The "Prosperity" Gospel

Does this philosophy have Christian origins? No, but it has infiltrated Christianity.

There are four principle beliefs in the “Christian” version of the Prosperity Gospel. I will demonstrate what they are and why they are not biblical, and, therefore, why they are not Christian at all.

The “God” of the Prosperity Gospel is radically different from the God of the biblical Gospel.

Belief One: God is a non-material, nonphysical power that you can tap into to change the material/physical world.

As Christians, we believe that God is revealed fully in Jesus Christ. However, this Prosperity Gospel has little to do with Jesus. It is completely metaphysical, a branch of philosophy having to do with the ultimate nature of reality.

 The Prosperity Gospel believes that humans may experience the divine realm through their own thought process, and in so doing actually change the material realm. It is a metaphysical philosophy of magical thinking.

For many Prosperity advocates, the acid test of their success - of how spiritual they are - is reflected in how healthy and wealthy they are.

The belief has as its basis an extreme individualism and self-determination, asserting that the divine operates non-relationally and impersonally. God becomes a universal force that we are said to be able to learn to possess and control. Thus it is the height of human pride.

The Prosperity Gospel has a parallel in religions of Indian origin, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Their notion of “karma” is compatible with the principles of this belief. Karma is their term for a cosmic law of reciprocity. Good deeds manifest good fortune. Bad deeds manifest bad fortune. Jesus, however, rejects any notion of karma, though we have no record he ever used the word. Someone interrupted Jesus while he was teaching to report an atrocity. Pilate’s men had killed some Galileans while they were worshiping. Jesus asked the crowd, “Do you think these men were worse sinners than all the other Galileans?” (Luke 13:2).

Jesus is being asked whether these men deserved what they got. Some reasoned that the catastrophe was God’s punishment. But Jesus answered his own question with an emphatic “No.” Then he brings up another incident. A tower fell on some workers at Siloam, which is an area around a pool in Jerusalem of Judea.

The historian Josephus reports that during Jesus’ lifetime an aqueduct was being built there with funds reportedly stolen from the temple treasury.

Perhaps the men working on the aqueduct, being paid from the stolen money, were crushed in a construction accident. Jesus asks, “Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?” (Luke 18:4) - meaning did they deserve it, and were they perhaps the recipients of God’s retribution for their sin against the temple?

Again Jesus says “No.”

What is really telling, however, in Jesus’ take on the men slaughtered by Pilate and the men crushed by the collapsing tower is his call to repentance. He warned the crowd of the peril of an unrepentant life. The word repent, metanoeo, means change-mind. Change your mind about what? Change your mind that God works like that! Jesus rejected karmic reciprocity. No, he said. Twice. Do not think like that about my heavenly Father. And do not judge people who experience misfortune. That is what I hear Jesus saying. He warned everyone in the crowd, and he warns you and me: If you keep thinking like that, then it applies to you, too. You will have to consider your misfortune as God’s retribution. You will have to condemn yourself.

The underlying moralism in the Prosperity Gospel is bleak. Misfortune in your life is the result of your thinking misfortune into your life. Your misfortune is your failure to block bad thoughts and think only good thoughts.

 Not unlike karma, this belief makes your fortune or misfortune the direct result of your individual intentional or inadvertent thoughts, words, or deeds. Notice that this philosophy leaves no room for accidents and, more alarmingly, leaves no room for grace. The last time I checked the Scriptures, Jesus allowed for accidents, and he was big on grace.

This denial of accidents and grace has an underlying legalism. God is seemingly reduced to a cosmic principle. God becomes a universal law of reciprocity. You get what you deserve, whether it is payoff or pay back. It is merely a cosmic mechanism whereby you determine your own fate. Health or sickness, wealth or poverty, good fortune or bad fortune, they are up to your own ability, your own thought process, your own religious efforts or lack thereof at tapping into “the divine.”

Another underlying legalism in the Prosperity Gospel is that God is bound by a law that regulates how he can and cannot communicate with us.

The Bible says that all things were made by the Word of God, Jesus Christ. (John 1:1-4; Colossians 1:16-17; Hebrews 1:2) He made our bodies with the capacity to see, hear, taste, touch and smell. He made the brain that generates our thoughts. God made the heavens and the earth and called them “good”.

The Bible, moreover, does not confirm God’s inability to breach the alleged material-spiritual divide. Quite the opposite. The Word of God became flesh. (John 1:14) The Greek word is sarx. Flesh is the ultimate in materiality. God became material.

