All seats of authority are from God, but any government is of
the people.
A her,
“If you are nice to me, I will give to you what you want.”
A him,
“Well, uh… That’s not very nice!”
When we hold someone in derision because of an unpleasing attitude, we are doing the same as the rich man with Lazarus.
Wondering why our own attitude with judging disconcerting behavior of another, especially one most beholding to us, is acceptable
while we reject dealing with what seems to be an affront to our esteem or self-respect, puts us into why the rich man felt
his judging of Lazarus was in his right of passage.
As he thought of his blessings of riches being his reward
for placing his trust of faith in God he assumed that Lazarus was being taught a lesson of suffering for being at odds with
God’s merciful considerations. In the rich man’s pattern of playing ‘spin the bottle’ with other’s
lives, he viewed the patient trust of Lazarus as an evil to be shunned. Many say, “Money talks…” but, money
lies the lie of convenience in selfish delusion to the payee with cruelty done to the debtor.
What is money for if not to reduce the miseries of our fellow
human beings? We use money unwisely to divide the purposes of marriage and family, the integrity of a man with his wife to
care for their children no matter race, creed, religion or social status, in efforts to minimize hardship by attempts to reduce
populations. There can be no honest overseeing respect for “all created equal” when deciding which individuals
and groups may flourish in living, and who may lose their lease on life “for the better good”.
Gambling, or chance taking, the dishonorable exploitation
of your faith is when your desires are because of people in the name of religion. Putting Christ first, and concerns for people
because of Him, properly aligns your undertakings of risk in ways where your faithful desires no longer are counterproductive
to living. Whatever you do, then, is not to achieve monetary results for the “service of God” but is in service
to God whether or not monetary successes are the result. Consequently, care for those to whom you are accountable finds reality
through your word of integrity rather than assuming your integrity rests in your bank account.
God first, then people, then profits - not the other way
round is the only way for everyone to thrive in the world of humanity.
God, people, and profits, in that order, provides for a
simultaneous achievement in unity of all three.
Any other variation of order casts our intentions into sequential
requirements where the unity of now is lost to yesterday and tomorrow because true class is not dependent on the materialistic
security of money. Whatever it is in daily living, with respect to our positions in marriage, neglect means to choose resentful
negativity against what (or who) God expects us to lift up into positive opportunity. Everything; including marriage, eternal
salvation, shielding regard for the lives of unborn children, and respect for loyalty in passion becomes negotiable when money
is considered the core of viability.
Faith in God’s leading to apply our concerns in providing
quality products and services respects His integrity in our integrity to appropriately care for our spouse, family, and fellow
citizens – again, always in that order. Our endeavors to produce better sustenance, upkeep, securities, and satisfaction
are not of money, but of devoted steadfast loyalty in our holding to who we are in our decisions with our loved ones. Calculated
values look for excuses while true love needs no excuse. Money can be emotionally exciting because it answers a lot of questions. However, it cannot tell right from wrong because it has no conscience.
Whether we are paid well in what we do, or for some reason
are not paid at all, our expressed love for God in expressing our love for what we do, to benefit those to whom we are committed
is the faith-in-action God asks of us to give. This is why faith in God’s leading, sidetracked in priority to make money,
stops short of God’s leading in living and diverts our natural faithing into the unnatural desires in the making of
money for the sake of the love of money. 1st Timothy 6:10 says, For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while
some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
So, if it is assumed that money is the expression of love,
and 1st John 4:8 says, He that loves not knows not God; for God is love. then, it follows in perverted logic that God is money,
or money is God. If that were the case, then stealing money, being rich, buying anyone we choose whatever they desire, and
living the high life of opulence and wealth would be the full expression of God’s will in Christ’s salvation...
“If you love me you will buy me things.” (though gifts for honest reasons are a proper use of money). Obviously,
love from, of, and to God; and love from, of, and to people in His Name for His sake is a quite different way of consideration,
without measure to quantify, that any amount of money can never approach.
"We reserve the rights to refuse sales and/or service to anyone for any reason," applies
to privately held companies only. It is not applicable to investment backed corporations and public service agencies.
Tight-fisted spendthrift misers keep restrictive controls over other’s expenditures, thinking
or feigning a frugal righteousness of piety, descriptive ‘for godly instruction’ knowing full well their own pointed
spending is directed to make others ‘make do…’. They can many times, but not always, be identified as ‘collectors’,
‘accumulators’, ‘ownership economists’, prudent, sparing,
careful and use their meager with-holding as a front.
