HE TAKES CARE Part II

Today the gospel became for many Christians a channel for success only, success measured mainly by palpable prosperity.
The gospel most seen today, it is a gospel that absorbed the materialist trend, it is the competitive proposal of Christians being the best in everything, a thought that comes from positivist philosophy, from market theories (who is the best is the one that leads and possesses more). The motto is to be the head and not the tail. Get out of my way because I’m passing. If you don’t take care I’ll take your position, I’ll take your status, everything, I’ll absorb you – Is this not the way things happen in commercial markets, the wealthy swallowing up those who do not have how to compete?
Is this not the message that several preachers of the gospel are preaching in the house people come in to try to find rest for their souls and where this kind of thought and attitude should be deconstructed, aiming that people, after hearing the word of the gospel, could leave the place more humanized, sympathetic, taking with them something different than the way they live in the individualist battle in which they are involved everyday?
In the proposal of possessions, God became the great source of blessings to swollen egos, stimulated by preachers who merchandize the divine blessings with personal profitable goals. God is source of blessings, but I do not believe that He is if what we have and are going to have is not fruit of the teaching of Jesus: seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you (Mathew 6.33).
We don’t need get upset about showing to anybody that what we have is the proof of our faith, is the materialization of our faith. In fact we don’t need to prove anything to anyone.
seeking first the kingdom of God became a message of “non-aggressive”, “weak” Christians, “believers without guts”, uncertainty of God’s promises; the motto is to determine, to claim one’s rights, corner God on His promises because “He cannot deny Himself”.
There are people who want to demonstrate their faith, that they are of God through their properties. How many of them have become frustrated when they did not get what they planed materially, when they did not achieve what was said to them they would achieve if they believe.
They got frustrated because what they confessed was not faith for eternal life, but for a present full of material things. They got frustrated because, perhaps, what they lived, they lived putting their trust in palpable things and not in the gospel that sees the future (but that also does not despise the present, just because he takes care of us as He does with the birds). They got frustrated because they believed in a gospel that does not reflect the dimension of Jesus’ work on the Calvary: God coming to us and setting us free of our incapacity of seeing ourselves, of our incapacity of understanding ourselves, who we were, are, and where we are going to, and why we exist.
Without Jesus Christ’s work on the cross, we would not have how to see this. Thus, now, we depend on Him and now we go to Him to have what we need, just because He has taken care of us.
They got frustrated because they believed in decontextualized triumphalist messages as the ones based on the words of Paul the apostle, for instance: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4.13).
The context of this verse is Paul knowing how to be in abundance and in necessity, full and hungry, encouraged and discouraged. It is not a context of invincibility, get out demon because I am a son of the King. Even the sons and daughters of the king were also called to suffer, to possess and do not possess, as He lived because they love Him, because they know that He gave them back life again, because they know that they were and are important to him in such a way that He wants them beside Him forever, because they were created in His image and resemblance, they are the crown of His creation, are His expression in their thinking, acting, having history, in their dreams, loving, planning, living, in their freedom to choose and judge.
The properties that we have and are going to have yet are consequence and not goals for the Christian that tries to live according to the example Jesus showed to His disciples.
Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Mathew 6.30)
Still in the text below:
1 Timothy 6.10-12
10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
11 But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness.
12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many.
The apostle is speaking that some in their strong interest of making money withdrew from faith. Love of money comes true in several ways and one of them is through strong emphasis on getting it , emphasis that creates in the mind of those influenced by the money message a mist that leads them astray of Christ’s compassion, that change them into indifferent, arrogant people, almost all that Jesus did not wish for those who were and are called by his name.

Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You (Psalm 73:25).

To be continued ...

Let’s think about this!


José Martins