Biblically, there is no alleged material-spiritual divide. Jesus’ incarnation as a human, his death in the flesh, and his resurrection in the body contradict the principle of exclusively non-material and non-intellectual revelation knowledge. The Bible insists that the one true revelation of God to the world was quite material.

This material-spiritual dualism, more resembles Plato’s philosophy and early Christian Gnosticism, with their body-spirit dualism, than the Bible. In Platonism and Gnosticism the body is bad and the spirit is good. The material is bad and the spiritual is good. The Prosperity Gospel’s first principle, is decidedly more pagan and Gnostic than Christian.

Belief Two: You have within you the power to force the non-material God to materialize what you want by claiming that it is yours.

The second principle of the Prosperity Gospel builds on its first principle. The second principle is about the power of your mind and mouth to change physical reality. “What I confess, I possess,” they say. “Believe it and receive it,” they say.

“Name it and claim it,” they say.

This belief entered the Christian Pentecostal movement of the early twentieth century through a movement called “Word Of Faith”. Word Of Faith became part of what is widely known as the Prosperity Gospel, enormously popular within charismatic Christianity. Word Of Faith is based on “What I confess, I possess” called “Positive Confession,” or alternatively, “The Law of Faith.” The term “Law of Faith” is itself an illustration of the logical contradictions within the Prosperity Gospel. It is contradictory to all logic and reason to turn faith into a law.

Word Of Faith teaches that you have the right to demand that God do what he promised. Because you demand it, God is obligated to give you what you want. We activate God, they say.

Well-known Word Of Faith proponents are the late Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland. Proponents arising outside of Pentecostal circles are the late Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller and Joel Osteen.

Copeland calls this Law of Faith the “faith-force.” He teaches that “the spirit world” can be commanded to do our bidding. Faith, in Copeland’s theology, is a power principle that we command to control our physical reality.

Faith, as defined by the Bible, however, is trust and rest in the good news that our relationship with God is based on his goodness rather than our own. “Come to me and find rest for your souls,” he said. Biblical faith is not a law. Scriptural faith is not an impersonal cosmic principle to be manipulated for prosperity. It is, rather, simple trust in a personal God who dares to love in relationship.

Peale’s emphasis on positive imagery and self-affirmation, outlined in his 1952 classic text, The Power of Positive Thinking, is one of the most well-known, popularized versions of self-help teachings of our generation. His ideas fueled the messages of Schuller, Osteen and a host of others.

The legalistic lie behind the Prosperity Gospel is that God is transformed into a pawn to obey when we think - who must obey human commands. This false gospel has created a god who set up a legal, universal principle that says that he has to do it when humans say the right things.

This belief’s emphasis is on a positive attitude yielding positive results, and a negative attitude yielding negative results. Thinking positively is said to force God to yield positive results for you. According to this unbiblical teaching, the words you think and say have direct results in the physical world.

The proponents scour the Scriptures for verses that support their philosophy. And they are good at it. But the shotgun wedding is a bad one.

This belief defines God as a universal principle to be tapped and controlled by human thought. Word Of Faith defines faith in exactly the same way. The Bible, on the other hand, defines God as a Person (more specifically, three Persons who are one), not as a cosmic law-bound pawn. And the Bible defines faith as trust in that Person, not as a cosmic principle for manipulating the material world with words and thoughts.

Belief Three: You have within you the power to force the non-material God to heal your material body divinely.

Just as the second principle of the Prosperity Gospel grew out of its first principle, the third principle is founded on the second. If and when your body is sick, it teaches that your physical healing is a done deal. It is called “a faith-fact” by some of its proponents, who include the late Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), the late Kathryn Kuhlman, the late Oral Roberts and the well-known, very much alive Benny Hinn, among many others.

According to the Propserity Gospel, the ultimate test of your faith is to claim your healing complete when you are still experiencing symptoms. Any continuing symptoms, they say, are not real, but a trick of the devil to hinder your faith and steal your healing. The legalism should be obvious. According to the Prosperity Gospel, your physical well-being is entirely dependent on how well you manipulate God with the faith-force. If you really get healed or if you enjoy sustained health, it is due to your prowess at naming and claiming your healing. But if you get sick or stay sick, it is your fault. Your continuing sickness is explained as your lack of faith, unbelief or sin.

The Prosperity Gospel is the worst kind of fear-driven hamsterwheel because some even claim that “The Principle of Divine Healing” works in reverse, too. If you talk aloud to someone about the possibility of getting cancer, that might cause cancer. If you worry about it in your mind, you can actually call cancer into existence in your body. What a slavish, paranoid existence! Many so-called “faith-healers” have emphasized this principle and have been extremely successful in securing the funds for their broadcasts by taking up offerings prior to the healing portions of their “worship services.”

Again, in this “gospel,” God is a cosmic principle, a universal law, an invisible faith-force, one that you somehow “hear” non-sensually and non-intellectually, yet one that you control with your thoughts. If you claim yourself healed, (and perhaps also apply the power of the almighty dollar in the evangelist’s offering plate), then God must heal you.

Picture this god like a slot machine. The gambling addict is seated before it, putting in quarter after quarter while chanting, “I won. I won. I won.” No jackpot, but if he only believes what he is saying, it will have to happen in the material world, and the jackpot will have to come pouring out.

If the Prosperity Gospel is correct, all Christians have a right to be healed, and have the power to force God’s hand to heal them. But, in the Bible, Epaphroditus, Trophimus, Timothy and the Apostle Paul were all sick. Paul was chronically sick. Three times he prayed to the Lord to heal him, but the Lord said “No” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Was that a lack of faith on the part of Paul and these others? Was it their own fault that they were sick? Were they spiritually inadequate?

Belief Four: You have within you the power to force the non-material God to give you material wealth and money.

This fourth law or principle of the Prosperity Gospel, like the third, flows out of the second principle. The late Oral Roberts was, perhaps, the most famous proponent of this fourth principle. He coined the phrase “seed-faith giving.” We are back to god, the one-armed bandit. “Seed-faith giving” claims that if you give money or belongings “to God” (meaning to their ministries), then God is obligated to give you more money in return, thus blessing you with financial prosperity. Thus the name, “Prosperity Gospel.” It is a double-your-money-back guarantee - at least double. A ten-fold or even a onehundred fold return is sometimes promised.

Other popular and successful proponents of this principle are Robert Tilton, Paul and Jan Crouch, Rod Parsley, Mike Murdock and again Kenneth Copland (and wife, Gloria). There are many more. The Pentecostal Prosperity Gospel dominates cable broadcasting, so much so that this brand of “Christianity” might be presumed by the uninformed viewer to be representative of all Christian believers.

This fourth and final principle is more than a religious, legal trap. It is more than just another self-salvation program. It is a successful money-making scheme. Prosperity Gospel proponents promise people that they have the key to ending their financial woes. If the victims of Prosperity Gospel preachers will just let go of the money in their pockets, they arebassured God will automatically have to let go of the prosperity that is in God’s pocket for them. It is a principle of reciprocity that God is obligated to obey.

On the other hand, however, it is also your fault if you are in a financial crisis - not because you made mistakes, but because you failed to implement the “faith-force.” Or your sins have messed things up.

Let us say that you sent your last $100 to the televangelist, and that you did not get the $1,000 back from God that he guaranteed. Well, that is your fault. You sinned or lacked faith or were in some way spiritually deficient. It would have worked, they say, if there were not something seriously wrong with you. So get back on the hamster-wheel, try harder, pray longer, get all the sin out of your life, and send more money next time.

The Prosperity Gospel proclaims that the poor are not blessed. Far from it. It proclaims, “When you are not blessed, your misfortune is your fault and you deserve it.” The poor, according to the Prosperity Gospel, are self-cursed and God-abandoned. What a coldhearted message to the poor, the sick, and the otherwise unfortunate ones whom Jesus loved and embraced and blessed - “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).

In the Bible, we find Jesus warning about wealth and greed, we find Jesus showing concern for and solidarity with the poor and blessing them, and we find Paul hungry for lack of funds.

This Prosperity Gospel, with its four principles, has its parallels in Dianetics / Scientology made popular today by celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, in books like The Secret  Law of Attraction made popular by author Rhonda Byrne, and in other modern prosperity gimmicks like “The Law of Success” by Napoleon Hill, now available by infomercial for the low price of only $49.95.

These “secular” gimmicks promote the underlying belief that you have the power in your mind, in your mouth, or in your hand to get individual health, wealth and happiness - a belief in common with the Prosperity Gospel. You can manipulate a universal principle if you learn the trick. And the proponents of this secret will sell you the trick for a low, low, introductory price.

