Hope in God not prosperity

Happy Friday Church family: Do you ever look around this world we live in amazement of its prosperity and wealth?  We live in a world where you can work hard, be responsible, be diligent and you can create prosperity and wealth.  Prosperity and wealth are a blessing from God.  However, we live in a world system that’s desire is to seduce us into placing all of our trust and enjoyment in the endless luxuries, pleasures, and wealth that can be experienced and accumulated in our prosperity.  In Revelation 18, we have been given a vivid picture of our seductive world system, Babylon, the great prostitute.  She focuses her economic power to seduce and control the souls of men and women and children.  The seduction of Babylon is real.  Do you feel and hear Babylon’s call to ignore God, ignore Jesus Christ, ignore the Holy Spirit’s conviction, ignore family, ignore the Church, ignore other believers and pursue her and her prosperity?  Do you feel and hear the call from Babylon to cave and follow its worldly anti-God ethic?  The world system seeks to take a great blessing of God, prosperity, and make it become the idol of our heart, controlling our time, thoughts, money, and desires.  The world system is determined to change our heart’s desire of following Christ without excuse to following the prosperity of the world system without excuse.  

This Babylonian, world system’s pressure to conform and enjoy its luxuries is before our faces every second of the day.  While working hard on this earth, being responsible and diligent and even prosperous we will not be able to remove ourselves from the world system completely.  In fact, God blesses us through the flourishment of the world system.  And this is where the danger lives.  The world's desire is to seduce us into worshipping her instead of God who has promised provision in poverty and prosperity.  So, our loving God sends us a powerful angel with great authority to command us to “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins” (18:4).  He says with great authority to come out, get out, flee, from the world system!  This command is to come out and flee spiritually.  We may not be able to leave the world system physically but we can flee the world system from our heart’s perspective.  

How do we come out of Babylon spiritually? We come out of the world system when we stop putting our trust in the riches of the world and its prosperity.  God calls us to trust in Him more than our government, stock market, financial standing in this world, more than our education, more than our savings, retirement, investments, athleticism, good health and good looks.  Trusting in anything other than our Creator God is trusting in Babylon.  We are to trust in God because He is good and He has promised to take care of us out of His love for us.  Can you say with Job, whether in prosperity or poverty, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord”?  Hope in God, not Babylon and her prosperity.  One day, it will be found no more.

Revelation 18:21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more...

Prayerfully, Steve