The Prosperity Gospel for Families

This morning I read a really great post from Richard Pratt called "What Does God Want from Families."

I was particularly struck by his point that while most of us scoff at the idea of a 'prosperity Gospel,' (physical and material blessings are tied to the depth of my faith), we seem to adhere to it somewhat subconsciously when it comes to our families.

To quote Richard:
"We have our own prosperity gospel for our families. We simply replace having enough faith with having enough obedience. We believe that we can lift our families out of their brokenness if we conform to God’s commands."

And yet, life seems to have examples to the contrary. Scripture has stories of incredibly faithful people whose families endured hardship and tragedy.

We are to be obedient to God's commands because we love Him and desire to honor and glorify Him with our lives. Obedience for the sake of the rewards we hope it will bring makes it about us and not Him. It will also lead us down the dangerous road of tying God's love for us to our current circumstances. We will idolize the wrong things and worship the Gifts instead of the Giver.

"We should do our very best to follow all the teachings of Scripture. But we shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that the future depends on us...the future of our families depends on God, not you or me." -Richard Pratt

It is convicting, challenging and yet somehow freeing to be reminded.