My Struggle

Wassup Family,

It's been a lil minute so let's jump right into it peoples!!!! The past few weeks I've been really struggling with being content with where God has me. I've been looking at my financial situation and been thinking and planning on every scheme in the world to come up! Literally it's been a EVERYDAY battle for me the past few weeks. Everyday I struggle and battle and then God encourages me for that day and the next day it's on and poppin again! I struggled with scriptures like 1 Timothy 6:6,

"Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment"

and scriptures like Proverbs 15:16-17,

" Better is a little with the fear of the LORD, than great treasure and trouble with it. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it."

Or scriptures like Psalm 37:16 or Proverbs 16:8 for that matter. To make this a little more personal let me give you a little background of myself. I am a man that lives totally by faith! In every sense of the word!!!!!! God takes care of my family LITERALLY! I dont make the kind of money to support a family of soon to be 6, in fact I live by off of 4 dollars a day. Really...... If I lived in India or other impoverished nations I'd be well off, where most of the people in those nations live off of 2 dollars or under a day. But I'm not... I'm in the U.S. of A where things are totally different..... But in the midst of this I live a life that is well provided for, people always say how God is their Jehova-Jireh (which they say means the Lord is my provider, but it really means the Lord will see to it) But I TRULY know HIM as this in a very deeep and personal way. He sees to ALL our needs and to some of our wants as well.

So what's the issue? Living by faith is extremely HARD!!!!!!!!!! It's no cakewalk peoples!!!!!! It's simple and easy to just have money in reserves, or in the savings and not to have to trust God to provide in every situation. And a lot of times I want that easiness and comfort but God has been saying uh uh, I have you where I want you. I was reading an essay one day though and God spoke to me through it. He showed me my feebleness and lack of trust in His provision and providence. A quote by John Yoder that stated,

" Jahweh has always taken care of us in the past; should we not be able to trust His providence for the immediate future?" 

This quote rocked me and my "lack of trust" and it encouraged me for that day (lol)......... But again I battled with it a couple days later and a turning point came last night for me as I was looking at a once prominent christian turned secular rapper from Houston Texas. In the 90's he was used by God to turn many to Christ and to make many strides in Christian rap and now he is a secular rapper talking about the money girls and everything else. And he spoke about how he started making all this money doing christian rap and unknowingly drifted away from Jesus and began to depend on the money. And lo and behold he is where he is now. That sealed the deal for me! I don't want to end up where he is at, so I prayed that if God wanted me to stay in the place I'm at I would love to. I know that right now I'm TOTALLY dependant on Jesus (which is what He wants) and I don't put it pass myself that if I had more money I wouldn't trust in Him like I do.

So, I'm content in that God is in control and I'm where He has me. And I'm soaking up other scriptures as well that God is using to minister to me with like these:

"Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity

   than a rich man who is crooked in his ways." (Proverbs 28:6)

" A rich man is wise in his own eyes,

   but a poor man who has understanding will find him out." (Proverbs 28:11)

And my prayer today is that of Agur: "Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the LORD?" or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God."

In Jesus Name

God is dope,

Amen