April 9 2018 – Click here to listen
I went fishing with some new friends, both of whom have considerable wealth, this weekend. One of them has visited Haiti over 40 times in the last few years and when I queried him on what he does over there, he told me that he bakes bread for the poor children who live there.
He bought a container full of wheat for $30,000 and spent $6000 shipping it over and now he and his wife periodically go there and spend their time grinding the wheat and baking bread with it which is then provided free of charge to starving people.
He went on to explain that when wheat is ground it must be baked within five days in order to retain its highest nutritional value. If done properly it will be so full of nutrients that people can actually live on nothing more than this bread and water. He told me that it is the same process that was used in ancient times including the time that Joseph was in Egypt.
So, he and his wife periodically make the trip and bake the bread and give it away to a plethora of schools. I mentioned it might be good to train the locals how to bake it themselves, and he said that a program was being launched to do just that. I quipped that many would probably begin selling the bread instead of giving it away.
Interestingly he told me that he hoped they would! He wants them to understand capitalism and though their intentions might initially be nefarious, if businesses could be formed it would provide employment and a new industry might take root. This reminded me of the adage of teaching a man to fish instead of giving him a fish every day.
I mused on that for a moment and came away thinking that was a brilliant observation. Most of us would be guarding against such a thing and providing tight security in a third world country filled with corruption.
This man owns numerous franchise restaurants and he told me he was making all the money that he wanted or needed, but the parent company just offered him 3 new franchise opportunities unsolicited by him. This will provide him with millions more which I feel sure will be put to good use.
My other friend, (the one who owned the yacht we were fishing on), has 36 different ministries that he financially supports. He told me that recently he was afraid that he might have to cut back on his giving due to some serious financial challenges concerning his expanding business, but ultimately, he decided to stay the course. I don’t have room to relate the entire story, but God resolved his dilemma and He did it in such a miraculous way that my buddy would never even have considered such an option. Now his business is zooming toward another record year.
Throughout my life as a Christian business person I’ve experienced similar events. Many of my friends have told me I’m favored by God. I and my two friends would be the first to agree that we have been enormously blessed or “favored” by God.
I’m sure my new friends would agree that God’s favor is undeserved by all of us.
In my case you can put a multiplier on that with lots of zeros. When I was mired in sin and did not know God I was lonely, bitter, angry, and miserable. When I turned to God that diametrically changed for me.
Even for a dummy like my I get the correlation . . .
I’ve found that the closer I come to obeying God’s word the more I’m blessed.
I believe that above all else God desires unswerving faith from us. This does not mean that becoming a faith filled follower of Jesus Christ will ensure that no problems will arise. It does mean that God will provide the solution if we will just be patient and maintain faith as we fight through the fiery trials of this short life.
Some folks don’t like it when I speak plainly, and others do. Regardless I will tell you in plain English that you cannot have your “sin-cake” and eat it too. If you choose the lusts of this world all the while knowing it goes against God’s laws and deliberately sin anyway, you are going to pay a heavy price. If God has favored you in the past, He can and will take those blessings away. I know this because it has happened to me time and again when I began drifting away. He does it quickly too.
I don’t fear much in life, but I’ve learned to fear God.
Kind Solomon was the richest and wisest man to ever walk this earth. He was blessed enormously by God, but often did not adhere to God’s laws as he should. He lived a life pursuing life’s pleasures but despite his enormous wealth and wisdom, he found his enlightened life of luxury to be “futile, a useless chasing of the wind, utterly ridiculous, disgusting, discouraging, useless.”
What?
All that wealth, beautiful wives and concubines, wisdom, material possessions galore? How could he possibly use words like that?
He understood that all those worldly things were just stuff. What pleases God is the wheat being ground into bread for the poor, the devotion to ministries, the standing on prison yards and evangelizing inmates, opting to forego sin with righteous living, the unselfish giving, visiting folks in hospitals, paying an electric bill for a struggling widow, and loving instead of hating. It is most important in this life and the next. God blesses those who faithfully abide by His commands.
Solomon concluded his summation in Ecclesiastes with the following verse:
Eccl. 12:13
The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil . . .