The Prosperity Gospel Test

So I have a question for you. Do you believe in the prosperity gospel? If you're a conservative Christian or a reformed Christian, you're probably going to say, no, of course not. That's ridiculous. I don't believe that God's going to bless me physically and financially and give me influence based upon my faith or my seed gift towards him. I don't believe in that kind of transactional faith. And that's good.

And this podcast isn't necessarily for those who believe in the prosperity gospel. It's actually for the Reformed and Christian. Hear me out. The idea of the prosperity gospel doesn't just stop with physical or financial blessing. we allow it to actually creep in to our everyday life without even knowing it. So what I did today is I wrote down some questions to help us expose where the concept of the prosperity gospel, also known as pietism.

can easily seep into our faith and start affecting our joy, the way in which we treat one another, how we don't have rest, we don't have satisfaction in Christ anymore, because... Well, our faith has become transactional. We believe God moves towards or away based upon how we're performing. So hopefully this will be helpful for you. Stay tuned. This is the moment in our episode where we take a moment.

and we turn our hearts and our minds towards Christ. Let's look to Christ. There's a quiet kind of exhaustion that settles into the soul. Not the weariness of a long week, but the heaviness of feeling like you have to make life work. That you have to be the strong one, the steady one, the one who gets it right. Many Christians won't say this out loud, but inside they live with that constant low-grade fear. What if I'm not good enough for God?

What if I disappoint him? What if I fall short again? And so they work. They try harder. They hide the parts of themselves that feel unworthy. They carry the pressure of holding together their faith, their family, and their heart. But listen, Christ did not come to give you a heavier load to carry. He came because...

He knew you were already carrying one way too heavy for you. You don't have to pretend with him. He's not waiting for you to level up spiritually. He's not watching to see if you'll finally get your act together. He moves towards you precisely where you feel the most fragile. When Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, he's not offering a break. He's offering himself.

He's giving you a place where you don't have to perform, where you don't have to protect an image, where you don't have to convince him you're worth loving. You already are. His heart towards you is steady. His mercies doesn't fracture. His love doesn't rise and fall with your best moments or your worst ones. And when the truth begins to settle deep into your soul, when you truly believe that Jesus wants you, welcomes you, and holds you, something inside you finally relaxes.

The fear loosens its grip, the pressure begins to fade, and your heart stops bracing for disappointment and starts resting in delight. So if your heart is tired today, If you're worn thin from trying to be enough, look to Christ. Let him be the rest for your soul. Let him be the one who carries what you can't. and let his love quiet your fear. You don't have to hold your life together. He's holding you, and he won't let go. Let's continue to look to Christ. Christ.

well it's good to have you back here with me talking about all of christ for all of life i this is my favorite thing to talk about is the gospel and in any way shape or form we can get to it then that's what I want to talk about. And so that's the whole purpose of Theocast. For those of you that might be new, we want to pull the clutter off the gospel. And I don't want to just talk about the facts of the Bible. I believe that Jesus is real. His gospel is powerful.

to bring dead people to life and to transform them and give hope in a world where there seems to be no hope. And today's episode is no exception to that. If you'd like to learn more about what we do, you can go to theocast.org, all of our books, articles. There's a community there that's got 2,500 people in it. That place is all about discussing these topics. We really want to protect that community to just be about gospel conversation.

If you want to go and join that, we'd love to have you over there. Let's jump into the subject. I was thinking about this and the episodes really a lot of times are going to be centered around things that I'm wrestling with or that I'm seeing or that I'm having conversations with people about. But when you start evaluating what motivates your life, like what makes you excited, what makes you sad, disappointment, anxiety, stress, things like that.

You have to ask, what's the source? Why am I happy? Why am I sad? What caused me to be angry? What caused me to be excited? And the word prosperity gospel for most... I would say, Reformed, Calvinistic, conservative Christians, Lutheran, Presbyterian, whatever you want to put out there, no one would ever say. I mean, we would be repulsed by the idea if someone walked up and says, oh, you are teaching and believing the prosperity gospel. I mean, I'd be offended by that.

