The Power to Create Wealth

The Power to Create Wealth

“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 8:18 NIV

I taught on this scripture a few weeks ago in my Financial Workshop. I was teaching on investing and discussing the fact that the first financial investment we make in our lives is what we will do to earn a living. Investing ourselves into something that produces money for us is the start to any investment strategy. Because if you don’t invest yourself wisely, it may have devastating effects on your overall financial picture. Think about it. People who hate what they do for a living quite often spend time saving up to quit or taking vacations to get away or always talking about retirement or buying things that do give them a sense of joy. It can effect your financial life more than you know. So the first question you want to ask when it comes to investing is where do I want to invest myself to make money. Even if you are idealistic and want to live your life helping people, you cannot escape the fact that money has to be made somehow. Even if you don’t make a lot of it.
But one thing that I noticed in this scripture when I taught a few weeks ago if when God gave the Israelites this message. They were about to cross over from the wilderness into the promised land. They spent forty years in the desert being fed from the hand of God manna and quail everyday. They were used to God providing for them in that particular way. They didn’t have to grow their own food, God sent manna from heaven everyday. They didn’t have to worry about where they were going to get food from because God promised that it would be there. And now they were shifting to a new system. Since it was an agricultural society, they had to plant and harvest their own food in the promised land. The method of them getting food was different. Now they were going to work for it.
Having to work for food is different then someone feeding you everyday. It takes a different mindset. You might start to worry little more because now you feel like you are in charge of getting food. It’s like moving from your parents house to living on your own. Maybe your mom and dad had dinner ready for you every night and you never really worried about it. But now on your own, you start to get concerned. Maybe you take more pride in what you did to earn the money that it took to feed yourself now. Maybe you forget about God in the process of making this transition.
But God is reminding Israel that He is the same God of the promised land that he is in the wilderness. He’s just feeding them a different way. He is giving them more shared responsibility for making it happen. It doesn’t mean that He is not there. Maybe with the way God was feeding them in the promised land it may appear that they were the ones making it happen. They may have started to accumulate more crops and herds for themselves and began to appear wealthy. BUt God is reminding them that it still all comes from Him. He is still God, even when He does things in a different way. He is the one who give you the power to create wealth. And He is also the God who feeds you in the wilderness when you can’t work for yourself.
I hope that we all can remember that God is the one who is our true provider, no matter how He chooses to provide for you. If you feel like you are in the wilderness, then He may have to feed you manna (like me) for a while, but it won’t last forever. Eventually you will get to a promised land, but don’t think that you are doing it yourself. God is still in charge. Remember Him when you come up from the wilderness lifestyle that you got used to. He is the one who gives you what you need to go out and earn a living. Regardless of how much that is in dollars. I also pray that we can all get to the point of doing what we love to do instead of what we tolerate. If you are not yet loving what you do, maybe you are still in the wilderness, even if you make a lot of money. Your still not in the promised land. But when you get out, remember that it is God who is with you everyday. You didn’t do this on your own.