The four laws of the Prosperity Gospel utterly contradict the biblical gospel.

1. God is not a faceless, impersonal force locked away from the material world. In Jesus Christ we see the face of God, flesh and bone and blood, entering and embracing this material world personally, passionately, intimately, for the sake of a relationship of love with us.

2. Scriptural faith is not a force whereby we can command a non-material God to do our bidding in the material world. It is simple rest and trust in the good news that Jesus Christ has finished salvation for the world.

3. You cannot force a nonmaterial God to heal you by claiming yourself already healed. This is superstitious, magical thinking. It is oppressive, futile religion. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, a healer by all accounts in the Bible, suffered pain. God in the flesh experienced suffering in the material world. Likewise, his earliest followers suffered, some were sick, and some were even killed. What entitles Christ-followers an exemption today?

4. You can’t force a non-material God to make you rich in the material world by claiming that you possess riches. Again, this is magical thinking. It is radical individualism and materialism. And it is futile religion. Jesus had few possessions and little money, he warned about wealth and greed, and he loved and blessed the poor.

While the Prosperity Gospel promises escape from suffering, God in Christ and his cross moves into suffering. There is no escapism in the cross. God does not run from pain. In the cross, God enters raw pain, and he does so naked and vulnerable.

While the Prosperity Gospel promise is concerned exclusively with selfish, individual gain through magical thinking, God in Christ and his cross is concerned exclusively with radically humble self-giving and suffering for the sake of others.

In the same way that the Prosperity Gospel does not deal with sin or suffering, neither does it deal with death. You have to stop sinning, it says, using magical thinking to make you healthy and wealthy. You can end your suffering magically, it says, by thinking it away, too. But how do you think away death?

In contrast to the Prosperity Gospel, in the biblical gospel, specifically in the cross of Jesus Christ, God enters even death. He does not run away from death. He does not use magical thinking to avoid death. God the Son willingly lays down his life.

Could the “God” of the Prosperity Gospel and the God of the biblical gospel be any different? One is an impersonal principle, a faceless force, a cosmic law to be manipulated for individual profit. The other is a divine Person with a face - a dear friend, a willing servant, determined to face horrific suffering though scarred beyond recognition, determined to face death though he himself is life - all for the love of us.

Will you be manipulated by the cold, hands-off, run-from-pain, get-rich-quick “god” of the Prosperity Gospel? Or will you believe in and accept the warm, hands-on, walk-with-you-through-everything and run-from-nothing God of the biblical gospel?

To me, the choice is clear. But, tragically, my “Christian” cable television station schedule today tells me otherwise.

The Flatlanders

Because human beings can visualize phenomena only in dimensions that they can experience, in their attempts to describe God, they reach a stumbling block in their thinking.

One reason Christians know that the Bible comes from a supernatural source is that it claims that God is not confined to our human dimensions of length, width, height, and time. It has become widely recognized that, mathematically, there are ten space-time dimensions of the universe. And the Bible not only insists on extra-dimensional capacities for God, but it also specifically describes how He functions in these extra dimensions.

Of all the holy books of the religions of the world, only the Bible unambiguously states that time is finite, that time has a beginning, and that God created time, that God is capable of cause and effect operations before the time dimension of the universe existed, and that God did cause many effects before the time component of our universe existed.

Other holy books besides the Bible allude to extra dimensions, trans-dimensional phenomena, and transcendence, but these allusions are inconsistent. The god and the doctrines these books proclaim always are shaped and limited in some way by the dimensions of length, width, height, and time.

The Bible alone describes God as a personal Creator who can act entirely independent of the cosmos and is not limited to length, width, height, and time. He is the One who brought them into existence.  

The Bible is unique, too, in describing certain attributes of God, such as the Trinity — in which God is depicted simultaneously as singular and plural, three Persons but one essence. Many who oppose Christianity state categorically that Christianity is false since the Trinity is mathematically absurd. And this is true in the context of a god limited in his operations to just the four dimensions of length, width, height, and time. But since God created and controls at least six more dimensions besides the four we humans experience, He must be able to operate in them.

Another attribute which the Bible declares forthrightly about God is that He is very close to each and every one of us. The Bible also states that Jesus Christ, a spirit being, actually comes to live right within a human being when that person accepts Him as Savior and Lord. But it just as definitely states that God is invisible. Evidently, it is impossible for us humans to make physical contact with God. How, then, can God be so close and yet be beyond physical contact? How can Christ live within a human being?

