Prosperity/Gospel

It’s important to understand the answers to a few really major

questions when you’re going to write a book. Who is the book about? Why am I writing it? What message do I want to convey? How do I want my reader to feel and behave following their reading of my book? Other than the first of those questions, the rest of them are in fact the very last things I cared about until the end of December 26th, 2017, it was Tuesday in fact and I’ll never forget it. It was up until that point in my life that I had lived as most people do, under the assumption that life is a book written about me. That I am the main character and that everyone around me is a supporting role of some size or shape. I only really cared about myself because I only had to care about myself. That isn’t to say that there weren’t other people in my life that were important.

By this point, I had a beautiful wife who’d been at my side for 10 years and 3 children. I would argue that they were of paramount importance to me and I would do anything for them. The struggle, if I’m honest, is the argument I just finished saying I’d make is only half true. I was raised as an only child by a single mother who was by all accounts absent, sometimes for work, other times for leisure but absent nonetheless. My father was completely absent, as in living in another country and never making contact. Clearly, I had become independent from an early age. That continued, or perhaps I should say worsened through my rebellious, self-destructive youth and young adulthood and truly came to a head when I ran my business into the ground in the aftermath of an affair I was having with a client, a story perhaps not for this book but nevertheless important to touch on, if only as an underscore of the self-indulgent, self-centered life I was leading. Through all of that, as I look back, two things are painstakingly clear. The first is that I was most definitely the main character and sought first and foremost to develop myself and my story, as any good protagonist should. The second, and infinitely more important, is that God was alive and working in each of the moments leading up to that Tuesday in December.

The major issue with thinking you’re the main character is that you

assume the world owes you something. And though not everyone will admit to such a haughty statement, the truth is embedded in their actions, or rather their reactions to the things of the world. Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV) tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” So who are we kidding really but ourselves when we think that we aren’t our own main character? And here’s the kicker, laid out so clearly in 1 John 2:15-17 (ESV): “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” When we really focus on the world what we are saying is that it is the source of our gratification. And if that is the case, then we believe we are the main character, because otherwise, the world wouldn’t be giving us things because we wouldn’t hold the most important seat.

The truth is, the world is full of ancillary characters in a story about God. It always has been, from Genesis 1, and will continue to be until Revelation 22. He is working all things out for our good and His glory. Notice that it doesn’t say that we are working all things out for our good through His glory, or that He is working for us and our glory. And the way we know He is working all things out is by getting to know Him better through His word. I hope you take away a good deal of food for thought from this book, but I really pray that as far as books go, it’s not this one you get really into, It’s His. It’s the Bible.