As of this month, I have owned my modest townhome for seven years…In this time of economic confusion, I don’t see this feat as a minor blessing – Particularly since just months after closing on my first home, I lost my job…About a year after that, I still hadn’t found a job in my field and my roommate moved out…It was a trying time for sure, but the Lord brought me through, and here I am seven years later…
This may sound like hocus pocus but about a year before I closed on my townhome, on the morning of my birthday, the Lord revealed to me that I would be a homeowner…I don’t know how this happens, but sometimes although I don’t hear audible words, I sense that the Lord is speaking to me…This was one of those times…I sensed this revelation as I read the book Dancing in the Arms of God by Connie Neal. (By the way, it’s a great book if you want to know how to develop a personal relationship with God!) At this time of my life, I wasn’t very making very much money at all so I wondered how this would happen…(Not that I’m rolling in the dough now…but I am doing better – praise God!)
There is an African proverb that states, “When you pray, move your feet.” After praying about the matter and coming to the conclusion that I had heard from God, I got moving. I began researching how to buy a home and even took a one-day seminar about buying a home, I talked with a friend who works in budget counseling about the costs of maintaining a home, and I started saving up my down payment money.
A few months later, I interviewed a woman for an article I was writing about her son who had won several scholarships to college. While I was at her home, I told her that I thought her new home was beautiful and that I was planning to start looking for my own home. She told me that through God’s favor, she was able to buy her lovely home although she had never thought she could afford a home as nice as that one. Then, she added that she rarely told the story of how she got the home to anyone. However, she said, to those to which she choose to tell the story, each one was able to get a home in spite of difficult circumstances…Finally, she gave me the name and contact information for her mortgage lender…My father said that the only way that you know that someone has truly prophesied is if the prophesy comes true…I called that mortgage lender…and you know the rest of the story…
This is a nice example of how the Lord has worked in my life. But as people are losing their homes all over the country, I wonder, if they, too, felt the Lord had blessed them with their homes in spite of unfavorable circumstances…I also wonder in light of “The Prosperity Gospel,” have many of us thought we heard from God when it was really just wishful thinking? Read this article below. It appeared in Time magazine on Oct. 3.
Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mess
Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That’s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”
Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: “The pastor’s not gonna say, ‘Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,’ but I have heard, ‘Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you’ll get that house or that car or that apartment.’ ” Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: “It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, ‘If you give this offering, God will give you a house.’ And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy.” If so, the situation offers a look at how a native-born faith built partially on American economic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.
Although a type of Pentecostalism, Prosperity theology adds a distinctive layer of supernatural positive thinking. Adherents will reap rewards if they prove their faith to God by contributing heavily to their churches, remaining mentally and verbally upbeat and concentrating on divine promises of worldly bounty supposedly strewn throughout the Bible. Critics call it a thinly disguised pastor-enrichment scam. Other experts, like Walton, note that for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are “worthy of having more and doing more and being more.” In some cases the philosophy has matured with its practitioners, encouraging good financial habits and entrepreneurship.
But Walton suggests that a decade’s worth of ever easier credit acted like a drug in Prosperity’s bloodstream. “The economic boom ’90s and financial overextensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the Prosperity message,” he wrote recently on his personal blog as well as on the website Religion Dispatches. And not positively. “Narratives of how ‘God blessed me with my first house despite my credit’ were common. Sermons declaring ‘It’s your season to overflow’ supplanted messages of economic sobriety,” and “little attention was paid to … the dangers of using one’s home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations.”
With the bubble burst, Walton and Butler assume that Prosperity congregants have taken a disproportionate hit, and they are curious as to how their churches will respond. Butler thinks some of the flashier ministries will shrink along with their congregants’ fortunes. Says Walton: “You would think that the current economic conditions would undercut their theology.” But he predicts they will persevere, since God’s earthly largesse is just as attractive when one is behind the economic eight ball.
