The Lie of the American Dream

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot.  So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.  Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing.” And you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. –Revelation 3:15-17

Christ gives this stern rebuke to the church of Laodicea.  This church so repulsed Christ that they made Him want to vomit.  His revulsion was that they were a fence sitter as they saw no need to make a difference in His name.  Too many in this country have deluded themselves into believing the great lie of the American Dream as we have allowed this dream to be defined.  We have taken this dream and allowed ourselves to believe that we should be in want for nothing and we live a life in such a way that we deprive ourselves of nothing.  We have made it our goal to build bigger and bigger barns as we accumulate more stuff and we need a bigger barn to store this stuff.  We force ourselves to go to jobs that we care little about for no other reason than we need some more money to pay for our bigger barn and our stuff.  We are blinded in our abundance and we then wonder why God does not hear our prayers.

We live in a time, in which the church is the most affluent in its history, yet each day, 26,000 children in this world die of starvation and preventable disease yet we allow our finances to go to such things that are only for our entertainment.  There is indeed coming a day and time in which each of us will stand before Jehovah God and have to account for what we did and did not do in this lifetime.  He has given to us great blessing but far too many self-proclaimed Christians in this country are not unlike the one talent servant who hid his talent as he was fearful of the one who gave it to him.  The master threw that servant out to where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Christ has commanded each of His followers to go into all the nations and make disciples.  This command was not for the select few but for all.  We, as a body of believers, are to unite and minister to those who are in need.  We are to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend to the sick and visit those in prison.  We are not to make our comfort and our excess our god but rather Christ is calling us out of that comfort zone and to fully rely upon Jehovah God’s perfect blessing for our life.  He will sustain each of us and give to each of us that which we need in order to execute His will for our life.