Proverbs 10:15

15 The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty.

Wealth and poverty are interesting. They are as much mental states as they are material states. When someone is secure in their situation, it doesn't matter how much actual money they may or may not have. Their sense of peace gives them strength, regardless of their bank balance. Whereas someone could have the wealth of Midas, but if they're expecting it all to go away, they have no wealth. Their poverty mindset feeds their eventual destruction.

I have a friend who is an advocate for the poor and homeless. He does tireless work which is good because the problem seems to get worse from day to day. He recently posted the following:

It is a common condition of being poor...you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute strength to stop them.

Those of us who may have come from meager or modest means an probably feel the truth in the statement "afraid that good things in your life are temporary." That perpetual anticipation of the other shoe dropping permeates every action when you've grown accustomed to 'not having'. It's that poverty mindset at work even when by all measures you're no longer poor.

The Holy Spirit showed me that this can even infect our spiritual lives.

It is a stressful condition when you feel like you have to keep a death grip on everything and everyone to keep from losing them or it. It's exhausting. And when your strength is exhausted, the expectation is that it will all go away.

Not so in Christ. In Christ, receiving is the real strength...not struggling to keep from losing but yielding to the will of the Father to have it all.

Loved one, when it comes to Christ, be encouraged. Our Savior said that He would be with us always (Matthew 28:10) and that He would not leave us comfortless (John 14:18) and that we would receive power (Acts 1:8). All of this is given, and given freely to those who will follow.

Its been a hard fight. You may have worked and scraped for everything you have. You may feel it's an insult to God to ever expect anything that you haven't worked, sweat and bled for. But, He already did the sweating and the working and the bleeding for you...for me.

2 Corinthians 8:9

9 For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.

The hard work of our salvation and our restoration to the Father has already been done. We don't work to keep the Father's love. Our charge is to open our hands and our hearts and receive from the Father through the Son. The work that we do then is because of the Father's love; a love that we can never lose...we can only refuse it.

Jesus already did the work to keep you. Won't you let Him?

John 10:27-30

27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.

30 I and my Father are one.

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