What are you talking about? I don't believe in the prosperity gospel. But what I wanted to do is put together a test because at the heart of the prosperity gospel is transactional. If you think about it. God wants you to be prosperous. And so when you do your part, and it could be as little as you believe, you have faith, to the tune of give money, a seed gift, whatever.

The idea of it is God's purpose for you in this life, not the life to come, but in this life, you are to be healthy and wealthy and prosperous. There's to be power. And look. to their defense what they want to do is like this honors god it brings glory to god it draws attention to god and uh so they're it's beneficial for the follower and it brings honor and glory to the lord right problem is scripture

gives us a different perspective about life. But before I jump into that, I want us to take a test. I think it's interesting. I put down some questions to evaluate, have I fallen into our prosperity gospel mindset? So I have a couple of questions here, and I'm just going to read them out loud. I want you to think about them before I answer them, and then we'll engage and talk about them. So here's question number one. When life is hard, do you quietly assume you caused it?

This is a hard one because almost every Christian I know right now is going through some kind of a hardship, right? When life is hard, you quietly assumed you caused it. Peter does warn us in 2 Peter, he says, look, you're going to suffer, so don't suffer for sin, because you're already going to suffer for the sake of Christ. So it is true. I mean, if we're being sinful, but sometimes it's not necessarily because we've been sinful. We can have this idea that, well, I have...

been lazy. I didn't make the right decisions. I have been disciplined enough. I haven't prayed enough. And so we think, man, my life is this way because I caused it to be this way by my lack of whatever you want to put in there.

Question number two. We're going to go through this pretty quick. Do you feel God is pleased with you only when your spiritual disciplines are strong? Spiritual disciplines could be... many different things, but a lot of times people think about the Christian habits, right? Bible reading, prayer, journaling, evangelism, tithing, the list kind of varies, but you would call them Christian habits. When the Christian habits...

are going really well for you and you've been consistent with them. We're about to get to that time of year. This is November. This is a couple of days before Thanksgiving for me. But the New Year resolutions are about to come up, right? And so we start strong, and then by this time of the year, life has taken over, and we can feel like these Christian habits have waned. And what can set in is, oh, man.

God must be very disappointed in me. And this can connect to question number one. God must be disappointed in me because I haven't been disciplined, and that's probably why I'm having problems. God would be protecting me more or would not allow this to happen. He's using this to get my attention.

Question number three, when blessings come, do you feel you finally did something right? like oh finally you know like everything is working out my kids my job my finances whatever it's all finally working out and this is the evidence that you know god is blessing me i i'm doing what is right and so

Here it is, finally. Everything is working out. Now, there's the pessimist side of it where things are going right and everybody's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like, okay, great. Now, what's going to happen? But it's easy to equate that I am successful or other people.

Other people have these blessings, and their life is put in order, and God is financially and physically and emotionally and socially blessing them because they've put their time and energy in. And at times, prosperity gospels can make it. sound like that, but preachers can make it sound like this. Heart to heart here to other pastors, guys, the last thing I'd ever want my congregation to think is that my life is being blessed because I've done something.

that God would then show favor upon me based upon my performance. Paul's explanation for his life, he's like, I am the greatest sinner that I know. Like, I don't know anybody that's... more of a sinner than me. So the reason why this is important is that a proper understanding of the law and a proper understanding of the gospel...

quickly demonstrates to you that God is not showing favor and blessing upon you because you've done something. And we as pastors should be the first to admit our weakness and our frailties. And if God has put blessings upon us, it's just because we're a part of his kingdom and he loves his children. And he's using that blessing as a means to advance the kingdom and to give comfort to us. But to ever think that God is blessing someone, specifically pastors, it seems like...

We have to be the greatest example. And Paul's example is not, look at my faithfulness, therefore I'm blessed. Paul's like, look, follow my example. As I follow Christ, in what way? How did Paul say he followed Christ? In weakness, right? He says, when I'm at my weakest moment... then I am strong because what brings me through is not the blessings of God, but the grace of God. Literally, Jesus tells Paul, my grace is sufficient for you for when you are weak.

