Does God want You to be Rich?

Does God want You to be Rich?
By DAVID VAN BIEMA, JEFF CHU
Time Magazine - September 10, 2006

"When George Adams lost his job at an Ohio tile factory last October, the most practical thing he did, he thinks, was go to a new church, even though he had to move his wife and four preteen boys to Conroe, a suburb of Houston, to do it. Conroe, you see, is not far from Lakewood, the home church of megapastor and best-selling author Joel Osteen.

"Osteen's relentlessly upbeat television sermons had helped Adams, 49, get through the hard times, and now Adams was expecting the smiling, Texas-twanged 43-year-old to help boost him back toward success. And Osteen did. Inspired by the preacher's insistence that one of God's top priorities is to shower blessings on Christians in this lifetime--and by the corollary assumption that one of the worst things a person can do is to expect anything less--Adams marched into Gullo Ford in Conroe looking for work. He didn't have entry-level aspirations: "God has showed me that he doesn't want me to be a run-of-the-mill person," he explains. He demanded to know what the dealership's top salesmen made--and got the job. Banishing all doubt--"You can't sell a $40,000-to-$50,000 car with menial thoughts"--Adams took four days to retail his first vehicle, a Ford F-150 Lariat with leather interior. He knew that many fellow salesmen don't notch their first score until their second week. "Right now, I'm above average!" he exclaims. "It's a new day God has given me! I'm on my way to a six-figure income!" The sales commission will help with this month's rent, but Adams hates renting. Once that six-figure income has been rolling in for a while, he will buy his dream house: "Twenty-five acres," he says. "And three bedrooms. We're going to have a schoolhouse (his children are home schooled). We want horses and ponies for the boys, so a horse barn. And a pond. And maybe some cattle."

"'I'm dreaming big--because all of heaven is dreaming big," Adams continues. "Jesus died for our sins. That was the best gift God could give us," he says. "But we have something else. Because I want to follow Jesus and do what he ordained, God wants to support us. It's Joel Osteen's ministry that told me. Why would an awesome and mighty God want anything less for his children?"

You can read the rest at Time.com, if you have a subscription, or pick up a copy of the September 18th edition at your local newsstand. But there's no real need to read it, we all know what this article will say. It's not the verbatim article that I want to talk about, but the subject matter. It's definitely interesting to me that Time decided to cover this subject.

Since I got in trouble last time ;) for slamming something I had little personal experience with, I will just say this: it seems to me that so-called prosperity doctrine is just another way of missing the point. Case in point: A local health&wealth church has just built a huge new campus, complete with business center, whose first major partner happens to be Honda. While this is all well and good, creative financing and a great way to seem less closed to the business world, but let's not get carried away. This project isn't far from my house, and I will say, it's not small.

Internet Monk Michael Spencer wrote recently, and less recently about Joel Osteen. I'm no expert, so I'll just say "Yeah. What he said".

[Edit: I forgot to mention that Michael Spencer is quoted in the Time Magazine Article: "Respected blogger Michael Spencer--known as the Internet Monk--asked, "How many young people are going to be pointed to Osteen as a true shepherd of Jesus Christ? He's not. He's not one of us."]

I believe God promises to meet our "needs". But our interpretation of the word "need" is probably quite a bit different from God's. He will rarely give us what we ask for or expect. Sometimes what He give seems like less than meeting our needs, sometimes it seems like more. But always it's perfect.

I don't believe blessings are dependent on faith, name-it-and-claim-it, or the-more-we-give-the-more-we-receive. I believe each of us has exactly what God intends us to have. I believe God always gives us what He wills, and sometimes what we ask for. Can He sometimes give us way more financial blessing than we can ask or imagine? Of course. But does He guarantee it? Of course not. I think in Ephesians 3:20, He's not referring to material wealth - but to the greater things that we cannot imagine.

Are we American Christians generally poor stewards? Don't we almost always have more than we need? I know we do, and we cling way too tightly to it, with the fear that God gave it so He can also take it away - why give it away? So I want it to become our goal, as a family, to make at least a little more effort to steer away from greed and try just a little harder to give it away.

What do you think about all this? Does God want us to be rich? I'm open to any opinion and I'm interested in anyone's experience with this prosperity kind of doctrine.