While Paul says in the KJV, "But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus," the New English Bible translates the verse to incorrectly state that God will supply ALL your needs.
“He doesn’t say
God’s going to supply all of your needs, or rather greeds,” says Richard
Jordan. “People, do you realize most of things we want and desire strongly
we can do without? Did you know you can do without health, wealth, education,
social standing? You know Paul did all that.
“He says in I
Corinthians 4:9, ‘We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to
men.’ You reckon that’s a pretty good social standing?! Not much. He says, ‘We
are fools for Christ’s sake.’ The world didn’t think he had much education.
They thought he was a nut. One guy said to him, ‘You’re mad; you’re a crazy
man.’
“Paul says to the
Corinthians, ‘You’re honorable but we’re despised. We’re weak but you’re
strong. Even in this present hour we hunger and thirst.’ Paul says, ‘I warn you
that there's a lot you can face.’
*****
“If the health and
wealth preachers are right, Paul must have been one of the most wicked men who
ever lived because he’s a guy who says, ‘I’m hungry right now. I don’t have
enough to eat. I’m thirsty. I’m naked. I haven’t got clothes to wear.’
“He didn’t open up
a closet and say, ‘I can’t figure out what to wear today.’ He said, ‘I don’t
have it to wear.’ He says, ‘Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and
thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place.’
And yet he says, ‘I labor with my hands.’
“Now, there’s a
guy working and still can’t make it! You ever had that
problem?
*****
“This idea about
health you hear preached all the time on the radio and tube—let’s be honest,
you can get by in your life without being healthy.
“Go to the
bookstore and get the book by quadriplegic Joni Eareckson Tada. Read the
stories of people like her if you want to see the victory of God’s grace and
His power being made perfect in weakness. In fact, you’ll see the kind of
victory few of us who are whole physically ever enjoy.
“Paul says, ‘Be
careful for nothing. Don’t worry about things.’ That word ‘careful’ there has
the idea of anxiety and worry and fretting. Let me give you a quick
illustration of that carefulness.
“In Luke 10:38,
Martha’s complaining. She’s worrying, she’s overwrought, she’s weighted down
with all this serving and gets distraught; she’s all in a dither about it.
“Jesus answered
and said unto her, ‘Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many
things. But one thing is needful and Mary has chosen that good part.’
“Rather than all
the fuss and fuming about having the house perfectly straightened, the roast
cooked just right, the gravy just right, the potatoes just right and everything
just so, He says, ‘You know, Mary’s doing the better thing sitting here getting
the Word.’
“Paul says, ‘Don’t
be that way. Don’t be all caught up.’ You know how you get that way? Pride.
*****
“Worry is totally
inappropriate in the life of a Believer. Why? Romans 8:24 says, ‘For we are
saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why
doth he yet hope for?’
“We have a day
coming where God is going to declare us before the whole universe as His adult
sons. Paul says, ‘You look around you and see all this undeserved suffering and
your participation with it. You’re saved from being dragged down into the
earthy by our hope.’
“You have a realm
of doctrinal understanding that tells you what you see isn’t what’s lasting and
with the eye of faith you know ‘the sufferings of this present world aren’t
worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.’
“Isn’t that
wonderful stability? You operate in the realm of the reality of who you are in
Christ. It’s inappropriate to have all the problems of life loom up and
cut out the sunlight of the Book—the light from the Word of God.
“ ‘Be careful for
nothing’ doesn’t mean you’re flippant; it just means you’re not going to worry
about it. You’re not going to be troubled and brought to the place of
inactivity through it as Martha was, just throwing up her hands and yelling,
‘Aghhhhhh!!!’ ”
*****
“I’m convinced
that most Americans live with almost a panic-driven fear of poverty and of not
having things. This has been a curse of Western civilization for centuries, and
so you’re driven to have and to have.
“To me, one of the
most touching things in the Book of Luke is to watch the Lord in just His human
sympathies—He understood what poverty was. He understood the poor, and Luke
constantly points to that.
“When He was born,
there was no room for Him in the inn. If He had had an Am Ex Gold Card He
probably could have gotten in, but He didn’t. He had a manger for a crib.
“In chapter 2,
when He was just eight days old and His parents went to the temple, it says
they offered a pair of turtle doves and two young pigeons. You know what that
was? That was the poor man’s offering. That wasn’t the first offering; they
didn’t have the money to offer the lamb.
“Jesus was raised
in a humble home; not a home of wealth and splendor. He was raised in a home
that knew what poverty was. Look at His parables—the Good Samaritan, the
Prodigal Son.
“In Luke 5 you
find the publican named Levi, who made Christ a great feast. The passage reads,
[29] And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a
great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them.
[30] But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples,
saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?
[31] And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a
physician; but they that are sick.
[32] I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
“A preacher once
preached a message called ‘The Table Talks of Jesus.’ He went over to chapter
10 where you’re at Mary and Martha’s house and then over to chapter 7 and that
woman; He said she was a sinner but she was the woman who anointed His feet
with oil and washed His feet with her own hair—the one who had nothing to pay
yet He forgave all.
“Then you see Him
sit at the table with them. You go through Luke and there are five or six
places where you come into the meal and you see the Lord sitting in somebody
else’s house. Somebody else has set the meal and yet He comes and sits with
them as the Great Teacher.”
*****
Pleasure is the
foundation of our society today and it is pursued secretly and publicly from
cradle to grave. Obviously, though, as they say, ‘pleasure brings pain.’
Finding freedom
from the pain (frustration, sorrow, fear, etc.) requires understanding the
whole structure of pleasure.
In what is pure counter-intuitiveness to the world’s way of seeing things, the Apostle Paul testifies, “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”
Paul says any
suffering we go through now isn’t even worthy of spending time on when we look
at the glory that’s one day going to be revealed in us.
“Christ’s
faithfulness is our resting place,” encourages Jordan. “He’s who God trusts and
we can trust Him, too. There’s a lot of comfort and peace in that. A lot of,
‘I’m through with the toiling process in that.’
“Paul writes in
Philippians 3, ‘Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may
win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of
the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and
the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.’
“The guy’s been saved 35 years and he’s still saying, ‘All I want in life is to know Him.’ You see how He’s to be the object of everything?”