The question in the subject line was texted to me on Sunday night by a teen in our church. Here is the full text message that I received (I am reprinting it here with the young person's permission):
Hi! I have a question about your sermon today. Towards the end you said something along the lines of "God can either bless our efforts or take his blessing from them." Is that what you said? I wanna make sure I'm getting it right! If that is what you said, is there something we can do to ensure God is blessing our efforts? Otherwise they're useless. Especially if it's an attempt to grow spiritually.
Before formulating a response to the question, I thought, "Praise God for young people that want to make sure that they understand the Scriptures and live accordingly!" May their tribe increase!
The question came in response to a sermon I had preached that morning on Haggai 1, where God is dealing with the procrastination of his people in rebuilding the temple. In verse 9, the Lord says,
You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.
The people were working hard but had nothing to show for it. It's like they had holes in their pockets. Their money was getting used up faster than they could earn it! God told them that he was behind it all, because his house (the temple) had taken a back seat to their house. God was disciplining them so that they could "consider their ways" and reorder their priorities.
So this teenager wanted to find out how we can be sure that God is blessing our efforts rather than blowing them away. It was a good question. Here was my response:
Yes, I said (based on Haggai) that God can bless or frustrate our efforts. Of course that needs to be taken in conjunction with other Scriptures, such as 1 Corinthians 15:58, which says that our labor in the Lord is not in vain. So God blesses the one who relies on him and looks to honor him in all his/her endeavors. Another good text to read is Psalm 1, which talks about how the righteous person bears fruit like a tree planted by rivers of water "In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so...." God will always bless our efforts to please him, even if it doesn't always appear that way (due to trials, etc. - but even those are for our good - Rom. 8:28; cf. James 1:12). Sometimes those whose priorities are out of place look better off than the righteous and can cause us to lose perspective. So Psalm 73 is a great text to help us maintain a right view of things. What I said must be understood in the context of Haggai, Scripture as a whole, and be kept in balance with other scriptural principles. Hope this helps!
Thankfully, it did, and that's why I got permission to post our correspondence here with you.
In closing, I'll leave you with a question that each of us should consider: "Why do I give to God?" Admittedly, giving money to the local church as the temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16) isn't the only way that we build God's house. But it sure is a big part of it, because Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matt. 6:21). So, back to the question: Do you give (or serve) to get something from God, or do you give simply because you love God?
I raise this issue because the question that the young person texted to me opens the door to a much deeper discussion on the "prosperity gospel," a dangerous doctrine espoused by many popular preachers today. This false gospel teaches that God wants to fulfill our every desire to make us healthy, wealthy, and happy. In their excellent book, Health, Wealth & Happiness, David Jones and Russell Woodbridge note,
The Bible contains many verses that declare God's blessings toward us and we should rejoice at this. God blesses us in order to meet our needs and enable us to give generously. The book of Proverbs teaches that hard, diligent work can lead to prosperity, but the prosperity gospel goes beyond these ideas and makes prosperity the goal of life. The prosperity gospel leads to idolatry: people worship God's blessings instead of God himself.
As we seek to ensure God's blessings in all that we do, let us be sure to keep our motives in check. To quote Jones and Woodbridge again: "If you give to God in order to get something from Him, then you have adopted a framework similar to that of the prosperity gospel."
In the end, we must take God at his word. If he has declared that our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58), and that whatever we do will prosper (Psalm 1:3), then we can be confident that we will be rewarded -- maybe now (maybe not), but definitely throughout eternity.
That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. (2 Cor. 4:16-18 NLT)