Lies We Believe #4: God Wants Me to Be Healthy & Wealthy!

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps.” 

—1 Peter 2:21

Does God want us to be wealthy? Does He want us to have perfect health? Does He want me to have a nice car, house and family? Before we consider this, we must not only understand who God is, but who Satan is and how he operates.

Satan is a liar and the father of lies, and one of his most subtle and egregious tactics is to imitate God. We need to “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”—1 Peter 5:8. He wants to devour us, so He deceives us by masquerading as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14)—which is to say that he tries to counterfeit the workings of God and the people of God, so that we might be brought under his spell. He sends “false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ”—2 Corinthians 11:3. He creates false churches (Revelation 2:9), falsifies miracles (2 Thessalonians 2:9), and even uses the Scripture against us (see Luke 4:10-11). We must be on guard, “so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs”—2 Corinthians 2:11.

Satan has used his agents to proclaim a gospel devoid of Christ, filled with error, although sounding like it is from God. Some of these agents may even call themselves pastors, evangelists, and apostles, while teaching and preaching a gospel completely antithetical to God’s Word. They use the Bible, but distort it by preaching only verses that are convenient for their agenda. They distort Scripture by teaching many different men and women that God wants them to be healthy and wealthy. Such a gospel as this is devoid of suffering, the Holy Spirit of God, and allows and even nourishes selfish and sinful desires, by using God and His Word as a genie in a lamp that needs to be rubbed by a word of faith so that the blessings may be unleashed. These Satanic teachers make us the determiners of our own destiny and God’s Word a means to self-fulfillment. But, this is not consistent with what we know about Christ. Does God want us to be healthy and wealthy? And if so, how does this coincide with believers in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia or the Sudan who undergo horrendous persecution, poverty, loss of status, money, health, and even life itself? Is their lack of material comforts, health, and money a sign of a lack of faith? What about Christ and the apostles? Did they not suffer? Did not Christ die a horrible death? And what of the apostles? According to church history, almost all of them died terrible deaths in their witness and testimony to Christ. Think about the Hall of Fame of Faith in Hebrews 11:35-38,

“Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy— wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

Or consider the great apostle Paul and what he endured,

“Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure”—2 Corinthians 11:23-27.

If Jesus, the hall of famers, and Paul were to endure such difficulties, how much more will we? As Jesus said,

“Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will also keep yours”—John 15:20? And, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps”—1 Peter 2:21.

While we are in this world, we will suffer, and experience loss and pain. That is not to say that God will not help us, or heal, or even bless abundantly in material ways, as He sees fit. It’s just that we are not to make those things our pursuit; rather we to are “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness”—Matthew 6:33. The kingdom of God is not what we can get now, or how to increase our creaturely comforts, or how we are to escape suffering; it is about being an ambassador in a lost world so that others might see Christ in us and be drawn to Him so that we might spend eternity delighting in how wonderful He is. Amen.