What belongs to anyone else is theirs to rate and judge,
they believe, being blinded by their personal indignant plight… esteeming those who have the least as not viable against
those who have the most whose successes merit a type of worship. What ‘they’ fail to acknowledge is they are not
sent by God to be a god over others abilities, efforts, and wealth to flourish in Christ’s behalf for those with which
they care.
If when budgets are tightened we find it necessary
to stop dining in restaurants (or even reduce our tipping), those who have jobs in food service have less with which to work.
Expanding throughout the supply chain, more and more people have less to spend while prices are inflated in an attempt to
make up for lost profits. A person who cannot now cook for a closed diner next to a closed motel cannot afford to spend at
the clothier he used to patronize.
Meanwhile the clothier is no longer in business because his main supplier’s factory is non-operational
and the clothing store employees as well as the factory workers are either homeless or trying to fend off creditors. Add to that a governmental effort to further increase taxes
to address increasingly dire social ills and disorder - public dole resource reliance including job cost expenses for a swelling
need for social workers and other public service employees.
Socialist pressures on individuals and businesses make for a caustic general unrest among
the populous. Additionally, all crime channels
expand to become crowded with hurting hopeless people who see no upturn in fortunes; not realizing or noticing that their
very disgusted distress with the conflicting rough winds against established capitalistic structures further pulls down their
own hard-fought-for, and won, economic arrangements.
Lowering taxes and increasing positive commerce can be accomplished
partly by not stealing from businesses (anyone, for that matter) whether a customer or an employee. Everyone who steals knows
they are stealing. They will look to see if anyone is watching… For example, an item stolen off a shelf in a store increases
the price of everything in the store, reduces wages for those who work there as well as those who manufacture and/or package
what is for sale, and eliminates jobs that could otherwise solidify not only the store’s economic base but, also, the
entire system of commerce. In short, it is not ‘them’ it is you.
On another note, the only legitimate avenues an elected
government has to reduce fuel prices is positive diplomacy with suppliers and to lower excise and other taxes.
Romans 8:11-14 says, “And, this besides, knowing the season, that it is an hour already for you out of
sleep to be wakened; for, now, is our salvation nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent and the day has
drawn near. Let us, then, cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light; as in daytime, becomingly
let us walk. Not in revellings and in drunken bouts, not in chamberings and in wanton deeds, not in strife and envy. But put
ye on the Lord Jesus Christ; for the flesh, take not forethought to fulfill its covetings.
While business is always, if conducted properly, a 50%/50% work-for-wage proposition
between an employee and his or her employer; marriage, as well as attentive conversation, is a 100%/100% endeavor. Every situation
is different, but "business is business" when it comes to basic realities that apply to everyone. In many group cultures it
is assumed that individualistic and personal faith unto God through work efforts are a prerequisite for shared cohesive marriage
partnership – that one or the other spouse, or both, are in denial of their faith in Christ if income difficulties arise.
This conveys unfocused social pressures to “get right with God or separate
from fellowship”. It bites to the core of healthy marriage union - the shared faith in God's provisional guidance. When
the sequencing of togetherness in faith unto God according to His promises in Christ has its foundational strengths in order,
a man and woman’s together trust supersedes financial concerns. They are then able to share encouragement based in honor
with united dependence in their persistently expectant God supplied confidence.
Making money is not the same as getting money. Just as feelings of the spirit
person are not emotions of the flesh person, and the spirit of truth in reality is not the same as the spirit of the moment,
choosing our thoughts in response to Christ with regard to those around us is not the same as following our thoughts about
Him in how we interact with those same others. Commonly, we call ‘getting money’ ‘making money’ in
that education, training, and experience prepare us to earn a better living if we have or find, and take advantage of, available
opportunities. These are ways to ‘get money’ from those who ‘make money’. An employee helps his or
her employer make a company’s money and therefore gets (hopefully) paid.
Again, our professions in work, our employment in a career, are ways to get
the money we need to pay our way through responsibilities and desires. As responsibilities and desires are not mutually exclusive
concerns, we understand that tending to both is limited by our level of income. Endeavors to orient ourselves to how and where
we may increase our income are plans, procedures, and cooperation with others to get the monies we need and want. Those who
are in business to make money are also in business to get money, but the difference is in understanding that if one makes
money, the possible opportunities of means to get money increases.
