I’ve always heard of “prophecies” proclaiming the provision of God is coming through unlocked windows of Heaven. Why do we always seem to wait in eager anticipation like dogs waiting on scraps of food from the table for God’s blessings?
I put the quotes around the word prophecies not to mock the prophetic but to cast my own doubts on the legitimacy of most prophecies I’ve heard about this. Since I was a boy growing up in the evangelical Christian movement I have heard this same generic and vanilla prophecy come from so many different people at so many different times (a lot of times it’s concentrated around the new year and all the “glorious” things God is going to do THIS year that he didn’t do LAST year). I honestly think this is a whip the people up into a frenzy kind of prophecy. I’ll say it here – I don’t think God said that. I really don’t. At least not here and now in a prophecy.
Let’s analyze this – God is going to open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing on us. Stop for a moment and think about what does that particular passage of scripture (Malachi) mean to you? Go ahead…stop…don’t keep reading stop and think.
We Americans tend to think in a very isolationist view. We think God is of course only concerned with us. We tend to think he has blessed us and not the rest of the world because we’ve obeyed him better than everyone else. We also don’t tend to really put a whole lot of thought into the “everybody else” because again – we tend to only think of America.
So let me paint a picture for you. Do you think God really said in that very generic very vanilla prophecy that he was going to give a fat man a cake?
America is already blessed. Blessed beyond measure. We already live in a highly industrialized country full of technology that makes our lives easier. We live in a country where our poor have cable/satellite, where our poor have cell phones, where out poor have access to clean drinking water, where our poor go to school for free, where our poor drive cars, and on and on. We live in a country where us white middle class politically conservative Christians think our poor are leeches on society sucking the life out of what we earned and deserved. God forgive us for our arrogance.
We proclaim from the pulpit week after week and year after year of God’s desire to bless us and increase us and multiply us and all the other frothy words that people love to hear and claim for themselves. So tell me the answer to my previous question. Do you think God wants to give a fat man a cake? Because that’s what this prophetic word is saying; our blessed country is somehow deficient and God wants to “kick it up a notch” and “BAM” here’s MORE!!!
It doesn’t take a theology degree to study scriptures. It only takes a willing and an open heart and mind. Let’s take off our spiritual glasses that we see the world and scriptures through (we all have them on…me included) and try to see things from God’s perspective. God has called us to care for those less fortunate and those without. He called Israel to show the world who he is/was. When Christianity was born and we became graphed into the vine of Judaism then it became for us, the Gentiles, the same mandate. We are to show the world the love of God. That’s how the world is to know we are his disciples. The love we have for others is what we show the world, not by what we spend on ourselves – but what we share with others.
We get excited because God is going to “bless us” but he already has! Why would he give us more when we haven’t even been good stewards of what he already has given us? Again, we tend to think in isolationist terms. We tend to think our lives aren’t that much. We don’t have all that much – because we’re comparing ourselves to other wealthier Americans – not comparing ourselves against the world. If God would just give me more THEN I could give more, etc…but he has already opened the windows. Once they are open they can’t get “more open”. Open is open. The only place they can go is shut from here. Is that what we want to risk?
When the Messiah came to earth he talked about the Kingdom of God relentlessly. Do we Americans think the Kingdom is about a bigger house, a newer model car, a bigger TV, a nicer meal to eat? Is that what we are preaching from our pulpits? A “ME” Christianity?
NEWS FLASH: It’s about others.
Let’s ditch the cheap prophecy about blessings and lets start being a blessing to others. Let’s take this thing called Christianity and do something with it. Let’s actually love the world by giving directly to them and by helping them directly. Let’s get our hands dirty and let’s touch the untouchables. Thus saith God…
