Today is the first day of the prayer and fasting week of our church, CCF. After reading God’s Word (I’m at 1st Timothy right now) I read Screwtape letters by C.S. Lewis. I’ve been trying to finish this book for quite a while but never really gotten to it until now.
There are thoughts here that have really gripped me as I read them. As the elder demon (Screwtape) is writing to his nephew (a younger demon named Wormwood) he said:
“Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want.”
It is chilling to read this and realize that I might just as well be on the way to this trap.
When life happens and things get in the way of your spiritual walk with the Lord, you lose sight of your final destination – eternity in heaven. It’s so easy to be absorbed by the day-to-day and ‘feel’ that you are at home on Earth.
I live at a house that I feel always ‘at home’ in with my family. I love this house, truly. But this is not my real home.
“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” – Matthew 19:24
Jesus Himself knew this. Prosperity here on Earth can easily turn into a trap.
In the book, the elder demon Screwtape also proceeds to say:
“So inveterate is their appetite for Heaven that our best method, at this stage, of attaching them to earth is to make them believe that earth can be turned into Heaven.”
If you have been following my blog since when I started it way back 2009, you might realize that my journey to where I am today is much surreal. I have failed so much in school that I just knew for myself that there can’t possibly be a good future for me in terms of working and generating wealth. I have been extremely broken hearted. I have known how it is to not have any money to buy food.
Where I am now is nothing short of God’s grace, mercy and miracle.
Where I need to be is to march on towards God’s Kingdom daily and not be trapped with the thought that this World is my home even as I grow in prosperity.