Contrariwise, when one or another (or several to many) work to get money as a way to make money, it is very difficult to make
money to get. ‘Making money,’ as opposed to
‘getting money’, is in integrating one’s creative production to the needs and wants of others. As an employee,
that integration is in response to the wishes of owners, often through delegated supervisory authorities. Many private company’s
best employees are the owners themselves because they understand their responsibilities to provide the work environment and
social opportunities to help their employees make their money from which everyone may be paid.
Because of profit motives in higher concern than the products and services a private or publicly held company holds dear,
business supervisors transfer their wishes for increased sales into over-managing their employee’s decision making aptitudes.
Therefore, as people forget why they work, governments’
treasuries print more backless money because more money is what people want. Those are those who want a paycheck while someone
else does the hard work. Since money is created by labor through faith, doing a quality job is the only way that will back
the exchange.
We should beware of doom saying prognosticators who predict
poor economic recovery. The atmosphere of fear vs. satisfaction based in negatives driving positives (or the reverse) is the
philosophic fatalistic battleground investor hawks feed on to scrape off savings we put into corporate accounts in faith of
the strengths of business encouragement. ‘Economic recovery’ means, to them, the volatile profiteering they assume
is the monetary stability of trade and industry – but is in fact a siphoning-off leach that undermines resources companies
have to improve their products and, thereby, the wage-paying base.
God is a God of people helping people. (Colossians 1:10-24)
“God helps those who help themselves,” is not Biblical, either Old or New Testament. It is a sublime sarcasm of
faithless resentment in opposition to the Gospel as if the only power of protection against hunger and dereliction is a person’s
social standing. We know there are thieves who misappropriate their faith quite well who leave their victims penniless and
without. Consider Moses and the Exodus or Christ and His disciples. Also, there is not a general rule, except for putting
marriage and immediate family first, and then neighbors as one can do with what he or she has in faith-action. When there
are problems with supply fulfilling demand we think the government collective (taxes) has the funds to compromise.
In that, it is assumed that big companies, and especially
huge corporations, hold the keys to relieving poor people’s miseries through taxes to alleviate the imbalance between
what is believed to be the successful and the unsuccessful. That is devastatingly
deceiving because larger businesses have the position to hopefully drive inflation to make up tax losses. The higher percentage
taxes are, the more cuts in quality and workforce are made to keep the company afloat. Again, when we have difficulty buying
what we are used to easily buy, it causes a general ‘tightening-the-belt’ atmosphere that cuts out higher employment
numbers.
The smaller the staff, the more workload each person has,
the less there is to go around. The error is to assume that money is God’s willed answer of faith. Who needs faith in
God when controlling one’s own monetary destiny is lost to those who make larger barns to guard against those who would
break in to take what they are lacking? However, it is Christ Who responds to those who tend to faithfully upholding their
household(s). In Scripture, God reveals to us He does not know everything before
it happens because He gives us the choice to respond to His call of salvation. He gives us the preference to choose what we
will say and what we will do.
Since the eternal value of our souls are infinitely more
important than our financial well being, and He knows of our tendencies to greed in the face of wealth, we might find ourselves
poorly struggling and at the same time among people of poverty who need a witness of faith and endurance. God is our immediate
supply for His purposes in the moments of daily life. He meets us where we are – not yesterday or tomorrow. The three
tiered purposes of any business are providing goods and services, and the jobs necessary for workers to produce those goods
and services, for the sake of God’s benevolent gift of living. Profits are a natural consequence and not the goal.
For example: Governmental and business provided health insurance/care
programs reduce employee wages, increase the costs of goods and services, swell taxation overload, undermine pick-and-choose
expressions of conscience, and drive economic optimism into despair. Men and their wives, as well as our nation, more appropriately
would be better off to buy private health insurance coverage while keeping their faith reliance in God through healthy living.
It is commonly believed that the core of a man's provisions of support for his wife and children is money. But, God's promise
to the faithfully involved is He knows and understands our most cared about needs and will provide.
