22 Ways Christians Think Differently on Life - No. 14 (The Way of Prosperity)

Ishmael ... struck down ... Gedaliah..."Jeremiah 41:2

I have a tree house in my backyard. You can go up to the tree house through the stairway established on the side. There are other ways to go up to the tree house, but the stairway is most handy.

The stairway consists of a few steps, so a few steps up, you are on the tree house, a few steps down, you are on the ground.

James says every good and perfect gift is from God, the Father, who does not change like the shifting of a shadow. Here 'every' means 'every' blessing; each and every gift which is good and perfect is from God the Father, and there is no exception. Not all gifts are good "and" perfect. Some are good but not perfect. But the gift from God the Father is different: it is good and perfect - good in every sense of the word good, perfect in every sense of the word perfect.

Now how does the blessing come down to you, so you would be in it, and be a source of it, so that you could distribute it to the needy?

We can find the way by understanding how it can be dried up. In case of the Israelites, prior to their exile to the land of Babylon, they lived in the "Promised" land where the Lord God pledged to bless them with gifts that are all good and perfect.

Yet, by the time Jeremiah prophesied as in Jeremiah 41 (today's daily bread passage), they went all the way down the tube.

How did they come down and hit the lowest point of the lowest?

We find the answer to the question in what Ishmael did to Gedaliah.

Ishmael is the one Abraham earned out of his marriage with Hagar, an Egyptian slave girl.

Gedaliah means in Hebrew "Jahweh has become great", a sign pointing to the greatness of our Lord Jesus, the Savior of the world.

Jesus is  the one who gets his children filled with every blessing that is good and perfect. This is seen in the first miracle Jesus performed at the wedding of Cana.

But when one loves the world the love for the Father is not in them, so/for the love of the Father cannot flow into his inner person.

The Lord loved the Israelites by establishing his presence in the Lord's temple in Jerusalem. But the Israelites loved the world more so that the glory of the Lord had to leave the temple in ten painful steps.

Now that the temple and the life of the Israelites became an empty shell. The temple was burned down. Jerusalem became devastated. To finish off the steps of downfall, Ishmael brought ten men, and struck down Gedaliah, effectively reducing the greatness of the Lord to the ground level.

For this reason, the Apostle John says, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love for the Father is not in them." 1Jn 2:15

Reversing the way of down fall is to go by what John the Baptist says, "I must become less; he [Jesus Christ] must become greater." Then Jesus says, "If anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself take up his cross and follow me." Finally, the Apostle Paul s ays, "For to me to live is Christ to die is gain." And he says "I die every day".