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Our life has always centered around one thing, regardless of where we've lived: we went from death to life. We tasted that the Lord was good, we have the joy of our salvation, and all we want to do is make his name great. That is the heart of what follows, and it begins with a single verse.
Tasting That the Lord Is Good
"Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. Indeed, if you have tasted that the Lord is good."
1 Peter 2:2-3
If you have tasted the Lord and know that he is good, you will long for good spiritual milk. You can't help it. If you've never tasted the Lord, that's a different story altogether. But if you have, you will long for something, and that something is a good-ground church or good-ground ministry: a place where you will taste it over and over and over again. You will see the hands and feet of Jesus, not just for charity's sake, but because it is an outpouring from people living out their faith. Your cravings go up, and you want to taste it every day.
Notice the text says you grow up into salvation. It's not a touchdown. It's not a one-and-done thing. Yes, your salvation happens in a moment. Yes, you're sealed for eternity. Your name's written in the Lamb's book of life, and Jesus holds you in his grip. But now you grow up in your salvation. The word for that is sanctification, and it happens if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
The Bride of Christ
What is the church? The real church is made up of people whom the Bible calls the bride of Christ. Over the years these people have created space to gather in, like church buildings, and they have listed out what they believe in a statement of faith and why they believe the way they do. After that, they have genuinely found ways to divide themselves. That's kind of the history of the church.
Division is not always a bad thing. It just needs to be in context, and it should occur over real, serious issues rather than trivial ones, which happens many times. There was a church in Texas of about 250 people that lost 100 members because one lady wasn't recognized for bringing the colored toothpicks to the church picnic. Real doctrinal divisions, on the other hand, are real. A man once kept coming to a church I pastored, wanting to talk about transubstantiation and his Catholicism. That is the belief that when you take communion you are literally eating the body of Christ, drinking his blood, and receiving his forgiveness on the cross again. We don't believe that, and we don't teach that. After three weeks of him coming up to me each week, I finally said, "Man, maybe this isn't the right place for you." Sometimes division can be a good thing. Other times it can just be ridiculous because of the human condition.
The church is often misunderstood and often unfairly criticized. That doesn't discount how many organizations have hurt people. There is a sour side to this thing we call church, and it is real. The church gets no pass. But the absolute beauty of the bride of Christ, the actual bride of Christ, deserves to be remembered. She is gorgeous and she is faithful, and when she has that balance of truth and love, it's worth dedicating your life to, because it satisfies by keeping the focus on the Savior.
Why We Don't Miss Out on Gathering
Some people say, "I was dead, floating in the water, and Jesus along with the church threw me a life preserver, and I grabbed on." That's a lie. How many have ever seen a dead man floating in the water reach out and grab a life preserver? Even in the movies it wouldn't be believable. No, we were dead, and he brought us back to life. Because of that, we don't want to miss gathering together with fellow believers. It strengthens us. It gives us a lift every day. It gives us purpose and direction. And it keeps us seeking the one thing we want all day, every day: that it's well with us.
Everybody has a good excuse for not attending church, especially in a generation this distracted. Take those excuses and apply them to eating, and it gets funny. Here's the top 10 reasons for not eating anymore:
- I was forced to eat as a child.
- People who eat all the time are hypocrites. They aren't really hungry.
- There are so many different kinds of food, I can't decide what to eat.
- I used to eat, but I got bored and stopped.
- I only eat on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter.
- None of my friends will eat with me.
- I'll start eating when I get older.
- I really don't have time to eat.
- I don't believe that eating does anybody any good. It's just a crutch.
- Restaurants and grocery stores are only after your money.
Giving a lame excuse for not attending church or not getting involved in ministry is just as silly as giving up eating. For the authentic Christian, being part of the body of Christ, which is called the church, and not just attendance for attendance's sake, is just as important as regular balanced nutrition. It's that important. Without spiritual food, we'll die. When you see a weak person in the faith, or a consumer Christian, just check their diet. It's kind of obvious.
Stay in the Game
No matter what you're going through, whether financial, health, employment, relationships, family, children not doing things right, or parents not doing things right, we have to stay in the game. Stay in the game for yourself. It's like when the airlines tell you during the safety speech that if the mask drops, put your own on first. Why? So that you can help those around you. It's the same with Christianity. Yes, for yourself, but also for those God has put in your path for you to encourage and influence. And the testimony runs both ways. There's a bigger testimony than what a teacher gives to those who listen, and that is how many of the listeners have been an encouragement to him.
Don't Waste Your Life
We want our lives to matter for something. And when you take all of your life mattering for your inheritance, for your legacy, for what you're leaving your kids, it pales in comparison to not wasting your life, so that when you get in front of the King, he says, "Well done, good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:21). That's the legacy you want.
John Piper writes in his book Don't Waste Your Life, "I'll tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life." He points to a story from the February 1998 Reader's Digest: a couple took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast when he was 58 and she was 51. They now live in Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball, and focus on collecting seashells. Can you picture them on the great day of judgment? "Look, Lord, see my shells? This is what I did with what you gave me." Piper says that is a tragedy.
Get the context. It's not just because of the shells. The shells are fine, but if that's all there is, it's a tragedy. I love collecting seashells, and I love the times my wife and I get to be on the beach. But when we tried seven-day beach vacations in our forties and early fifties, by the fifth day I was ready to move the flight up a day. The first three days, I'm like Free Willy on the beach with my book. But there's a place for everything in proportion. There's nothing wrong with collecting seashells and retiring early, but if that's all you've got, that's not what the kingdom has for you. I've been looking all throughout the Bible for the word retirement for the saint, and I can't find it. We're supposed to keep pushing on until he calls us home.
God created us to live with joy and passion in his excellence, in all spheres of our life, to make much of him in every part of our lives. That's why we pray to bless our food: the glory of God is around us, and he has provided again something for us to eat. In spoiled America we take that for granted more than other countries do, but it's still good to be thankful.
Dark Days, and God Says "Fear Not"
Today, like never before, is a day to live for Jesus, because of how dark the days really are. There is a lot of evidence that the time is near for Jesus's return. You should never try to set dates. We're about 0 for 900, going back to the 1800s when everybody thought Jesus was coming. But it's not just the signs and the stars in heaven. It's the days of Noah. Never before in my recorded history, or in what I've seen, have we been so close to lawlessness like the days of Noah.
There are attempts to disrupt our food supply chain. Regional and national leadership is subpar on many levels. Look across the landscape of political leaders on either side of the aisle, national or local, and ask whether thirty years ago this person could have been elected dogcatcher, let alone governor, senator, or president. It feels like a void of leadership, with lightweights everywhere. So we pray for godly leaders. Lawlessness is abounding. We can have people who commit crimes with empirical evidence that cannot be argued that they are guilty, and yet justice can't be found. That is a sign of a country under God's judgment. And when you read the published plans of the globalists, not the conspiracy theories, we are just scratching the surface. Dark days are indeed ahead.
Yet God tells us over and over and over again, fear not. Who is the fear-not for? For those who have tasted the Lord and know that he is good. And right in the middle of the dark days, God tells us of prosperity and good success.
What God Promised: Prosperity and Good Success
"This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that's written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success."
Joshua 1:8
This was a promise God gave the Israelites under Joshua's leadership, and it was based on their obedience to God's word. We've had charlatans all throughout the last couple hundred years, particularly in the television age, who took these true biblical principles and twisted them into how you can be coerced into obedience, planting your seed, and being promised riches. That's not what's going on here.
Prosperity in the Bible is real. The problem is that even though it is God's desire for us, we don't always appear to be living in the way to obtain it. So could it be that we really don't understand what true prosperity and good success actually look like? Let's look at it from many sides, in an honest way.
The Dictionary Definition
Start with the dictionary: the condition of enjoying great wealth, success, or good fortune. That sounds pretty good. Deuteronomy 28 goes into detail:
"If you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all his commandments, all these blessings shall come upon you."
Deuteronomy 28:1-2
It sounds like a game, right? I obey, two, three, I get stuff. There's some truth to that, but that's not how it rolls. The chapter goes on to promise so much: success in all we do, our business, plenty of everything, success against our enemies, that we should be lenders and not borrowers, blessing on the work of our hands, and rain on our lands in season. God has clearly promised in his word to bless his people, and we can always trust God to honor his word. Paul doubles down on this:
"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you always having all sufficiency in all things may have abundance for every good work."
2 Corinthians 9:8
The simple reality is that God's blessing includes all we will ever need, and more: totally more than enough for every good work.
Nothing Missing, Nothing Broken
Still, there is so much more to prosperity and good success than material possessions. One old-school preacher summed it up this way: prosperity is nothing missing, nothing broken. Is that what you want your life to look like? I know I do.
Stan Moser wrote about it in his book Kingdom Men, giving a three-word description of the authentic, prosperous life, a place where nothing is broken and nothing is missing. Stan was the original president and CEO of Word Records out of Nashville, and he brought Rich Mullins, Amy Grant, and Michael W. Smith to market. He did not have the prosperity gospel thing going. He was trying desperately to get men to see what the kingdom of God could be for them in real prosperity. This is what he wrote:
- Freedom. Freedom from every fear, doubt, guilt, lack, disease, and debt.
- Fellowship. Fellowship with God and people: a unity of heart, belief, and vision, embracing a life that glorifies God and draws others to his love and grace.
- Fulfillment. Fulfillment of purpose: a daily, passionate, and rewarding pursuit of my God-given purpose to be fruitful, multiply, and utilize every resource to see God's kingdom come and his will be done on earth.
Mush them all together in one understanding, and it points toward God first and us second. If I can walk through life in agreement with my wife, my family, my friends, and God, with no strife and no division, in total agreement with God's word, God's plan, and God's way of doing things, that is a solid description of how we can have prosperity and great success.
Prosperity in the Life of Paul
That's how the apostle Paul actually lived. He suffered physically and emotionally. He lived in great conflict with the religious crowd of his day. He knew what it was like to be lied about, beaten, incarcerated, hungry, abused, and oppressed, all for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To our natural minds, that doesn't sound like prosperity and great success. But listen to what he says:
"We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed."
2 Corinthians 4:8-9
Paul knew his struggles were temporary, and he never took his eyes off the promises of God. God knows how to get you from where you are to where you need to be. You may think you know where you want to go, but God is the only one you can totally trust to know where you need to go and the best way to get there. Sometimes we can't see clearly, so we trust him to make our path straight.
"In his heart, man makes his plans, but it is the Lord who directs his steps."
Proverbs 16:9
This is the same Lord you've tasted and know is good. He is the same God who knows every mistake you've ever made, and he still has these promises for you as you walk out your salvation and grow in your sanctification. And so you are walking out prosperity and good success.
Much of the prosperity promised in the Bible is actually for the other side. Here, we are promised trouble, Jesus says, but rejoice, because he has overcome the world (John 16:33). So what is prosperity and great success? When it's well with you. That comes from the Lord. You cannot have it be well with you when you're trying to conjure up all this stuff on your own. Embrace the joy of the here and now. Yes, we're going to have trouble. Yes, we're going to have struggles. Yes, some things won't look like prosperity and great success. But when you have him, and you've tasted, and it's well with you, that is prosperity and great success.
The Diamonds Under Your Feet
Russ Cornwall tells a true, historical story. Not far from the River Indus in India in 1870, there lived a farmer who owned a beautiful farm with orchards, grain fields, and gardens. He was very wealthy and very contented. Then one night a traveler came through and spent the night with him and told him all about diamonds: spectacular diamonds that could buy many farms much larger and more beautiful than his own, diamonds that could put his children on thrones around the world in far-off countries.
That night, the farmer went to bed a poor man for the very first time. He went to bed poor because he was now discontented with all he had. He became obsessed with the thought, I must have a diamond mine. I must have the immense wealth and riches that come from a diamond mine. So he sold his farm and began a passionate pursuit of riches. He left his family in the care of a neighbor and went in search of diamonds from country to country until all his money was gone. Finally, standing in rags in Spain by the Bay of Barcelona, he jumped in and drowned himself.
But the man who bought his farm was digging in the garden that the now-dead man had left, and he found a massive diamond. He continued digging, and to his amazement, diamonds were everywhere. That is how the diamond mine of Golconda was discovered. It is the biggest in the world and has always been the richest. For decades, every shovel revealed gems that would decorate crowns of royalty around the earth.
The point is this: had that farmer been content with what God gave him and just dug in his own garden, rather than submit to the greed of the flesh, he would have realized God had already given him more than he could possibly manage. It was right under his feet. So what has God given you? It's right at your fingertips. Look close, not at your neighbor. Look close to your world: the miracle already in our own homes, the miracle in our own gathering. God's supply is for us.
The Spirit Guides Us Forward
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you."
John 16:12-14
So make your decisions about your future, and about how to serve him, in the right frame of mind and with the right motives. Whatever God has for each and every one of us, let it be well with us as we go forward, trying to make a way where sometimes there doesn't seem to be a way. Ask him to direct your paths and direct your steps. That is real biblical prosperity: nothing missing, nothing broken, and it's well with you because you've tasted that the Lord is good.