That's when you're going to experience this power of grace upon your life. So as pastors, we need to live vulnerable lives that help people understand that we don't have everything put together. That is a pressure that pastors feel. I've just been talking with some pastors, and you can feel it. They never can be vulnerable. They can't admit struggle. And so it comes across as if their life is all put together.

They don't ever have any problems, don't have any struggles, and God is blessing them with some kind of an extra special blessing because they never really talk about their struggles. Kind of off point, but made me want to think about it.

Okay, number four, when you fall into sin, do you believe God steps back from you? Now, this is huge. Now, this one is, I don't care. You don't have to be in a prosperity gospel context to have this one land on you. right? When you fall into sin, do you feel that God steps back from you? I would say this is probably the greatest lie that Satan has ever convinced anybody of.

What a horrible thought that Jesus would die on the cross, pay for our sins. He's ever interceding for us before the Father. He says, I love you, and yet... When we disobey, which we're never going to do perfectly, ever, we're going to sin every single day, to think that he would remove his presence from us or to step back or remove blessing is the exact opposite of the good news of the gospel. But this is how the prosperity gospel works.

It's transactional in nature, but the good news of the gospel is the opposite of that. It says, when you were dead in your sins, when you were his enemy, when you were at your worst, that's when Christ entered into this relationship. And 1 John says, you're a liar if you're not sinning, because if you don't have sin in you, you're a liar.

But when we sin, it's not if we sin, but when we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, right? And so we can go and confess these sins. This is why in Hebrews it says you run with boldness. The moment you know that you failed, you don't want to... think to yourself, how do I earn his attention again? How do I earn his favor again? What is heartbreaking and comforting is that my father sees all my sins better than I do.

and he never removes himself even while I'm in my sin. The Holy Spirit doesn't leave me while I'm in my sin. Christ doesn't turn his face away from me as the great high priest while I'm in my sin. The writer of Hebrews says that I can with boldness run in.

to the throne room of God, which means that's anywhere I am because there is no throne room on earth. It's in heaven. So I can run before the Father, lift up my hands and say, Father, I need mercy. I have failed. I need you to forgive me what I have done. and I need you to give me grace. It's interesting that he says in a time of need, you can ask for it with boldness. The boldness means God's disposition towards you has not moved.

Now you moved, you turned your heart and affections away from God and you trusted a lie instead of the promises and the satisfaction of Jesus. So this is the effects in our culture. No matter what denomination you might be a part of, this is the effects of the prosperity gospel, the effects of pietism and revivalism, to believe that God would distance himself from you. because of your sin. There's nothing in Scripture that would ever indicate that God would distance himself from us as a child.

We are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Would he distance himself from Jesus? No. You aren't favored. You aren't loved. You aren't in this position because you earned it. That would be a reason to boast. That would be self-righteousness, right? You are in the position that you are in.

Because you're a sinner who is in desperate need of grace, and God clothed you with his righteous son's righteousness, and that's why you get to stand with confidence. You never stand. This is why I love this, Ephesians 6. He says, the strength of the Lord, right? Why would you need to stand in the strength of the Lord? Because you don't have any.

That's why he tells Paul, like I said earlier, my grace is sufficient for you for in your weakness, you need something outside of yourself. Extra notes, that's what this sign says right over here. Extra notes, outside of yourself. You need something outside of yourself.

Moving on, next question. Do you measure God's love by how peaceful or comfortable your life feels? Yeah, this one is easy. In those moments where life seems to be going good, you can go into the holiday season or get a pay raise or whatever, but there seems to be a moment of ease and rest. We can immediately start thinking to ourselves.

that, wow, God is so good and His blessings are so good. But when you're sitting by the bedside of your child or your spouse, when you're looking at the debt piling up, and you're sick constantly, that one more fight, it's really hard to think to yourself that God is good. Because what prosperity gospel does is it gets your eyes on the temporary. So we live in a world that is cursed, it's full of sinners.

and it's falling away. Literally, Paul says it's groaning, waiting for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for Jesus to come and resurrect all of us who are going to bed, who are dead, and bring a new heavens and a new earth. This is why Paul says, do not set your mind on things here. Do not get entangled with civilian pursuits. Why? Because they are corrupt. They are going to pass away.