A recent publicly posted testimony by a congregant at the Brownsville Assembly of God, near Pensacola, Fla., seems to confirm his intuition. Brownsville is not even a classic Prosperity congregation — it relies more on the anointing of its pastors than on Scriptural promises of God. But the believer’s note to his minister illustrates how magical thinking can prevail even after the mortgage blade has dropped. “Last Sunday,” it read, “You said if anyone needed a miracle to come up. So I did. I was receiving foreclosure papers, so I asked you to anoint a picture of my home and you did and your wife joined with you in prayer as I cried. I went home feeling something good was going to happen. On Friday the 5th of September I got a phone call from my mortgage company and they came up with a new payment for the next 3 months of only $200. My mortgage is usually $1,020. Praise God for his Mercy & Grace.”
So this article, I think, can lead to some interesting discussion at our churches…How do know that we have truly heard from God? Does God “bless our mess?” Does God call for us to throw reason out of the window when He has revealed something to us? For goodness sake, why do people always say they are “blessed and highly favored,” when life is really sucking for them – at least at the moment – I swear…Does getting blessed by God always follow a large donation to our church? I’m sure that you can think of your own questions. Let the commentary begin…
Any thoughts?
First, congrats! E-mail me and tell me where the house is located.
Most people don’t really understand what the Word says about prosperity. Any preacher who says “If you give this offering, God will give you a house” is delusional (unless God has given him a word of knowledge, but those instances are the exception.)
The prosperity of God is based on scripture and scripture only — not man’s ability to twist it. God’s prosperity isn’t just financial. What the Bible teaches is total life prosperity of which finances are just a part.
There is a difference between faith and foolishness, and unfortunately many believers don’t know where the line is. Dr. Fred Price wrote an excellent book entitled, FAITH, FOOLISHNESS AND PRESUMPTION.
So many Christians get into financial trouble because they are operating by their feelings — I want this. I want that. Without taking their level of faith into account. God wants us to operate in wisdom.
Great post! I love the way you relate the personal and spiritual to larger issues in our economy and society. I saw that “Blame God for the Subprime Mess” article… I think that preachers that tell people what they want to hear will always find a willing audience. The challenge is digging a little deeper.
“For goodness sake, why do people always say they are “blessed and highly favored,” when life is really sucking for them – at least at the moment – I swear…”
Good question! I’ve often wondered that too.
“Blessed and highly favoured”…look at who God & Jesus called “blessed” in the Bible. They all suffered immensely. God’s idea of blessing isn’t man’s definition of blessing. You are blessed because life’s challenges have moulded you into the image of Christ. Money rarely does that.
Tess,
People say that because the Word of God declares that we are – no matter how the circumstances appear. It’s not a lie. It’s a statement of biblical fact. The circumstances aren’t the truth. The Word is the truth.
Hey Chicki,
The Bible may declare us blessed, but that does not mean we always feel that way, or even that people in the Bible always felt that way. See Psalm 88 for one example. I believe in trusting and surrendering to God. I also believe that prayer is one place where I can be honest about my emotions, even when these include fear and anger. God is big enough to handle them.
I don’t presume to know what anybody else’s relationship to God should look like, and I hope that all of us (self included) will continue to look for blessings when facing difficult times.
That’s what I like to see – a healthy dialogue! Onward Christian Soldiers! (That sooo sounded like my Dad!:)
Tess,
God never expects us to deny our emotion, but he doesn’t want us to be lead by them. That’s what it means to walk by faith and not by sight. If we considered all the mess going around us, we’d never get out of bed in the morning! 🙂 Emotions are real, but they have nothing to do with how God sees us or His plans for us.
I’d say that the primary way that the prosperity gospel deceives people is to say that “blessed” means “rich”. Then, when they look for examples in the Bible, they focus only on Solomon (a king), David (another king), etc; people who were of course rich because they were royalty.
But if you look at Isaiah’s life, Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, etc., these were ALL blessed people, and GOD took care of their needs.
But they weren’t RICH.
So blessed and rich are not the same thing, and it wasn’t GOD’s will for everyone to be rich. Even with New Testament examples like Peter, Paul, Mary Magdalene…they weren’t rich. They were blessed and GOD took care of all their needs.
