8 Secrets of the Truly Rich
By: Bo Sanchez
Buy your own copy at any National Bookstore Outlet
Have you Romanticized Poverty?
Blessed are the poor.
- Luke 6:20 Religion can romanticize poverty.
We can receive this message: "To be poor is better than to be rich. It's more pleasing to God. He favors the poor. Poor people go to heaven. Rich people go to hell."
If you believe in this philosophy, then goodness, why in the world would anyone even think of becoming rich?
Yes, it's true that God favors the poor. And it's true that the Bible says, "Blessed are the poor" (Luke 6:20). But I believe God loves the poor and accompanies them in their difficult journey so that they can rise from poverty. Not so that they can remain in their poverty!
It's foolish ti romanticize poverty.
Whoever says being poor is romantic is out of his mind. When I was 15 years old, I lived and ministered in the slums - and I'm telling you, there's nothing romantic about it.
I lived in a house with nine other people. And we all slept in one single room that's about the size of your office cubicle.
We also shared the same dark, damp, muddy toilet with four other families. (Can you imagine how interesting my mornings were lining up for it?) I ate their food and lived their life.
The entire area was flooded nine months of the year. Stagnant water reached my knees. I remember seeing an entire army of mosquitoes living , eating, partying, laughing, making love and hatching millions of eggs around us. It may have been romantic for the mosquitoes but it wasn't romantic for us.
And there's nothing romantic about the baby I heard crying in the middle of the night because her mother had no money to buy milk.
There's nothing romantic about the old man I met next door who needed a doctor because of severe pneumonia, but his family couldn't even pay for the jeepney fare to the hospital.
There's nothing romantic about the almost weekly stabbings in the street because of rampant drug addiction.
Poverty is evil. Period!
And God wants us to get rid of it.
You also need to get rid of it in your life - so that you can get rid of it in the lives of others. If you want the Philippines to become a first world country, become a first world citizen first.
Have you romanticized poverty?
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