April 1, 2024
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"We were closer when we were poorer." The lady who told me that was speaking about her marriage, and she wasn't poor any more. You could tell that by looking at her. She was very affluent. But she was telling me that she and her husband were closer in the early days of their relationship when they were pinching pennies, and scraping by, and wondering how they were going to pay the rent, and fighting the wolf at the door. But they were at least fighting the wolf together.
Now, since that conversation with that lady I've had many opportunities to quote her at women's luncheons and dinners. And I always see women's heads nodding in agreement as if that's been the case in their life too. Apparently there's something about not having much that can make a relationship stronger.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Very Needy, Very Close."
The Apostle Paul knew about poor making you close, in life's most important relationship that is. He talked about it in our word for today from the Word of God. It's in 2 Corinthians 12:9. He says (quoting the Lord), "But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore," Paul says, "I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power will rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
I've had the wonderful privilege of meeting believers from a lot of other countries: Haiti, Africa, India, a lot of places like that. And I've noticed something about them. It's something, honestly, that I covet. They seem to live in the supernatural more than I do, and more than most Christians I know in this country. They seem to pray powerfully and they expect and honestly they often get miracles. They're radically Christian. And I feel like a pale office worker who hasn't been out in the sun all year, standing next to someone who just got back from Florida with a savage tan. I want what they have. And one believer summed up their secret. He said, "Ron, we live in a poor village. We have no regular support. We don't have organizations or manuals or tools. We only have God." I can't get those words out of my heart, "We only have God."
See, they're rich in God because they're poor in earth. They're very needy and they're very close to God. Now, our Christianity is active, and sophisticated, and well-managed, well-planned, well-financed, and often pretty powerless. The early church had little machinery and much power. We seem to have a lot of machinery and, yeah, little power.
I guess there are three roads that we rich Christians can take. One, we can continue with our mediocrity, doing the biggest things that man can do. Two, we can learn God's power through a time when He strips us of all the earth things that we are depending on. Or three, we could use all God has given us, but put no trust in it.
You know, couples can have a lot but hold it loosely and still love each other as if they were living on pork and beans. A Christian can live in America and have it all but ask God to teach them childlike dependency. All that we have blinds us to our total need - our desperate need - of God and His power. We're as needy as the Christian from India, barely surviving in his village. We just don't recognize it. We just don't admit it. We just don't acknowledge it. We just don't live like it.
When you recognize how poor we really are, that's when you're really rich. Whether we live in a condo or a hut, whether we eat filet or rice, we only have God.