I think these writers you quoted have a good point, and many Christians were set up to be easy prey.
At least, that’s my 2 cents!
(Unless GOD “blesses” it and turns it into 2 million!) =)
Congratulations, Jackie, on standing firm and riding out the storms! Getting and maintaining your home when you didn’t always have the obvious means to do so is a tremendous feat.
And what a great article for discussion! Their premise that these believers are likely the greatest victims of the sub-prime lending mess is so intriguing! I wish I could get out and collect the data to research it myself. But of course, that’s why I’m a researcher 🙂
I’ve personally felt torn about these issues as well. On the one hand, I have been upset to hear ministers talk about faith and in the next breath encourage their listeners to engage in simply irresponsible behavior. It seems to me that responsibly encouraging faith would look a lot more like asking people to consider carefully what they are hearing from God (which may be STOP SPENDING for some even if it is TRUST AND GIVE for others) and helping them to decipher His will versus their own.
One thing I have to say I also recognized and appreciated about the general prosperity movement, though, is that sense the authors note that: “for all its faults, the theology can empower people who have been taught to see themselves as financially or even culturally useless to feel they are “worthy of having more and doing more and being more.”
Take everything else about prosperity messaging away, but helping people to understand they CAN do and be more, to want more for and from themselves, and then to “move their feet” when they’ve prayed … those things I hope will live on.
Well said Nicola D! I agree that one of the benefits of the “Prosperity Gospel” is that people learn that they are incredibly important to God and as result, they can be incredibly important (living intentionally) in their own lives, in the lives of their commnunity and in the lives of the world over…
And if you should ever conduct this research, let me know about the results! It would be interesting to find out what is happening with churches throughtout in nation regarding this issue…
I liked this one…….
Thanks, Jackie. Great article. I also like Soul Daddy’s comments.
Check out the video by at Justin Peters site: http://www.justinpeters.org Here is a man with cerebral palsy who lives by God’s sufficient grace and gives a seminar on the health and wealth gospel. He distinguishes between clear thinking charismatics and the “word of faith” movement. Its really, really good. Very doctrinally sound.
Hi CLS,
Thanks for visiting my site! Please come back often! So you’re in LA! Very cool!
Hello
I would really like to know how people hear God speak to them.
I donf think i have ever heard his voice
I really want to hear it
i know people who say; God told me to move here or to do this:
How do they know its God?
i would really appreciate some feedback on this
God bless”
thank you
Barbra
Hi Barbra,
Thank you for stopping by my blog! I have never heard an audible voice that I knew for sure was God. But I do believe I have heard from God in various ways…Sometimes, it’s a strong feeling that I should make one choice over another. Sometimes, I feel like God speaks through other people to tell me what I need to hear. Sometimes it is through doors that have opened for me and doors that have closed for me…Here are a few verses that demonstrate how people in the Bible have heard from God: 1 Samuel 3, Matthew 2 and Acts 16….let me know if I helped 🙂
Me and mu hissbnd botj have bed creidt we stsrted dsting five years agi i was raised religioisly, and now after 26 years if my life i have found out that i nust follow jesus insteas of man pastors and people in general maybe god will bless us both eith a home the finances to get our licsnece and a vehicle now that i see clesrly he is still dealing with both if us as a onem may god be the glory we jabe. Past but dont we all?
Hi Geneva,
Thanks for stopping by my blog! When you put God first in your life, He promises to take care of us!
this house on boundary road 234 deland fla I pray for this house they ask me for 10.000 for a down pay but I don’t have it so iam still praying
HALLELUJAH and Amen! Our God is an awesome God! Won’t He do the impossible!!! 3 strokes…the last one; 3 days tge Lord said get up! You are nit done!! Presently we are waiting on God to open the floodgates! HALLELUJAH…there is still work to be done for His kingdom!!! WE will not be moved…we can do all things through Christ ; HALLELUJAH; who strengthens us!
Trust and believe that He will give us the power to move mountains of impossibility!!
Just wait and see! Become active participants on the journey. .be productive ..ask and He will answer every time; ha, in His own way!!!