As I had this on my mind I stopped by one of my favorite blogs, Pyromaniacs, and found a great post by Frank Turk about the priority of preaching Christ.  His argument is that Jesus Christ and the gospel are the solution to culture.  That Jesus Christ is the solution to our problems.  Marital difficulties?  Christ is the answer.  Money problems?  Christ is the answer.  Spoiled kids?  Christ is the answer.  Not self-help guides.  Not 5-step processes to be a better person.  Not man’s wisdom.  Christ and Him crucified.

That may sound a bit oversimplified and you also may be wondering what in the world that has anything to do with material vs. spiritual blessings.  Here’s where they start to come together.  Since we are in Christ, we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the Heavenly places.  I think a lot of our problems stem from a misunderstanding of this important gospel truth.

See, we’re looking to God to supply more, special blessings, like our visiting tithe proponent talked about in his posts on tithing.  We expect God to operate simply on the physical plane.  When God promises healing, we expect it to be physical healing.  When God promises blessings, we expect material blessings.  We expect a back-scratching type of relationship with God.  I scratch God’s back with my tithe, and He’ll scratch my back with “special, material blessings”.

Let me illustrate this.  As I was reading Frank Turk’s post about Christ being the answer, my mind, of course, ran to Third Day’s excellent song, Cry to Jesus (please follow the link to listen to it;  they’ve disabled embedding, so I can’t place it here directly, but it is well worth listening to).  I looked up the video on YouTube and enjoyed a few moments of focusing on Christ as the answer to my problems.  Then I scrolled down to the comment area.  Wow.  Let’s be honest.  Anyone who’s ever been on YouTube knows that the comments section is not the place for enlightened, honest, intellectual discussion.  And this was no exception.  But what several people said was very enlightening.

Mac Powell sings this as the chorus,

“There is hope for the helpless
Rest for the weary
Love for the broken heart
There is grace and forgiveness
Mercy and healing
He’ll meet you wherever you are
Cry out to Jesus, Cry out to Jesus”

And the problem people run into is that when he says “hope for the helpless” they assume he means physical hope.  When he says “mercy and healing” they assume he means physical healing.  And so when they cry out to Jesus, they are assuming physical categories.  They cry out to Jesus for their mom to be healed of cancer and if she’s not, then they assume the whole things was false.  They cry out to Jesus because of their poverty and expect God to provide a new job, or higher salary.

But that ignores the fact that God has already provided us every spiritual blessing.  We just need to live in the reality of that fact and put our focus in Christ for healing, spiritual healing that is.  Christ is the answer to all our problems.  And He has provided me with every spiritual blessing.  So if I am trying to gain more favor from God by giving my tithe, I’ve missed out on the point of giving.  And I’ve missed out on the fact that even if God leaves me in poverty, that is a spiritual blessing in my life.  That if God leaves me in poor health, that is a spiritual blessing.  That everything that happens in my life has been ordained by Him for my good and His glory.  So talking about extra, special, material blessings that you can unlock by giving a tithe is just nonsensical.

But a materialistic view of God is not only poor interpretation of Scripture, that view creates atheists.  They come to God looking for God to solve their material problems and when he doesn’t do it the way they expect, they assume that the problem is with God.  And when they reject God and still see material wealth or physical health, they think that invalidates God.  Over and over on the YouTube combox.  But the problem is not with God.  The problem is with a faulty view of God.  So focus on Christ when you run into problems and understand that Christ is not necessarily going to fix your problem, rather focusing on Him is the solution to your problem.

As Christians in our culture, we seem to have gotten into the habit of creating a false separation between prayer requests and praises (I’m speaking from my own experience here; your experience may be different).  In other words, we open up Sunday School with prayer time and start out with praises.  This is usually our list of things that are going “right” in our lives, or the “good” things God has given us.  Like a raise, a new house, a new job, better health, etc.  Then after we’ve finished listing our praises to God for “good” things, we start on our prayer requests, which are generally the “bad” things that we’d like God to fix in our lives.  Like unemployment, sickness, money problems, etc.