An analogy that might help was developed partly by Edwin Abbott, a nineteenth-century schoolmaster and preacher who published the book - “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions” — in 1884. I am going to describe the concept in my own words.

First let’s talk about God living in His four or more dimensions without any created time element. Let’s call these dimensions: “length”, “width”, “height” and “wow”. God has other creatures in this Wow World who are somewhat like Him but are not true offspring. God makes a decision that He wants to have true offspring, true children. He has the power to create them as He wants to. And the way He really wants them is with the ability to choose to enter His Wow World and to love Him as He would love them. God didn’t want robots who blindly had to follow His directions but rather He wanted them to CHOOSE to be His children.

So He created a world of a lesser dimension than His Wow World. He created a three-dimensional universe. Now, of course, these human creatures which had the potential to be WOW people didn’t and couldn’t understand the Wow World. They only had a concept of length, width and height.

But here’s where it gets good. God placed within them a desire for an understanding to know how and why they were made and how any world beyond their’s operated. Then God could work with this inbuilt desire to get them to first know Him and then to choose to follow Him. And then, at the right time of their lives, God would bring them into His Wow World to live as children in His Family.

OK. That’s the God story. Now let’s bring the God story down and describe an imaginary human story similarly.

Suppose that Lou Hodapp is god of the three-dimensional universe. And all I have around me are lower creatures like dogs and cats who have a kind of love for me but are not and cannot be my true children. I long for, as God in His Wow World longed for, real children on a level with me.

So I decide to create a world of a lesser dimension than my three-dimensional world. And to do exactly like God did – work with them to choose to be my children.

 Imagine a universe where only two dimensions of space exist rather than three. In such a universe, Flatlanders would be confined to a plane of length and width - similar to a large piece of paper - with no possibility of operating in the dimension of height. A three-dimensional being like me then could approach the plane of the Flatlanders and place my hand just a hundredth of an inch above the two-dimensional bodies of two Flatlanders separated from one another by just one foot. Since I, as a three-dimensional being, am slightly above the plane of the Flatlanders, there is no possibility that the Flatlanders can see me. And yet, I am more than a thousand times closer to each of the Flatlanders than they are to one another.

As with the Flatlanders, so it is with human beings. God is closer to each of us than we ever can be to one another. But because God’s proximity to us takes place in dimensions or realms we cannot tangibly experience, we cannot possibly see Him.

The Bible goes even further. The New Testament states that God, in the Persons of Christ and the Holy Spirit, comes to actually dwell within Christians in a living union. Yes, God actually enters the believing Christian in an unseen eternal union.

Likewise, I, Lou Hodapp, as god of the three-dimensional universe, can enter the believing Flatlander in an unseen union.

Abbott goes on in his book that the only way we could see God is if He were to place a portion of His being into our space-time fabric. This would be analogous to me poking my finger through the plane of the Flatlanders. If one of the Flatlanders were to investigate, he would draw the conclusion that this visitor to their realm is a small circle.

But what if I, as the 3-D god, were to reveal separately to the friend of that Flatlander three of my fingers? The friend then would draw the conclusion that the visitor to their realm was not one small circle but rather three small circles. We could then imagine a theological debate between the two Flatlanders that would end up with the first Flatlander founding the Church of the One Circle while the second Flatlander would establish the church of the Three Circles or the church of the Trinity.

This analogy may appear amusing, but it fairly represents what non-Christians have done with the Trinity of God. Some have accepted God’s singularity but rejected His plurality while others accept His plurality and reject His singularity. Only Christians accept that God is simultaneously singular and plural.

Religions that view the Bible through the limited dimensional concept of humanity inevitably deny portions of God’s transcendence. Judaism accepts almost all the teaching of the Old Testament but rejects the New Testament. Islam and Mormonism “accept” both the Old Testament and New Testament but add other holy books to supersede them. The Jehovah’s Witnesses accept the Old and New Testaments but choose to change several hundred words in both. Other cults such as Christian Science simply ignore “unpleasant” passages in the Old and New Testament.

The common denominator in all the alternatives to Christianity is a denial, at least in part, of God’s transcendence and extra-dimensional attributes.

