October 27 - Psalm 128

October 27 - Psalm 128

I chuckled a little as I read this Psalm.  This is what we all want, isn't it?  To have blessings and prosperity, a family that is happy and successful, a long life lived in a community that is prosperous.  These things are a dream come true for most people.

The prosperity gospel which has been preached over the centuries tells us that if we follow Jesus, we will have all of that and more, that all we have to do is follow a certain pastor’s guidelines for successful living and everything in this life will be ours, because God promises us those things in scripture.

The thing is, that’s absolutely true.

I could stop there and you might wonder if I had lost my mind, but I haven’t. I’m as pragmatic and normal as I've always been.  You see, there are several things we forget to include in the prosperity equation.  First, we can’t just go after this for a few months and expect God to drop blessings in our laps.  It’s easy to straighten up our lives and live well for a short period of time.  Who are we kidding?

Secondly, scriptures also tell us that God knows our hearts.  If the purpose of following God is to gain prosperity and blessings then that isn’t truly a relationship, is it?  Oh, it’s a relationship many of us are familiar with, we live it out in our jobs and in many of our other relationships, but it won’t work with the Lord.

We also have to recognize that prosperity and long life have differing definitions for different people and cultures … and our definition is absolutely not going to be the same as the Lord’s definition.  He wants what is best for us within the overall scheme of what’s best for His creation.

It is easy to skip over the first verse of this Psalm: Blessed are all who fear the Lord.  We moved right past that to the part about blessings and prosperity.  The Lord has the right to expect a lifetime of honor from us.  When we live within His will and ask for His input into our lives and then live according to that, we begin to align our desires with His and discover a new understanding of blessings and prosperity. Rather than balancing ourselves against the definition given to us by the world, we define ourselves according to how God sees us and the relationship that we are in with Him.

This is transformative!  Imagine the peace that will come from living, not according to standards set by culture, which changes moment by moment, but those set by the Lord who is never-changing.  When we can do that, we will find that the blessings have been there all along and that our prosperity is more than enough to meet our needs and that our lives are lived just long enough to offer us the opportunity to be in a relationship with the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth.