Name It and Claim It Ain't It

-


So many Pastors today preach a "name it and claim it" philosophy, and they back it up with Bible verses like this one:
"whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
The thing is, when you take pieces of the Bible you can use them to back up almost any belief you want to espouse. The Bible is a complete book, a picture of who God is, given to us to know more about God from a human perspective. You cannot take it in bits and pieces.

For instance, the quote above was something Jesus said directly to Peter. Pastors will tell you it applies to us all, but that does not mean we can decide what to do and Heaven will okay it with a big stamp of approval.

We don't bend God to our will - ever. That's not the purpose of prayer, that's not the reason to become or remain a Christian. God is not some Heavenly Grandfather peering down and winking at our indiscretions and looking for ways to bless us.

Yes, we have blessings, and God will pour them down on us. Micah 3:10 says clearly
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. 
But that's out of context, too. This was a promise given to the people of Israel, after scolding them for robbing God. Yes, the promise reflects to us, but there is a condition to it. Give back to God what belongs to Him, and the blessings He has for us will be poured out.

That is still far from "name it and claim it" that is preached by some current churches.

Jesus says very clearly in Matthew 6:33 "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." That IS a promise to us, but the "all things" are the things we need, not the things we want.

God supplies our needs. If God gives you more than what you need, look around. Maybe He wants you to help supply the needs of others.

It is more blessed to give than receive. That is from the Bible - from Acts 20:35.
In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' "
Thanks for reading. God bless you.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I cancelled The Bauman Letter

-
Image
I signed up for The Bauman Letter, edited by Ted Bauman and read it for a few months. His father is a well-known member of The Sovereign Society and Ted contributed for years. I like Ted's writing style and read his letter for the nuggets of information I could glean. One month he recommended a company in Australia for holding my gold. If I had a hundred grand in gold, maybe I'd go that route. Then again, maybe I'd bury it in the back yard like the old Romans. I cancelled his newsletter after reading his October issue. Ted posted ten pages of glowing prose for the 1291 Group of the Americas . I was impressed by his report and thought this might be a company I could park my IRA with and not worry about it. (We've been burned by local investment advisors who lost large chunks of our investment and still took their overly fair share of fees, so we're hyper-cautious.) Ted especially praised Erika Nolan, the CEO of this prestigious firm. Ted forgot to menti...
Read more

FBAR Scam, but not illegal

-
Image
FBAR (not to be confused with FUBAR, but the one can lead to the other) is a government required Foreign Bank Account Reporting that you must file if you have one or more foreign bank accounts that total more than $10,000 in assets. It is another of the methods the USA uses to track illegal drug trafficking money. I won't comment on how effective it all is, but there is a sort-of scam you need to be aware of. Yeah, you didn't want to read all that. Here's the scam. If you google FBAR, the very first link reads: Fbar Filing - FinCEN Foreign Bank Accounts Form - eFileFBAR.com and links to www.efilefbar.com. Don't click it! It's a legitimate link and they ask you all the correct FBAR questions. When you finish, they want you to pay them $350 to file for you ! Go to the FREE Government Link The government web site asks exactly the same questions, in exactly the same order and then lets you file for  FREE  with the USA. So what the "efilefbar...
Read more

Grandma

-
Image
Mom would have been 78 this year. Happy Birthday, Mom. When our cousins laughed and told my youngest brother that Grandma Jen wasn't our Grandma he just smiled and walked away. "She's my Grandma," he said. When they told me, I was irate. I was eight years older than my youngest brother, and I knew it wasn't possible for Grandma to be my cousins' great Aunt. I also hate being confused and I knew Grandma Jen was our Grandma. In a family tree Grandma Jen was our great Aunt, our real grandmother's younger sister. We have very little information on our grandmother. Elva Gertrude Elston was born in Sanilac County, Brown City, Michigan in 1915. She left the farm and her family and moved to the big city of Detroit when she was eighteen. According to relatives she never used the name Elva, but went by the name Peggy. She was very beautiful. My Aunt Ida (Peggy's youngest surviving sister) told me that Peggy came home to the farm for a few weeks duri...
Read more