Not to say that all those things that I just named are corrupt, but they are corrupted. They are not going to work. properly. I mean, I'm wearing glasses because my eyesight is starting to fade, and I have to take all kinds of different things. There's parts of us that just doesn't work just because we live in a broken world. When you begin to think to yourself, well, there's something happening. God's withholding these blessings from me because I have not been faithful enough.

That is to assume you live in a world where everything is fine and the access to these good things is based upon your performance. It's very, it's very much like a dog. I mean, my kids do this to my dog all the time when she does a good job and she goes out and she goes out into the yard and she comes back to give her a treat, right? She did well. We reward the dog. And if we do well, God rewards us. But this is a problem. Jesus straight up told us, you're going to suffer.

not only suffer from the effects of Adam's sin because of sin on our bodies, but you're also going to suffer for your faith. So the experience of suffering and to have heartache and sorrow, the only thing that... What happens for a believer is that Paul says we don't grieve like the world grieves. They grieve without hope. We grieve with hope, which means we're still grieving. It's still sad. It's still heartbreaking.

But we don't have to grieve in such a way where it leads us to despair because we know that one day all things will be made new. So we have to be careful not to measure God's love.

towards us based upon how peaceful and comfortable things may seem to feel. So next one. Do you believe mature Christians should have fewer struggles? Now, the reason why I put this in the prosperity gospel lineup, because there is this idea that the more you grow in your faith, the more you grow in Christ, the less problems you should have, less struggles you should have.

And man, I felt trapped to this for a long time. There are times I even still think to myself, John, I can't believe you're X amount in the faith, you know, this many years in the faith and you still have struggles with this particular area or you have struggles in general. Somehow we think that the farther we get down in our faith, then the Christian life just gets easier.

Man, that couldn't be farther from the truth. I've been shepherding for over 20 years now. I've been a pastor for over 20 years. I've been a Christian since the time I was 11 years old that I can remember professing. And I do not feel like my Christian faith is easier today. At times I feel like it's harder than it's ever been.

Temptation feels stronger. There's more heartaches. There's more people to help. And I find myself needing the sufficiency and grace of God now more than ever. So if you're sitting here thinking to yourself, God has abandoned me or there's... wrong with me. I'm not growing. All I do is struggle all the time.

Paul later in his life, as he's writing to the Romans, he says, the things that I don't want to do, I keep doing, and the things that I should be doing, I'm not doing. This is a current, present tense struggle that he's having. He's not talking about his former man, he's talking about now. And sometimes people struggle and say,

oh, you know, well, that was Romans 7. That was before he was a Christian. Well, you don't need Romans 7. Go to Galatians 6. Those of us who are trapped in 6, Galatians 6.1. Restore them with the spirit of gentleness. Walk by the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. That means you can do that, and we often do. This is why we must confess our sins. We need to repent. So we have to be very careful.

When we're thinking about this idea that as we grow in our faith, that there's going to be less struggle. It's just not in Scripture. I think that this is... an effect of the prosperity gospel that I put my faith in God and God, he's going to remove temptations. He's going to move struggle. I think every day in the Lord's prayer, he says, as we pray it, deliver us from the evil one.

right? Forgive us our debts. Why would we have to forgive us our debts? Because we keep failing, right? We keep sinning. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debts for those who have hurt us and deliver us from the evil one. So we actually are praying every day for protection because the struggle is real. So as the Christian life...

The only thing that I think you grow in is a greater awareness of your need for Christ and more rest in your soul, knowing that your performance is not based upon God's affection towards you. It's not based upon your performance. That would be a prosperity gospel perspective.