I have another way of looking at the Spirit World. Leaving out the concept of “time”, I have my own geometric analysis of the fourth dimension:

Dimension #1: An infinite number of separate points become one LINE. Or we might say that many separate small lines make up one BIG LINE. (Bringing the God story and the Lou Hodapp story down another level of dimension, if I were the god of the Flatlanders and entered this dimension, I would only be conceived as a point of a small line.)

Dimension #2: An infinite number of separate BIG LINES become one PLANE. Or we might say that many separate planes make up on BIG PLANE.

Dimension #3: An infinite number of separate BIG PLANES become one CUBE. Or we might say that many separate cubes (human beings) make up one BIG CUBE (the universe). (If a spirit WOW being entered this dimension, it would only be conceived as a plane or a small cube – that is, either virtually invisible or as a human being.)

Dimension #4: An infinite number of separate BIG CUBES (universes) become one WOW WORLD. Or we might say that many separate Wow People (spirit beings) make up one BIG WOW WORLD (God!)

What can we see in this orderly setup?

1. There are probably many universes.

2. Human beings lose their separateness and become unified in the Wow World. The Church, the Body of Christ, becomes one organism in the Wow World.  

    

Everything loses its separateness and becomes unified ultimately in GOD.

    

Christians must learn to expand their minds by whatever human analogies they can come up with. More than a century ago, Abbott did this with his “Flatlander” example. We today have the benefit of computer graphics and computer mathematics to expand our thinking. Ask the Holy Spirit to make your understanding as complete as humanly possible in this life. Certainly the Flatlander will never completely comprehend the workings of dimensions greater than his. And we human 3-Ders will never completely understand the workings of the Wow World in this life. But this is where faith and trust in the Creator God comes in.

Route 66 - God's Way

[ A sermon given by Lou Hodapp at the Missouri Veteran's Home on February 12, 2012 ]

It’s good to be with you veterans on this coldest morning of the year here in St. Louis. You have a nice warm facility here. Give thanks to God  for it.

Most of you veterans can remember the 1960s. Some bad things happened then – the Cuban missile crisis, John Kennedy’s assassination, the start of the Vietnam war. But some good things happened in the 60s too. Two of my children were born then – Sandy and Richard – and they are here with me this morning.  

Also, the construction of the Interstate Highway System began. By the way, did you know that the first national pouring of concrete for the Interstate system was for I-70 here in St. Charles County? I know because I was there that day.

Before they changed the numbering system on highways, there was a Route 66. Nat King Cole made Route 66 famous.

If you ever plan to motor west –

Travel my way, take the highway that’s the best –

Get your kicks on Route 66.

It winds from Chicago to LA,

More than 2,000 miles all the way –

Get your kicks on Route 66.

Now you go through St. Louie,

Joplin, Missouri,

Oklahoma City is mighty pretty.

You see Amarillo,

Gallup, New Mexico,

Flagstaff, Arizona,

Don’t forget Winona,

Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino.

Won’t you get hip to this timely tip,

When you make that California trip,

Get your kicks on Route 66.

I can hear you saying, “What’s this guy doing? This is a church service. You’re supposed to talk about God. He’s singing about highways!” Well don’t worry. Here comes the God talk.

Let’s look at it this way: Say you’ve lived a wild life in Chicago. You’ve repented and truly, truly called out to God for Jesus to be your Savior and Lord. You become born again. Instantly you become, not just a creature of God but a child in God’s Family. Jesus Christ comes to live within you joined eternally to your human spirit.

God then makes you a solemn promise that He will get you to that heavenly, beautiful California coast. Like in the gold-rush days, He in effect says, “Go West, young man, go West!”

Up until this time on your road of life, you’ve been traveling alone and without a map.  Oh, others HAVE influenced your journey – a wife, a boss, friends. But you have basically made the choice of direction yourself. But now Jesus hops into you car, and tells you that He is with you from now on. And He makes you a supernatural promise that He WILL get you to California.

The best way, His way, is Route 66. But there is nothing to stop you from making a side trip off the highway, either accidently or deliberately. These side trips can temporarily mess you up. But you will be corrected back to the highway.

You could take a side trip north to the Rocky mountains and get stalled by snow and ice. You could take a side trip south to Mexico and get held up by bandidos. You need to travel God’s way – on Route 66.

You know how these GPS navigation systems work. When you get off their route, that woman’s voice in the box tells you, “Recalculating – recalculating!” That’s like the Holy Spirit coaxing you back to the highway.

What happens if I die along the way to California? Christ will pick me up and whisk me right there in an instant. Because He promised He would get me there.

