Open Heavens Devotional: PRIDE NEGATES WEALTH – Saturday, February 11, 2012

By Pastor E.A. Adeboye

Memorise: The poor useth intreaties; but the rich answereth roughly. Proverbs 18:23

Read: Proverbs 18:11-12, 23

Not all wealth is good. God is interested in your prosperity but only through the right channels. If the channel is right and God is in it, then that wealth is blessed, if not, it is cursed. As a child of God, your concern must not just be being wealthy, but to follow Heaven-approved channels. Proverbs 28:6 says:

Better is the poor that walketh in his uprightness, than he that is perverse in his ways, though he be rich.

If it appears you are temporarily impoverished because you will join others to get rich quick through unscriptural ways and means, that poverty is honourable. There are many nice and easy going people who took to wickedness in their quest to get rich. Some do not mind stealing and using other people’s children for money making rituals, forgetting that they have laid a foundation for their children, even unborn generations to become victims of the same act. God says it is good to be poor and live than through wickedness become rich.

In addition to being holy, you must also be humble. Proverbs 16:19 says:

Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

It is preferable to be holy and humble than to be rich and share in the loot of the proud because God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5). When you are humble and wealth comes, not only will you be able to create opportunities to retain such wealth, but you will also retain favour with God and man. On the other hand, the rich sinner is made proud by the abundance of things he has and he ignores the cries of the poor. Wealth has brought out nothing but meanness in some rich people. Although one major reason for getting wealth is to remember and assist the poor, yet for many, wealth has turned them against the ones they should protect. For some people being rich is not worthwhile to them unless someone else is poor.  If your wealth is making you full of yourself and your head swollen, you are on your way to destruction. Have you become so unfriendly, distant or even unreachable to the poor around you? You are losing track of the righteous path God placed you on. Proverbs 29:7 says you should be at the vanguard of crusading for the welfare of the poor. Are you?

PRAYER POINT:

Father, the more You prosper me, the humbler I want to become.

 
Bible in one year: 2 Samuel 9-12

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