So no, don't believe that somehow as you get older in the faith, you're going to have less and less struggle. You're going to need more and more dependence upon Christ. You're going to need to trust your brothers and sisters. You're going to need more of the preaching of Christ the older that you get, because...

you're just going to be facing more and more struggle. So it's not that you get less, it's that you get more. I know that it seems upside down, but the Christian faith seems upside down. Let's jump on a couple more. I don't know if I'm going to get to all of these today.

All right, next. Do you expect spiritual effort to produce quick results? Man, this is, we live in a results-based society. This is a definitely... the definition of pietism, where we start emphasizing and focusing in on effort. Here's the spiritual workout plan. And if I do this workout plan, then it will produce these results. Now, as it comes down to biblical data and knowledge, this is true. I think if you dedicate yourself to...

learning the Bible, you can definitely grow in awareness and knowledge. But I've met a lot of people who know a lot about the Bible and have not grown spiritually. They don't show the evidences of the fruits of the Spirit, right? They just know a lot about the Bible. There are atheists that know the Bible probably better than most Christians do, because they're always debating people on it.

So I've met people who have biblical knowledge. So if you think biblical wisdom, or I wouldn't even say wisdom because... The Bible describes wisdom very different from knowledge. Actually, it says knowledge can actually puff you up. It can make you feel as if you're better than what you are. Knowing something is very different than... applying it to your life. This is really important.

We could sit there. It happens all the time when we watch sports. We watch these people who have dedicated their lives to these sports, and they spend hours and hours and hours. We've become armchair quarterbacks. I can't believe he did that. And we assume...

Because in our minds, we know how it should have gone that we would have done it better. I mean, maybe not. I don't know how you watch sports, but that's how it can feel sometimes. Just because you have the knowledge, it doesn't mean you have the capacity. right? So what ends up happening is we create programs that they've been around forever. I mean, spiritual disciplines, the concept of it, you can go, I have a whole video on this, how they get misapplied all of the time, but just...

Just because you spend 30 minutes a day in the Bible doesn't guarantee that you're going to be growing spiritually. give that kind of a promise. Just because you say, okay, I'm going to dedicate, if 15 minutes in prayer is great, then I'm going to do an hour and a half in prayer because that'll 10x all my time and I'll have better results. And so we're always looking at...

our faith as if it's all about overcoming sin and becoming wiser and stronger, and I guess becoming more respected, more mature. And the emphasis of our life becomes about... basically you being in control of your transformation. Now, hear me out. I think there are things that you can do that really do benefit you. They're good for you to do. To meditate on God's word and to converse with others about God's word is not only good, it's commanded.

We are to meditate on God's Word. We are to consider how to build one another up into love and good works. We are to speak psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another. And the Bible says when the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love. But don't fall into this trap. that if you put enough time in, then you can accelerate the timeline of your Christian maturity. Because Christian maturity is not about how much you know about Christ, it's how much you trust Him.

It's how much your faith that you are trusting in every area of your life. What's interesting about what Paul says is, Paul says, faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of Christ, not just the Bible, but hearing about Jesus Christ for you. And he's speaking in the context of the church. So a lot of times I see people dedicating their times to reading and praying, journaling, podcasting, and they are not dedicating their time.

towards the actual things that God says will help you, which is the local church and the preaching of the church, discipleship, fellowship, considering how to build with one another, praying for one another, encouraging one another, confronting one another. That's how Ephesians 4 makes it abundantly clear. It says, when the church functions properly, it builds itself up in love. And it has a whole section on there and how that works. So I think it is very much...

an outflow, an effect of prosperity gospel to think that you put in enough effort, you're going to produce quick results. And I think that it discouraged a lot of people. because they didn't get the results, so they just ended up quitting. Or they'd go to find something else, so they're always exhausting themselves, putting in more and more effort towards the newest thing that's out there, and it's not helping. And I think that...

