Since several people I know have been having financial difficulties, including myself, today I sought God on the subject. I was asking primarily for myself, but secondary for all of us. The answer came quickly.

I had a vision of Satan. I saw him standing holding a large gold coin, and I saw a person on their knees before him asking for money. Satan was sneering at this person, enjoying the fact that he had them in bondage. I also knew that he might occasionally break a piece off of the coin and give to this person just to keep them coming back for more.

After meditating on this and asking God its meaning, what I understand is this. I/we are not looking to God for what we need. Though we may think in our minds "God is our provider," in the deep recesses of our hearts we are looking elsewhere. We look at the avenues by which we think God will provide for us rather than looking to God himself. We look for these avenues and opportunities and when we spy some out we think to ourselves "Maybe God will bless us through this." We look to the ways provision has come before. We look to others and think, "They blessed us before, maybe they will do it again." We look to our jobs and that consistent income, and we get our eyes off of God, the provider. We look to ourselves and our own abilities to work and generate income.

I do not believe any of us has ever consciously knelt before the enemy asking for money, but to do any of these things is to bow before the enemy by default. And when we look to the enemy, when we look to the avenue by which provision may come, we automatically align ourselves with the enemy. We put ourselves and our finances under his control, and in doing so, we block the other avenues by which God plans to provide for us. Because our eyes are not on God, and because we are neither in agreement with Him nor walking in faith, these other avenues are automatically closed.

Occasionally we will receive something through these avenues that we've put our eyes on, but I think that more often than not the little bit we get through these avenues is from the enemy. Think about it, if we get a little bit of "reward" for having our eyes in the wrong place, won't that cause us to keep our eyes there? That is exactly what the enemy wants.

As I have found out, it is easy to think one thing yet hold something else in our heart. We can do it so easily without even knowing it. The struggle is to renew our minds, change our thinking, and get where we really need to be. But we must first recognize this wrong thinking in order to correct it. So, I challenge everyone to examine themselves and ask God if there's anything in their thinking that they have been unable to see which needs to change.

In closing I want to note, I asked God, "So what about super abundant blessing beyond what we need for his purposes. How do we get into that realm?" and He replied that this (the above) must come first.



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