Power of Enjoyment

Key Scripture: "As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be proud and arrogant and contemptuous of others, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches, but on God, Who richly and ceaselessly provides us with everything for [our] enjoyment." I Timothy 6:17, Amplified

Power Point:

There is a nasty little lie that has been circulating since the Garden of Eden. You’ve probably heard it a million times and in fact, you may even have said it a time or two. It’s the belief that God gives us hard things to help us grow. The last time I checked, the word “Father” indicated someone who cared for, and loved, and gave good things to His children. If God did what we expected of Him in this area, He would be imprisoned for child abuse!

Adam and Eve had lived in the very center of the goodness of God and Satan still got them to question it. It’s his ace in the hole. It’s his weapon of choice. And it’s very effective. It works like this.  God opens up a promise to you and you get very excited as you begin to think about the possibilities it offers. And then Satan begins to whisper that it couldn’t possibly be true because the Christian life needs to be HARD! Beloved, God doesn’t make our life hard- WE do, when we believe that He is anything less than good.

Several years ago, I read John 10:10 for the ten millionth time and Holy Spirit opened it up for me for the first time.  It changed my life forever when I realized that Jesus had said He had come to give me an abundant life. It was the other guy who had come to steal, kill and destroy everything Jesus died to give me. If you were to take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle and at the top on one side write “Steal, kill and destroy” and on the other write “Abundant Life”, where would that thing that’s the most troublesome in your life go-on the left or on the right? What about the biggest blessing in your life right now-right or left?

If you’ve been deceived into thinking that God does bad things to make you better, maybe you need to do this little exercise.  You see Beloved, when we realize where the “bad” is coming from we realize that we can fight back.  If God gives us cancer to teach us something, then everything Jesus did was against the will of God, because everywhere He went He healed everyone who came to Him. If God wants us to live in poverty, or in need, then why on earth does He promise to provide all our needs?

Paul said it so perfectly in I Timothy: “God who richly and ceaselessly provides us with everything for enjoyment.” In 2 Corinthians 9:8, he adds, “And God is able to make all things abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things would have an abundance for every good work.” Are you sensing a pattern here?

Wherever you’ve allowed yourself to believe that God will not be good to you, will not heal you, will not generously and lavishly provide for you, ask yourself if it passes the “Abundance vs. Steal, Kill and Destroy test.” Read the words in red in the Gospels and see exactly what Jesus said and did. Don’t take the lies of the enemy as truth. Don’t let him steal the “good” from the Good News. Otherwise it just becomes “news” doesn’t it?  It’s all there in black and white Beloved. He generously and ceaselessly gives you and me all things to enjoy.  So get on with it! Enjoy the things He offers and most of all, enjoy the goodness of who He is, for you, generously and ceaselessly.

Power Thought:

God never runs out of good things for us to enjoy. That’s called abundance.