God has made it very simple that it's the preaching and teaching of his word, the gathering of the saints on Sundays, the receiving of the table. to pray for each other and care for one another. It's a communal aspect. I think it's a painful, long period of time where God eventually matures us over time. It's the work of the Spirit.

He who began a good work in you will complete it, right? This is why he gets so angry with him in Galatians 3. He's like, who's bewitched you? Who taught you witchcraft that you're going to begin this journey? of living by faith in the Spirit, like you come to faith by the power of the Spirit, but now you're going to transform yourself by efforts of the flesh? This is what he says in Galatians 3, and this is what he means.

There is effort in the Christian life. We do need to exert effort, but the way in which God grows us is a work of the Spirit. You can't expedite that in a way where you think you can just kind of hurry things up. This is why it says about elders that they can't be a novice and they can't be a new believer, meaning that there has to be a period of time where we can examine their faith to know that this is real and the maturity has taken place.

based upon the evidences of time. So in many ways, I want to encourage you believers who are like, oh, I need to get over these problems. I need to grow. You need to trust the process of the Holy Spirit and let him do his work. I'm not telling you to be lazy. I'm not telling you to be quit. I'm saying allow God to do his work. Look unto Jesus. Find your joy and satisfaction there as he's shaping you and molding you. And stop expecting yourself to have to have this transformation overnight.

That is not the way in which Scripture talks. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. Have you ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden? versus rest and joy that you wake up worrying about how well you're going to perform instead of thinking about what christ has done for you it's dread versus joy really

That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing. And we have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it. And we're going to explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism. Reformed theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ.

And when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it at our website. Just go to theocost.org. All right, next question. Do you feel uneasy resting in Christ unless you...

Have first done your part. I know that word rest can feel weird because people are like, well, it feels like I'm doing nothing. Like I'm just sitting around. I'm being lazy. That's kind of where this question comes from. It's like, well, I guess I need to do something, and then when I exert my energy, I can rest. Well, that's to misunderstand the concept of resting. Resting is for the sake of your soul.

This is vitally important. This is kind of at the heart of what the free e-book that's available. If you haven't got that, you should go to our website and get it. Rest, it's called Rest. The heart of it is this, is that your soul needs a place to find comfort, a place where you're not constantly living in fear and anxiety and doubt. once that takes place, then you are going to be liberated and free to do things that God has called you to do. Resting is this.

I don't have to earn God's favor. It was granted to me by grace. I don't have to earn God's blessing. It was given to me because I'm in Christ. I don't need to maintain my forgiveness Everything that I need for life and godliness has already been granted to me by his divine power, 2 Peter 1, verses 3 and following. So we are resting in the fact that my forgiveness and my righteousness and my blessing and my status, my...

my transformation, my sanctification, all of it, all of this is in the hands of God, and He will never let me go. So I need to look to Him, and I'm constantly being reminded that I don't need the world, I don't need the flesh, I don't need the temptations of Satan. my heart and my soul can rest there. And it's not this, well, I did my part. Now God is saying, you can rest your dear child. You don't have anything to do. This is not what is happening.

The resting is related to my relationship to God. And if my relationship to God is being, if it was started by Him and is held by Him and will be finished by Him, I have nothing else to do but to rest in that sufficiency. And then when my God and King give...

to me, hey child, this is what I want you to do. I want you to reflect the rest that you've received, right? I want you to give mercy and grace and kindness and love. I want you to lay your life down for other people. You can do so because you're not exhausted trying to earn God's favor. I know that developing relationships, I do it all of the time. I'm constantly trying to build a relationship and maintain a relationship with my wife and maintain relationships with friends.

friends and with my children. And it can be exhausting because you have two sinners who are selfish trying to care for one another. And Jesus says, come to me. I am the perfect, powerful, all-sovereign, loving Savior. Come to me and I'll give you rest. Why? Because there is no transaction between you and me. You can just come and I take care of everything.

