Blessings Contain the Seeds of Destruction

 "Is it a time to receive money and to receive clothes and olive groves and vineyards and sheep and oxen and male and female servants?" 2Ki 5:26 NASB

We must cultivate the bitter seeds of sorrow and suffering for Christ, for they yield the sweet fruit of righteousness.  However, we must never stop cultivating the seeds and the tree.  If we stop, then woe to us, for the fruit and blessings of righteousness then become the seeds of sorrow and suffering.  As a nature illustration, the sweet apple contains amygdalin, a precursor of cyanide and if ingested in quantity can produce sickness and death.  Like apples, the seeds of prosperity, comfort and ease contain the seeds of their mother tree - sorrow and suffering.

There are hilarious YouTube videos called "Don't Celebrate Too Early".  They show clip after clip of persons disastrously celebrating before they have finished and won.  Likewise, we must finish the course.  This life is not the time for celebrating too early.  Gehazi lied to Naaman in order to get some silver and clothes from him.  Elisha's rebuke to Gehazi is [2Ki 5:26 NASB]  "Is it a time to receive money and to receive clothes and olive groves and vineyards and sheep and oxen and male and female servants?"

We live in a land and culture of abundance.  Now is not the time to receive money and to receive clothes and olive groves and vineyards and sheep and oxen and male and female servants.  We must do as Proverbs 23:1-3 instructs.  "When you sit down to dine with a ruler, Consider carefully what is before you, 2 And put a knife to your throat If you are a man of [great] appetite. 3 Do not desire his delicacies, For it is deceptive food."

Ease and comfort are deceptive foods.  Let us, while it is still day, Suffer hardship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.  The fruit for which we labor is nothing less than the presence of Christ.