The problem is that this bifurcation reveals how we view God.  We’ve missed out on the truth that God is working all thing together for our good and His glory.  So that means that everything in our lives is meant for our good.  Paul says it this way in 2 Corinthians 12:9 (ESV):  “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”  And James tells us in James 1: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”  So when trials, weaknesses, tribulations come into our lives, what do we do?  Praise God.  Glory in infirmities.  Count it all joy.  God is at work.

This low view of God as Santa Claus has come up lately in some discussions I’ve had on tithing (you can read some here, here (especially the comments section), and here.)  One argument that generally comes around when you discuss the Biblical view of giving with someone who believes in the tithe as a command for believers is the prosperity argument.  EnnisP, a blogger who decided to interact with some of my postings on the tithe just stooped to using this argument.  He says this in a recent post:  “You have no reason, however, to claim God’s material blessing on your life if you do not commit to this offering [the tithe].  Put Him to the test and see what happens but remember, tithing is obedient giving not sacrificial giving and the Bible teaches that God’s special blessing will be on those who obey.”  So the logic here is that if I want God’s special, material blessing on my life, I must tithe, and, of course, what he means by special, material blessing is God giving me more material things like money.

But isn’t that a complete misunderstanding of the differences between the Old and New Covenants, you ask.  Of course it is.  And what about the fact that God never actually issues a command for believers in general to tithe?  That doesn’t stop them.  And its a widespread problem.  The same people that would rail against the high profile health, wealth, and prosperity preachers on TBN and elsewhere will tell you that tithing will bring about God’s financial blessings.  And they’re armed with examples of people who didn’t think they could afford to tithe but decided to anyway and then got a raise or better job, etc.  It goes even further though.  Have you ever heard someone talk about someone who is rich and say something like, “God has just chosen to bless that guy a little more than the rest of us”?  Maybe you’ve said or thought that yourself.

But if you think about it, if you’re a believer, how can you say that God has blessed someone more?  Think about Paul’s words in Ephesians 1:  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. . . .”  Every spiritual blessing.  This is the inheritance that Paul goes on to say that God has lavished on him.  Its so important to him (and to us) that when Paul talks about confidence in the flesh in Philippians 3, he says, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  C.S. Lewis dissected this idea well in his essay titled “The Weight of Glory“.

The promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five heads. It is promised, firstly, that we shall be with Christ; secondly, that we shall be like Him; thirdly, with an enormous wealth of imagery, that we shall have “glory”; fourthly, that we shall, in some sense, be fed or feasted or entertained; and, finally, that we shall have some sort of official position in the universe—ruling cities, judging angels, being pillars of God’s  temple. The first question I ask about these promises is: “Why any of them except the first?” Can anything be added to the conception of being with Christ? For it must be true, as an old writer says, that he who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.

So when we consider the riches Christ has lavished on us, chiefly our position in Him and relationship with the Father, how could we say that someone could be more blessed.  “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”  And if everything in my life is a gracious gift of God for my benefit and His glory (even the so-called “bad” things) then why would I ask God for more money or material things.  Believe me, He may choose to give them to me and He has, but ultimately they should not be our focus.

The danger is to mistake more material things with God’s special blessing.  Poverty may be God’s special blessing in your life because you learn to trust God better.  Relationship problems may be God’s special blessing because God wants you to learn to be satisfied in Him.  Everything is God’s special blessing in your life because everything is done for your good and His glory to conform you to the image of Christ.

And when, for His good reasons not based on your performance, God decides to give you more material wealth or possessions, it is a temptation to mistake them for performance incentives.  If I get a raise or better job it could be a temptation in my life to trust in my employer rather than God.  Hence the title of this post.  Pray for me, that I wouldn’t put my trust in the wrong place.  Pray for me that I wouldn’t overly indulge myself in the things money can buy.  Pray that, like Paul, I would count all things as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  And pray for the prosperity preachers tithe proponents, that they would learn that spiritual blessings far surpass material possessions.  And that God wants your heart, not your money, though He’ll take both.