Like it is all yours. So don't, I think sometimes people will say, you know, I've even heard this about unbelievers. Like, well, I'll come to church once I clean my life up. Jesus didn't die on the cross so that you could first clean up your life. That's not how this works. You don't clean up your life and then come to him and confess your sin. You come to him and confess, I am a sinner.

I have done wrong. And it's God's grace and his mercy by changing your heart that causes you to repent. He repents you. He's the one who draws you back. You confess that you need help, and he immediately, through his love and his affection, is what draws us back to him. All right, a couple more. Do you believe that a strong Christian life should...

shield you from sorrow. It's kind of very similar to the other one, but the one that I talked about before, like a mature Christian doesn't have problems, but this one is different in this way. Sometimes I meet Christians and... They cannot admit that they are sad. that's called the Apollyanna effect, right? It's like everything is happy all the time. Everything is good. And it feels fake, honestly. Like, look, I'm a pretty happy guy. I'm a happy-go-lucky guy, but...

I can also have my face plowed into the dirt at times and I can feel it. And I am sorrowful and I am sad. And I've gone through many seasons where I'm extremely sorrowful. But there's this attitude that... No matter how bad it might get, we should be happy and rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say rejoice.

Well, I do rejoice. I am so thankful that this is not the full status of my existence. I am not going to be sorrowful for the rest of my life. But Paul specifically tells the church, rejoice with those who are rejoicing and weep with those who are weeping. Because there are moments of sorrow. There are moments, and most of the time, if not most of life, is full of times of sorrow.

And the prosperity gospel makes it sound as if you have a positive outlook on life and you have a positive attitude, then you should have positive results. So don't let the sorrow—it's almost there's not a place for grieving and sadness. And I have literally experienced this. I have watched people who lost their child to cancer, and their church did not allow them to grieve. This is happening. It's time to move on. It's time to get your mind focused on other things. And that's just...

That is not how the gospel works. It is that we are forgiven of our sins, that he sustains us by grace, and all of our righteousness is taken care of, and we can cast our anxieties on him because he cares. for us. This is what Peter says. Every day, it didn't say once, it says every single day your sorrows and your anxieties, you can put them upon the Savior because He wants to carry those for you. As a matter of fact, we're even called to carry each other's sorrow. That's what it means to...

bear each other's burdens. So if you're at a place where you don't feel like, oh, I can express my sorrow, I'm sad. I think there are more lies told on Sunday morning than any other day of the week. My church is starting to break this down, which I love. I'll ask them how they're doing, and I get it. You're on your way out to the car. We're in the middle of the foyer. No one wants to get into a private sad conversation.

vulnerability and being honest with each other allows us to pray and care for and acknowledge that there is pain, there is suffering. And so, yeah, strong Christians, they do have moments of sorrow. This is demonstrated quite often. Jesus himself showed sorrow. And if Jesus is showing sorrow, then yes, because he was sad over the death of his friend, and he weeped over Israel. And so to show these affections... to show this type of an experience.

Even Jesus himself demonstrated. This is why he says in Hebrews, we have a great high priest who is sympathetic with us. Why? Because he has suffered. He has grieved. He had sorrows in all the ways in which we have. That's why he's sympathetic to us.

That's why we could go and talk to him, because he understands. I don't know. Those are just some thoughts that I had. I just wanted to go through and kind of take a list and say, do these apply to you? Because I think there is some overlap of...

the prosperity gospel that comes into almost every Christian home. We can feel it. And we would never label it as prosperity gospel, but if you're thinking positive results based upon my actions, and then... uh negative results based upon my negative actions or lack thereof or whatever you want to put you're making this relationship transactional and we don't live in a world where god

provides prosperity or withholds it based upon your performance. Look, I just want to point this out. If you go read the New Testament and the early church, and you learn about how the disciples died. It's fair to argue that the disciples after the resurrection of Christ became very honorable, powerful men who really served the Lord well. I mean, look how much Paul suffered. He suffered a lot, and that man...

did not have a life of prosperity. You know, Peter did not have a life. These guys suffered tremendously, and they lived really hard lives. Peter is writing to the churches his first and second letter. If you go and read it, he's writing to churches that are really, really suffering. And he gives them three things. He gives them gospel hope at the beginning. He helps them understand the supernatural nature of their faith.

do not equate what you see physically as a spiritual reality. And this is a lot of what happens to the prosperity gospel. We assume what's happening on the inside is a reflection of what's going on. I'm sorry, what's happening on the outside to us. physically, is a direct connection to what's happening to us spiritually. And Jesus debunked that when they asked him, well, is this man born blind because of his parents?

