By Janie Baer
Some people go out and comfort shop if they are stressed or feel a little down and depressed. By comfort shopping they are trying to alleviate some emotion, some pressure or something that is supposed to be alleviated through their relationship with God and His Word.
Isa 26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. KJV
The God of peace is the only One who will keep you in perfect peace in these days when you encounter stress and anxiety and fear, feel like you have no reason to live or just plain want to give up.
The bible also lets you know,
Neh 8:10 …for the joy of the LORD is your strength. KJV
Through comfort shopping people try to alleviate through the use of money and purchasing of things something that is supposed to be alleviated only through their intimate relationship with God.
The devil uses comfort shopping to get you into more debt and bondage to him and his system.
Some even in financial difficulty will buy things, putting even more on their credit cards because it makes them feel better for a short time and gives them a sense their situation isn’t so bad. They get their sense of value from having money and so when they have some money they feel less valuable so they go and buy and charge so they can feel valuable, so they don’t feel poor, and so they feel better about themselves. It’s all a trap of the enemy. This is bondage because debt is always a trap and bondage.
You must learn debt is not a friend but a trap the enemy has set for you to get you in bondage to the enemy and his system.
Check yourself out how you spend your money:
- Do you do comfort shopping?
- How do you spend your money and what do you spend your money for?
- Are you frugal, faithful, working to get the best deals and make the money stretch?
- Whose money is it, your money or God’s money?
- Do you spend your money with the purpose of being a faithful steward with everything God has given you?
- Do you buy unnecessary things, unnecessary for the purposes of God, things that are wasteful?
- Do you purchase things to feed your flesh, to squander it on your own selfish lust?
- Do you think constantly about this being God’s money and how He would spend it or how He would want you to spend it and constantly laying this before Him?
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This is the only way you are going to be counted faithful. Realize the money that’s in your hands right now and in the days ahead is not yours but God’s. The earth and everything in it belong to God and you were made a steward of it. |
- Have you been a faithful steward, faithful in God’s eyes?
Money is the training and proving ground for what you will do with the anointing. If you receive money and tithe and give an offering but don’t ask the Lord how to use the rest but instead spend it to feed your flesh and emotions and give you a sense of value and worth, you will do the same with the anointing.
The power of God, the promises of God and the prosperity of the Kingdom of God feed the flesh of the uncircumcised individual.
God tells us to be content with what we have,
1 Tim 6:6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. KJV
Phil 4:11-12 Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: NKJV
Of course God wants to bless you with things but you shouldn’t always be thinking about getting this or that.
Here’s another warning we need to take a look at in Deuteronomy God gave to the children of Israel before they went into their Promised Land:
Deut 8:7-18 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; 9 a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you. 11 "Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, 12 lest — when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; 14 when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; 15 who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; 16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end — 17 then you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.' 18 "And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. NKJV
God has made promise to bring you into the wealthy place of His covenant but you also, like the Israelites, need to recognize the warnings here of living in the blessing and abundance and forgetting God and thinking you produced all of it and becoming unfaithful in handling the prosperity He gave you. The power and the prosperity of God is a great danger for the uncircumcised person for it feeds their flesh. This is why it’s necessary before you experience God’s supernatural provision you first embrace the cross and die to self in the handling of money, get your value and worth from God and realize the abundance of God is also to be a blessing to others.
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