Spiritual Ponderings

What we want most of the time is for God to change uncomfortable circumstances. What God wants to change in us is our responses to uncomfortable circumstances. God allows difficulties into our lives many times as a means of sanding our roughness away. When we beg God to remove the sandpaper, we seek to block His plans and circumvent His methods for making us smoother and better suited to reflect His glory more clearly. We understand the need for cutting, grinding and polishing when it comes to constructing something of beauty or good function for our everyday life. So why is it so hard to see the parallel in the way God is working to prepare us to function in His family? We don't want a rough piece of lumber full of splinters, sticky sap oozing out and splattered with mud to use as a piece of fine furniture. We don't want a dull, ragged piece of metal to use for a mirror or even for a tool. We understand the need to cut away rough, sharp edges that present danger...

Why is the love of money the root of all evil? Money has no value of itself. Any perceived value is artificially infused into it by those using it and relying on it to provide for their needs and desires. Money is the core representation of the entire system of economy. Economy is one of the three main pillars that constitute Satan's counterfeit kingdom now called civilization. The function of economics is founded squarely on the concept of exchanging things that have artificially assigned value. Money is the medium of liquidation by which we transfer perceived value of something for empty promises of value – currency. We then take those promissory notes and in return look for someone else that has something we want and then offer them those same empty promises (promissory notes or currency) in hopes that they will believe in them enough to give us what we want in exchange. The key concept here is the practice of exchange, but not direct exchange such as might be ...

But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment . For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content . But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil , and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness. (1 Timothy 6:6-11) An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money . (1 Timothy 3:2-3) Make sure that your character is free from the love of money , being ...