Now there are many ways to go from Chicago to Los Angeles. The best way, the most direct way, the safest way is Route 66, Christ’s way. But Jesus is now in the car with you to influence and guide you. You can still choose to make wrong turns because you are doing the driving. You may choose a path that gets you into trouble. Jesus doesn’t leave the car. He reminds you to get back on the safe 66 route. Or, Jesus may influence you to turn OFF OF 66 for a time because there is a need in some small town that you should take time to fill.

The key is that once you are born again by making Christ the Savior and Lord of your life, you are going to get to California one way or another. Jesus has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us.

I have a little plaque that sits on my bathroom shelf quoting Romans 8:28. I look at it every morning as I start my day. It says, “All things work for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

“All things” is not being used loosely. All things means everything – not only when natural troubles smack us, but also when we choose to sin. God will turn our side trips of sin back to Route 66. 

Too often, people think this message gives believers license to continue in sin.
Bob George, in his book, “Classic Christianity” states it this way:

QUOTE - “Wherever the pure message of God’s love and acceptance in Jesus Christ has been shared, people have raised the same objection: “But you’re giving people a license to sin.” It is an absurd question when you understand the love and grace of God and know about Christ living in you. I like to answer with an illustration.

Imagine that you owned a fine cafeteria. One day, you hear this tremendous commotion out in the alley where the garbage dumpsters are. You open the back door to see what’s going on, and you see the most pitiful-looking human being you have ever seen in your life – ME – fighting with several stray cats over the food scraps in the dumpster. I am a virtual living skeleton. It’s obvious that I am living on the edge of starvation, and probably have been for a long time. There is nothing about me to provoke liking or affection in you, but you are moved to pity.

“Hey, hey!” you yell. “Get out of the garbage. Don’t eat that stuff! Come over here.” I trudge over to you, half-seeing you through hopeless eyes.

Listen,” you say. “I can’t stand to see you eating garbage like that. Come into my cafeteria and eat.”

“But I don’t have any money,” I reply.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say. “My chain of restaurants has done very well, and I can afford it. I want you to eat here every day from now on, absolutely free of charge!”

You take my arm and lead me inside the restaurant. I cannot believe my eyes. I have never seen a cafeteria line before. With huge, unbelieving eyes I stare at the spread: vegetables, salads, fruits, beef, fish, chicken, cakes, pies. In my wildest dreams I have never even imagined that such things could be.

I look at you intently. “Are you saying I can eat ANYTHING I want?”

“Yes, anything.”

Then slowly, with a gleam in my eye, I ask, “Can I eat some GARBAGE?’

What would you think of me? You would think I was insane, wouldn’t you? In the face of all that delicious food, all I can think of to ask is whether I can eat garbage. But that is exactly how I feel when people ask me if they can sin because they are under grace!

Are you ready for a really shocking statement? The goal of the Christian life is not to stop sinning! The Christian world is obsessed with sin. It’s all we talk about. Most of our teaching and preaching is directed toward getting people to quit sinning. It’s like a person following a starving man around saying, “You stay out of the garbage! Do you hear me? Don’t eat the garbage! You stay out of there!” LOOK, WHEN YOU’RE TRULY HUNGRY, YOU’LL EAT ANYTHING – EVEN GARBAGE.

What should you do? I promise you: If you will get that man into the cafeteria line, and he begins experiencing what real, good food is like, he won’t be nostalgically dreaming about the garbage out back.”

Unquote - from Bob George!

In conclusion, veterans, let’s remember two things: Remember Route 66. God says, “travel MY way.”

And remember that name on the church I am from: GRACE CHURCH. We are saved by God’s unconditional grace in Chicago when we accept Christ as Lord. We are saved by grace and brought back to Route 66 when we make side trips of sin.

And we are saved by grace ultimately and finally when we reach that beautiful and heavenly California coast. Yes – it’s God’s unconditional grace and love all the way as we make that California trip – on Route 66.

Let’s pray –

Father – we whole-heartedly accept the gift of eternal life you have freely given us. We understand that Jesus has come to jump in the car and live in us to lead us and we trust Him to do it. We know we are going to slip up and sin, but we understand now that you will not condemn us and eternally punish us since we are now your children and we sure don’t want to eat that garbage!

Holy Spirit, help us to grow daily in the lifestyle of God’s Family. We thank you for doing this – we love you for it and for everything else you have given us. In Jesus name, Amen.