "bad things" as blessings from God instead of repenting because something is obviously wrong, we effectively embrace curses upon our lives that God intended for no other purpose than for us to repent!
It is time for the Church to wake up and repent!
What about Paul's 'thorn in the flesh?' I believe there is overwhelming evidence in the Bible of God blessing obedience and cursing disobedience that we should look at Paul's thorn in the flesh as an anomaly more so than as the norm! We should look at Paul's situation like we look at Job's situation: Job appeared sinless and perfect at first, but when his punishment became great enough, his heart became evident and all manner of pride and arrogance manifested - so glaringly much so that God demanded Job's repentance!!
As I have grown to know more and more, faith is an obedience. It is an obedience above and beyond the Law of Moses. If we fail to believe, the consequences are no different than failing to keep the Law. Human failure is the trigger for human suffering.
Will we persist to embrace suffering as a sign of God's love? Or will we finally accept the overwhelming story of the Bible by seeing suffering as God's call to repentance? Can we afford to wrong about this? Will we keep ourselves from prospering by our pride (and refusal to repent)?
Father, forgive me for my own pride and for the pride of the Body of Christ. Forgive us for embracing suffering as anything less than Your call to repentance!
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