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Fortified City

             The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale. (Proverbs 18:11)

 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:3)

I’ve harped a bit about poverty not meaning only financial poverty, so now it’s time to turn the tables and discuss wealth. If poverty is the lack of something, wealth is the abundance. It is also in what we place our confidence. It’s our strength. It is the spring from which our conceit flows. We see it as our best means of defense. Somehow, even if the wealth is of a negative form (poverty, illness, bad luck, broken relationships, addictions, special identities, etc.) it not only gives us something to hold onto, and that will hold us up in one way even if it tears us down in another, but it seems to grant us privileges. We are better or more deserving than the others because of our abundance, no matter what we have in that abundance. This is especially true if we can find others who share our abundance. Then we, as a group not only have our own fortified cities, but there’s a whole string of them drawn together in an alliance that supports and justifies our claim of wealth, no matter what kind.

Being good Christians, we’re likely to claim that our wealth is in God. To the extent that it’s true, it’s true. But how often is our claim a forgery, like Simon the Magician, seeking and claiming “God” that we may spend what we get on our pleasures? How often do we seek God's hand, not His face? 

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