Skip to main content

On the Health and Wealth Gospel

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more that all that we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us...." (Eph 3:26)
The new “health and wealth” gospel that is being preached to us actually making us put a cap on what God can do for us. We should leave it to God, to his will. The ultimate purpose of Christian life is to glorify God and not to limit God.

The new gospel of prosperity that is being preached is one of “name it, claim it”. The argument is that human words have power to make things to happen. It follows from this reasoning that God will grant anything that we ask specifically. Promoters of this “gospel” say that we need to clear in our imagination and be specific about our prayer requests. For example, if you are praying for a car, don’t just pray for a car, they say. Pray for the specific model, specific color, etc.
However, I find this teaching and all its reasoning contrary to the Word of God!
The Bible teaches that we don’t know how to pray and the Holy Spirit comes to our help in our weakness to pray. The Bible also teaches us that God is a good God. He will not give us what harms us, though sometimes we may even ask for harmful things, being limited in our knowledge (James 4:3). God’s wisdom certainly overrules human’s faulty wisdom. Our imagination is limited. God’s blessings cannot be limited by my faulty imagination!
God’s gifts are the best, though I may not be able to appreciate the greatness of them. My inability to appreciate God’s gifts is due to my fallen nature (James 1:17). Ephesians 3:20 make it very clear that God’s blessings for us are not limited by what I ask for. He always grants more than that I ask. Then why should I limit God by the specifics that I can think of? God grants not only more than we ask for, but more than what we can imagine! That means we should not limit God by our imagination.
The new “health and wealth” gospel that is being preached to us actually making us put a cap on what God can do for us. We should leave it to God, to his will. The ultimate purpose of Christian life is to glorify God and not to limit God.
 
 
 

Popular posts from this blog

The Days of Antipas

"The days of Antipas" means not only a period of persecution but a period of perseverance as well. It signifies the days of believers who withstood the pressures from outside to surrender. In the church in the city of Pergamum, there were some people who remained faithful to Jesus in the days of severe persecution. Apostle John calls these days of persecution "the day of Antipas" (Rev. 2:13).  The Antipas mentioned here should not be confused with Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas was a wicked ruler whom Jesus called "fox". He is the one who offered the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter to his daughter. He might have tried to kill Jesus and presided over Jesus' trial. However, the Antipas mentioned in Revelation 2 was the bishop of Pergamum, a pagan city in the first century AD. The name means "against all." There is a great con trast in the names -- Herod was against all that was good, however, Antipas th...
Read more

The Lonely Jungle Babbler

Every day it comes, and pecks at the glass panel of the window of my study. It is a Jungle Babbler, a very common bird in the Indian subcontinent. It dances flying up and down and fluttering its wings. Sometimes, three or four times a day it repeats this ritual. I thought it is trying to get  into  my room or fly through as it can see the other side. But why does it keep coming, can't it make out after three or four attempts that it can't fly through?   I told my Neighbor, whom I consider an expert on birds, about this winged visitor. She explained that the babbler is pecking at its own reflection, thinking that it is another bird. I thought of verifying her suggestion. The following day I kept the window half open, drawing one panel fully open. The babbler came as usual. Perched on the window,  looked into  my room through the open panel but did not enter the room or peck. But it moved to the side of the window where there is glass and started pecking on the gl...
Read more

The Conquering Grace

  Grace of God is hard to define. When I was making baby steps in Christian faith, mentors told me that ‘grace is unmerited favor.’ I found that helpful. But as I continued to experience God’s grace as I grew, I found that this definition is inadequate to express all that God does in my life. Now, I have come to realize that grace of God is such a thing that eludes any definition. Grace, as I understand now is what God alone and no human can do in our lives. It comes in various colors, shapes and sizes! John, the gospel writer seems to have understood the multifarious nature of grace that he talks about the ‘fullness of grace’ and ‘grace upon grace’ (John 1:17). Or the New Living Translation puts it: ‘From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.’ These expressions mean that grace is not just one-sided reality but a multi-faceted reality. Its fullness is beyond our comprehension just as God evades our understanding. One of the rare but ...
Read more