The Trip To Bountiful“For You, O God, have tested us; You have refined us as silver is refined. You brought us into the net; You laid affliction on our backs. You have caused men to ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; but You brought us out to rich fulfillment [to a place of abundance or a wealthy place].” (Psalm 66:10-12). In the 1985 movie The Trip To Bountiful, Geraldine Page is an old widow trapped in a Houston apartment in 1947 with a controlling daughter-in-law and her hen-pecked son who finally escapes by bus to her hometown of Bountiful, Texas. God too desires to bring us on a trip to bountiful, into a place of abundance. The King James version of Psalm 66:12 even calls it a wealthy place. Psalm 66 tells us that God does in fact bring us into places of abundance, but the road to abundance is littered with the potholes of prisons, nets, and burdens, the roadblocks of afflictions of oppression, and the speedbumps of fire and water. This is because in God’s eyes,
abundance includes much more than just money, possession or material
blessing. In God’s economy, abundance is measured in wisdom from
the Word of God and knowledge of Himself. We are truly blessed only
when we know God and His Word intimately. Wisdom cannot be gained through
schools, books, debates, TV pundits, or trivial pursuits, for it only
comes through humility and experience. Real wisdom comes from the kinds
of experiences that come only through the deepest and most agonizing
of tests against the backdrop of God's Word. It appears strange that a loving God would use such cruel and unusual punishment with His children, but what many of us fail to realize is that God's measuring stick is the character and likeness of His divine loving nature in each of us. This cannot be gained through La Dolce Vita, a life of comfort, ease and pleasure, a life of party hardy spending our parents’ trust fund, for they lack the intense heat to refine and purify us into precious silver and gold. If God has brought you into a net of debt, suffering or loneliness or laid afflictions of joblessness, poverty and shame on your back, then take heart and realize that if you are faithful and stand on the promises of the Word of God, you will eventually and triumphantly enter a place of abundance and prosperity that only a select few will ever reach. God is bigger than anything you may face, the sun is always brighter than the clouds, the light is stronger than the darkness, and it is always darkest before dawn.Copyright © 2003 Eddy Ministries. All rights reserved. Subscribe/Unsubscribe: eddyn@earthlink.net
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