” …The Lord your God is not giving you this good land because you are righteous, for you are not. You are a stubborn people” ( Deuteronomy 9:6)
Material riches are no more a sign of God’s blessings than financial lack is a sign of God’s curse. What ever side of the material prosperity see-saw you find yourself, God can use whichever circumstance you find yourself in to fulfil His glory and your eternal good.
There is a very human tendency to interpret our material prosperity as God’s reward to our deserving, well behaved selves. To be clear, it is God who does give us the ability to become wealthy. But we are woefully mistaken when we replace His prerogative with our sense of entitlement. The very real danger before us is that as our wealth increases so does our pride and prejudice. Ultimately the centre stage of our hearts moves from being a sacred altar where God alone is worshipped and self takes the stand.
A healthy perspective on wealth should straddle the midway between the extravagance of King’s Solomon’s splendid kingdom on one hand, and King Jesus earthly poverty and suffering, for the sake of many inheriting his Eternal Kingdom. Between these extremes, God is present by His grace working to glorify Himself and bring about our highest, holiest good. That middle path can only be discovered by knowing that Christ is truly ALL that you need, and everything your will ever need is Christ.
How great is our God who spans the earthly treasuries of wealth and riches and the heavenly riches of grace, mercy, long suffering and eternal love. Both poverty and wealth are in His hands. We would do well not to think that we are entitled to either riches or poverty. To do so would cause us to stumble and fall because of pride, or despair and die of hopelessness.