The wisdom of mankind is based in physically observable
results of compensation for labor of the flesh, while the wisdom of God is based in the spiritual unseen results manifested
in mortal life through prayer, faith, and the same labor for a different reason. Consequently,
a man's provisions for his wife and children are his invitations and opportunities for togetherness and unity of pledge based
heartfelt purpose. As we trust in His leading by upholding our own word in His Word to those we are committed, through faith
action in respecting whom we are to our loved ones; we will find there is no lack in His fulfilling our proper expectations.
Creation of the universe is unfolding even as you are reading
this. God chose, for our sake, to become vulnerable to trust because of His promise of the Authority inherent in free will
to everyone. Honor has in His design the primary elements of respect and courtesy. He knows the results of decisions and choices
people may make and can and does intervene when it does not violate His Word. God knows the intent of the heart and wishes
a person’s attention to be converted from misunderstanding to understanding.
If a person’s intent in their desire is to establish
a relation with the world through the knowledge of good and evil, he or she has the right to do so. It does not mean it is
right or healthy for them and others, but it does affect the entirety of creation. So, God does not know specifically what
we will do tomorrow, or in the next moment, because we have the call to accept His will, or not. Just as we do not know the
choices our children are making as a day transpires, God does not know what choices we will make. He sent His Son to provide
an avenue for our restoration to Him and the life He created for us to have. We have the choice to accept His offer of salvation.
The means God used to do this is to separate His Omnipotence
from the temporal world by granting His authority to the people through their prophesied position of fulfillment. In other
words, by grace through faith, the creation of the finishing of the souls is in the Authority of the people. If a person uses
his or her authority (bought through Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection) to have faith in secular existence,
the moments of life become part of the eroding of Creation itself. God wishes all to be saved. Not everyone wishes to be saved.
Therefore, in His ever-loving kindness, God blesses a person with the joy, or suffering, of his or her own life, or demise,
respectively.
A rich man may have the secular reward he wishes. There
is much poverty and suffering, denial of opportunity, and most importantly lost souls, at the hands of selfish and ambitious
people. There are many genuine God loving faithful Christians who die of starvation at the hands of self-righteous, prideful,
and indignant people. Time, and time again, many have said, "It's never too late." More importantly, it's never too early.
Because the Work of Christ encompasses all things, including time itself, there is no such thing as fate. Fate is a myth that
denies personal responsibility. Each person was brought into this world with an intended general purpose.
The idea, or belief, that every thought, feeling, act, and
event was planned to happen is not true. Most people, due to distraction and influence by Satan and his demons, other people,
and by their own choosing, never find their purpose. There is no luck. There is no coincidence. Everything and everyone is
being influenced in one way or another. This world, as we know it, is a battlefield. Even though the war has been won, the
working out of the battles of process is not finished. As long as anyone believes they must earn God’s attentions, He
views them as immature and under the dictates of the Law.
When anyone accepts His grace and mercy of Life through
faith in Christ, He views them as mature and under the freedoms of the Grace of obedience to promise that dismantles the restrictions
of the law by obedience through works. Everyone is a part of Christ whether in His death or His resurrection. Life is a matter
of accepting to be lifted up into the Resurrection of Christ’s mercy, out from our death in His of condemnation by Crucifixion.
Devotion, when founded in valuing people based in their monetary prowess, will wax and wane with the intensities of life and
death. False faith drawn from emotional attachments to financial seed planting leads to shallow allegiances.
Fanaticism, through materialistic defensive ideas and exercises,
places other’s faithful expectations into subservient faithless obligated fantasies and serves to bring reproach upon
the causes of truth. The adversary works to deceive people by driving them into extremes, and when their habits are extreme
the Gospel message is mentally screened in ways that simple faithful trust loses its understanding. Satan’s demonic
entities incessantly are ready to seize our concerns to exploit every error, every failure, and every unbecoming act and hold
it up among the people in its most exaggerated light - to render loathsome perceptions about our faithful living people.
The prince of evil contests every inch of ground over which
God’s people may advance in their Christ victory by blinding people to the reasons they work and what may be done with
their income(s). Thus, the greater the numbers of God = Money believers he can crowd into making false professions of faith
in money, as if it is the power of God, the more distant people become from each other. While his power of suggestion controls
their hearts, the greater advantage he thinks to gain is by calling attention to destruction of the witness marriages and
families exist to give as the Church Body of Gospel believers.
"The envious feel misunderstood in their hunger."
Lamentations chapter 3
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