And Jesus is like, no, this man was not born blind because of someone else's sin. We can easily always assume that there's a direct correlation between physical and spiritual. That is not the case. The disciples didn't die because they were sinful. They died because they were preaching the gospel in enemy territory, and the enemy took them out. They killed them.

Right? And so this is why we're warned. Be sober-minded. Be vigilant. Your adversary, the devil, is like a roaring lion seeking him he may devour. Do you know what he says right before that in Peter? He's talking about... pride, arrogance in our mouth. This is what he means by sober-mindedness, that we have to be...

protecting our mind, because our mind is what feeds our heart and our soul, right? So if we're setting our hope and our affection on Jesus Christ, then we can endure as good servants the suffering that is set before us so that others might find rest in Christ. That's why later on in Peter, he says, be ready to give an answer of the hope that lies within you. Why? Because in the midst of your suffering, your experience is different.

Right? You're not getting frustrated in the same ways as the unbeliever does, because you understand that this suffering is the cause of sin, is temporary, and your hope is far beyond that. Now, I'm not saying we're going to do that perfectly, and neither is Peter, that our testimony is this perfect testimony.

that's going to lead them. It's the hope, not necessarily the perfection. It's like, why is it you have hope and I don't? That's the difference that's there. So as you go through these questions and you think about them, It's good to just stop and evaluate, you know, where has the prosperity gospel seeped in and maybe morphed itself into my life, and that's why I find myself discouraged.

I find myself hopeless. I find myself focusing on my circumstances instead of focusing on what Christ has done for me and his promises of restoration. And I think that that'll help us. The reason why I wanted to expose this is that I'm finding more and more people as they find rest and find their security in Christ, they can suffer, they can endure, and they can have the energy to help others, which is what I really want.

I'm hoping that as you listen to this episode, it encouraged you and you could share it with your church members, with your pastor, with your pastors, with your congregants. Because the goal of this is at the end of the day, if we can find... Christ's sufficiency for us, it'll give us the energy then to care for others, expose the prosperity gospel in their life, expose where they're being transactional in their faith. Sometimes people just give up because they're tired of trying.

and someone needs to tell them, you don't need to try to get God's attention. You already have it. You need to stop listening to these prosperity gospels, these lies of Satan and his army. You need to stop listening to this idea that God's... affection, favor, and blessing toward you is based upon your performance. You'll never be able to perform enough. If you think someone's being blessed outside of Jesus for what they're doing, you're just not understanding Scripture.

Hopefully this is encouraging to you, just something I was thinking about, a prosperity gospel test for all of us, and remind us that Christ is sufficient, and everything that Christ is is sufficient for everything that is in our life. for now and eternity. So do not think that Jesus cannot affect and help you in the smallest areas of your life. Don't think that it's too small for him to be the king of your life in that area.

Well, thank you for listening. If this has been encouraging for you, do us a favor at our ministry. We have a big team here that helps out. From what they tell me, when you like this and give a comment on this on YouTube or you share this or give us a rating on iTunes, it helps or whatever platform you're listening to. then that helps share the ministry and more people can find sufficiency in Christ. Thanks for everybody who has been supporting us.

And we'll see you next week. You got some more interviews, hopefully coming up soon that you're going to enjoy. I enjoyed them. Hopefully you'll enjoy them. We'll talk to you soon. Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions. So where do you go?

How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the Theocast community. And we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like-minded believers, all of our resources there. past podcast education materials articles all of it's there and you can share it and ask questions you can go check it out the link is in the description below