{"id":3377,"date":"2011-02-08T10:54:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T17:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harmonicminer.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/08\/prosperity-gospel-for-christian-institutions-part-2\/"},"modified":"2022-03-10T23:29:31","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T06:29:31","slug":"prosperity-gospel-for-christian-institutions-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.harmonicminer.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/08\/prosperity-gospel-for-christian-institutions-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"“Prosperity gospel” for Christian institutions? Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

The previous post in this series is here<\/a>, and will help provide background for what follows.<\/p>\n

There are many instances of people and groups who take risks for the gospel, do the unpopular thing, and God does bless them.But obvious worldly blessing is not a given.God has His own agenda and ways of doing things, and we cannot assume that our worldly success is due to God’s blessing, nor our difficulties evidence of our failure to seek God’s will and do it.Some missionaries are murdered, and martyrdom in Christ’s service did not end with the fall of the Roman Empire.Lesser difficulties also occur with some regularity, even in the modern world.<\/p>\n

Yet how many boards and leaders of churches and para-church organizations proceed with the assumption that apparent worldly or financial success equals God’s blessing, with such a rigid conflation of the two that any policy which carries some attendant risk of worldly disapproval is assumed to be the wrong one? Consider the logic: if we are doing good, God will bless us in worldly ways. Therefore, we should not consider doing something that risks getting worldly disapproval, since if the world disapproves, by our benighted definition, God is not blessing us.<\/p>\n

So how can we decide if we are making our decisions according to God’s plan, from a fully Christian worldview, or if we are simply doing what seems best to us, within our human expertise (and afflicted with human pride and desire for power), as we try to strengthen our organization or institution in a worldly sense?There is no way to know for sure, of course.<\/p>\n

But one thing seems indicative.<\/p>\n

If we find we are mostly making decisions from the point of view of what the world will think of us (not from the point of view of God’s will, God’s commands, God’s moral precepts, and Christ within and among us), even if we have great institutional and public success, even if we are doing some good, we are not doing what God desires of us. Christ’s way is one of sacrifice and risk-taking for the sake of the gospel, most particularly the risk of being misunderstood and vilified by those who do not know Him. This is true whether we are explaining His way to the world, or standing for the principles He taught.<\/p>\n

I’ll be developing this idea further in subsequent posts.<\/p>\n

The next post in this series is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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