No doubt, this topic has you asking who needs to learn to live with great gain. Certainly not you who were born with a huge capacity to enjoy wealth. The only problem is that you have been waiting for the gain all your adult life. Once that gain comes your way, you will not need to attend school to enjoy it, thank you very much! Nor will you have to read a post to make the most of as whatever gain you can access.
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Okay then, let us take it from there; you have spent most of your adult life awaiting great gain. Have you ever wondered why it is delaying? And if you are a little older than middle age, you ask yourself a different question. Will I ever get my hands on any of the stuff in this world before I depart? Stay with me and you will soon learn to live with great gain. In point of fact, it will soon become your lifestyle.
First, we consider where the concept comes from. Not surprisingly, we find it in the bible. It makes it plain that great gain is the sum or product of Godliness and contentment. Either version works to make our point that one without the other cannot give you great gain. According to that passage, you must have both. That is how you learn to live with great gain.
If you are fortunate enough to both be Godly and you have an attitude of contentment, congratulations. Please consider yourself an ambassador to help others who yet have to learn to live with great gain.
Paul Had To Learn To Live With Great Gain.
The Apostle had no problem being very low-maintenance since he knew both how to abound and to be abased. But he had to learn it because contentment does not come to us naturally. Contentment is a learned response. Before we go too far and without assuming too much, let us consider the meaning of contentment. A simple dictionary search shows that contentment is a state of being satisfied.
And although there are further definitions which you can look up, we adopt this one. Contentment is a state of being satisfied. Consider the child; as soon as you hand him a cookie, he owns it. And should you ask for a piece of it, he hides it behind his back. In the same way, whatever God gives us, we own.
Oh, how we own it, finding it hard to give back to the original owner or out to others. In addition, we hoard it and keep asking for more, just like Oliver Twist. So, Paul had to learn how to be content. And if you too learn it, you will live with great gain. You could say that learning to be content is to learn to live with great gain.
This is easier said than done because we all know that ambition is the force that gets us out of bed in the morning. Without that ambition to attain greater heights, most would not possess the drive to keep going, day after day. But here we are saying that in order to live with great gain, you must be satisfied. Which is it? ambitious or satisfied? The answer is both.
Assuming You Are Godly
And that is where godliness comes in. For, without godliness, you will take satisfaction to mean a lack of ambition. This is the phenomenon that you observe in Eastern religions, for which God readily abandons His people. God strictly warns us against going that way and the reason is not far to seek.
Any religion that asks you to blank your mind is setting you up for a demonic takeover. It should not surprise you that professional begging is one of the results of such demonic influence. You cannot attain godliness on such a demonic pathway.
On the contrary, God wants us to love Him with all our heart, all our strength, and all our mind. Observe the emphasis on the mind. God will never require us to blank out our minds. Therefore, if you are following the ways of God through His Son Jesus Christ, your mental faculties become quite sharp.
After all, Jesus is the wisdom of God and, with Jesus in your life, you become progressively wiser. Or to say it in bible language, your light shines brighter and brighter, unto the perfect day. It should therefore not surprise you that godliness is the state of being devoutly religious. It signifies that you want to please God and without faith, it is impossible to please Him.
Faith leads you to depend on God, desiring to do His will all the time. That desire will show you the way in which you can balance satisfaction with ambition. Indeed, it is God that provides a healthy balance in every and any area of our lives. Without God in your life, ambition can very easily lead you into serious perils. We can consider some of such perils
Perils Of The One Who Refuses To Learn To Live With Great Gain
Unless you learn to live with great gain, you may not realize that you came into the world totally naked. And since you brought nothing into the world, you are sure to carry nothing out. Ouch! That is so profound and yet we mostly behave like it was false, as we join house to house.
The group of people who miss this truth the most are celebrities. As long as they are alive, they rule the airwaves. But after they hang themselves in hotel rooms or prison cells or they drown in bathtubs, they become quite pitiable. Of course, we are not naming names but if you have been keeping up with the news, you personally know a few.
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One moment, they are sports, Hollywood or national rulers. The next, they are wrapped in a bedsheet that just happens to be lying around. Suddenly, all their acquisitions are going to some else. And all because the did not learn to live with great gain. The godly position is that once we have food and clothing, we shall be content.
They Fall Into Many Harmful Lusts
But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare. They fall into many foolish and lustful practices which drown men in destruction and perdition. One word about perdition. It is the highway to hell. You may recall that Judas Iscariot traveled that same road after he betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. And you only need to look at said celebrities to understand the destruction and perdition into which men/women can fall. All in their quest for wealth.
And why? Because the love of money (not money itself) is the root of all evils. Fornication, adultery, murder, lying and stealing; etc., are simply offshoots of the root. That root is known as the love of money. If they had allowed contentment and godliness to rule, they would not have ended up in such shameful destruction.
But they refused to learn to live with great gain and ended up in ignominy. The bible says that they pierced themselves with many sorrows. I sincerely pray that this shall not be your portion. But you must today learn to live with great gain. And, would you know it, once you do, God will start to pour gain into your life.
Maranatha!
