My Personal God: The Source of My Prosperity

0:00Welcome to your moment of hope. I'm Jen Houston, joined today by Pastor David in Maryland, Chadwick. We're going to continue a series that we picked off last week. It's called My Personal God. David, will you reintroduce that briefly and then go right into talking about how God is the source of our prosperity? Thank you, Jen. I will, as I said last week, these ideas of a personal God are all found in the Psalms. And when I was going through a really difficult time some years ago, I was trying to ask the Lord, well, how do I get through this? And I felt he led me to read the Psalms every day, one per day, and just make note of all of the insights that were there as David walked through prosperity and difficult times as well. Well, one of the things I saw that was so clear were the number of times David called God by a personal name, My God, My Rock, My Fortress, My Deliverer, My Strong Tower, et cetera. And we're covering a lot of those different terms during these weeks together. And I just thought to be interesting to cover those today,

1:02years later after I've been able to lift myself with God's help out of the quagmire of those personal problems. Today is God as my source of my prosperity. King David's relationship with God was profoundly personal. And I'm here reminded of James 117, which says, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Well, David knew this promise fully. He knows God was the source of his prosperity, Psalm 36, of having more than he could possibly imagine. David credited God with all of his successes but all of his blessings as well, both for the times that God assured David's victories as well the times that God protected him from death or other enemies. It's our loving daddy's desire to prosper his people. Even in war, famine and chaos, God's heart is to give people a future and a hope, Jeremiah 2911, and meet their every need.

2:04He is fullness of life. God is great peace and he wants to prosper us and give us everything we need, body, soul and spirit. Now, let me make a statement here because I don't want this to sound like the guarantee of the prosperity gospel that God just wants to make us healthy in every situation, whole in every situation and prosperous in every situation. I mean, we still have down times. King David had those down times as well but when you go through them, you remember, my God and his character is a God who gives blessings to his children and as I cling to him, I do believe he'll lift me out of the quagmire and take me to that place of hope that he promises me, that he promised King David as well. Marilyn, your thoughts. David, I have struggled with this over the years and I know many of our listeners probably have as well and that is the question is God really a blesser because I think we can invent all kinds of hard scenarios for ourselves thinking, if I just go through this, I'll be better or this will strengthen me

3:04or I'll become tougher. And I think it's really mind-boggling to realize that God is the source of prosperity and prosperity is not a dirty word. We need to almost extricate ourself from the wrong things that we've thought about prosperity and realize the best definition of it is to be thriving or flourishing and that could include material things but emotional well-being and who doesn't like to see your own children succeed. I thought there was nothing more exciting than watching our children prosper in the area of their goals and dreams and junior mom. I know you know what I'm talking about. You didn't set it up so they'd fail. No, I'm actually my son scored a goal in a really aggressive game recently and I was so excited for that victory for him. It was so fun and another word that we can use is favor and we pray for this over our children. We pray for this over our own lives as well that we would walk in the favor of God so that other people around us can be blessed. It's not just in and of ourselves to dead end there.

4:06It's to flow to this world. And every good and perfect gift comes from God and it says in that same chapter, David, he doesn't change. This is always who he is. It's always who he will be. Well, let me make a statement here just to make sure everybody hears this. We do live in a broken world. We live in a broken world that has broken relationships in a broken world that has broken physical bodies. A world that does have pain. We do see that but the question is in that particular circumstance does God want to come to us and meet our every need and give us what we need in order to continue to move forward in life and I biblically think that is what God teaches even though again it might be through some difficulties. God is still the one who wants to lift us out of the pit and give us all that he wants us to have. Well, David and Marilyn, this has been another powerful conversation today. Thank you both so much.