GIF Acknowledging God’s Blessings

“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

(Romans 1:21 NIV)

Acknowledging God’s Blessings
by Chuck Bentley

It’s impossible for a nation to be in fellowship with God when its people have forgotten Him in their hearts, given credit for their prosperity to anything but Him, and as a result have a possessive attitude about money.

God designed a system of economics in which He would provide all things. He wants us to remember that everything belongs to Him and that we are stewards of what He has entrusted to us. He wants us to keep our hearts and minds on Him.

If we begin to believe that we are the owners of money and possessions, we embezzle what is rightly God’s. We become selfish and think we deserve to be wealthy. This leads to hoarding, covetousness, stealing, and an uncaring attitude toward others.

And, when we begin to regard God’s blessings as more important than God Himself, we lose our sensitivity to Him. Shortly before God brought his final judgment on Jerusalem, He told the King of Judah, “I spoke to you in your prosperity; but you said, ‘I will not listen!’ This has been your practice from your youth, that you have not obeyed My voice” (Jeremiah 22:21).

God deals severely with bad attitudes because they lead to behaviors and actions that disrupt the entire economic system. People end up being lovers of the blessings instead of lovers of the One from whom all blessings flow.

“You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18 NIV).

Daily Scripture Reading:
1 Samuel 30-31
2 Samuel 1
1 Chronicles 10