One of my favorite scriptures is in Jeremiah (29:11): “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”!!! He has plans to prosper us… PLUS not harm, give us hope, future! Goodness, what a marvelous, wonderful promise the Lord has for His people. He also reaffirms this ‘promise’ in Ephesians (2:10) when He tells us: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” Remember though that these scriptures are predicated on our accepting Jesus as our Lord. And the next steps are discovering who we are as a result.
So let me ask you… are you living the prosperous life? Let me back up a minute, how do you define prosperous? Without your definition how can you possibly know if you are living the prosperous life. Also… do you have hope? Is your future bathe in hope? First – what’s your definition of prosperous? Is it only financial? Material? If more/other then what? Is prosperous based on those ‘things’ you don’t have? To be completely honest, at one time I did think that prosperous was only in terms of financial and material. Grief, how limiting!
Do understand that it’s the Lord who is speaking these words, perhaps we should know His definition of ‘prosperous’? God describes Himself as Jehovah Jireh (Genesis 22:14), our provider. So now we know where the source of prosperous is. But what is it? Actually it is grounded in faith – faith that God will provide. This does not mean that we should tempt God to see if he will provide when we get ourselves in a dire situation (Matthew 4:7). But we can rely on His word (Isaiah 55:11) that He will provide when we come to Him in need – and that is the definition, at least in my world.
The Lord invites us into the prosperous life because He has purchased ‘abundant’ for us. However, it is up to us to learn what this means and to act on our understanding. And we can’t act without faith. So I propose this definition: The Prosperous Life is one that is lived in faith, one that is built on trust. And no, this isn’t simple. But… as we try to live out this definition we will look back and discover we are living a prosperous life.
