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Exceptional piece. Highly recommended!

- fabian musoro (a year ago)

About the Book


"Money Won't Make You Rich" by Sunday Adelaja is a guide to financial prosperity that challenges readers to rethink their beliefs about money and wealth. The author emphasizes the importance of developing a mindset focused on creating value, investing wisely, and prioritizing personal growth in order to achieve true wealth and abundance. Through practical advice and inspiring examples, Adelaja encourages readers to shift their perspectives and take action towards building a sustainable and fulfilling financial future.

John Wesley

John Wesley John Wesley, (born June 17, 1703, Epworth, Lincolnshire, England—died March 2, 1791, London), Anglican clergyman, evangelist, and founder, with his brother Charles, of the Methodist movement in the Church of England. John Wesley was the second son of Samuel, a former Nonconformist (dissenter from the Church of England) and rector at Epworth, and Susanna Wesley. After six years of education at the Charterhouse, London, he entered Christ Church, Oxford University, in 1720. Graduating in 1724, he resolved to become ordained a priest; in 1725 he was made a deacon by the bishop of Oxford and the following year was elected a fellow of Lincoln College. After assisting his father at Epworth and Wroot, he was ordained a priest on September 22, 1728. Recalled to Oxford in October 1729 to fulfill the residential requirements of his fellowship, John joined his brother Charles, Robert Kirkham, and William Morgan in a religious study group that was derisively called the “Methodists” because of their emphasis on methodical study and devotion. Taking over the leadership of the group from Charles, John helped the group to grow in numbers. The “Methodists,” also called the Holy Club, were known for their frequent communion services and for fasting two days a week. From 1730 on, the group added social services to their activities, visiting Oxford prisoners, teaching them to read, paying their debts, and attempting to find employment for them. The Methodists also extended their activities to workhouses and poor people, distributing food, clothes, medicine, and books and also running a school. When the Wesleys left the Holy Club in 1735, the group disintegrated. Following his father’s death in April 1735, John was persuaded by an Oxford friend, John Burton, and Col. James Oglethorpe, governor of the colony of Georgia in North America, to oversee the spiritual lives of the colonists and to missionize the Native Americans as an agent for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Accompanied by Charles, who was ordained for this mission, John was introduced to some Moravian emigrants who appeared to him to possess the spiritual peace for which he had been searching. The mission to the indigenous peoples proved abortive, nor did Wesley succeed with most of his flock. He served them faithfully, but his stiff high churchmanship antagonized them. He had a naive attachment to Sophia Hopkey, niece of the chief magistrate of Savannah, who married another man, and Wesley unwisely courted criticism by repelling her from Holy Communion. In December 1737 he fled from Georgia; misunderstandings and persecution stemming from the Sophia Hopkey episode forced him to go back to England. In London John met a Moravian, Peter Böhler, who convinced him that what he needed was simply faith, and he also discovered Martin Luther’s commentary on the Letter of Paul to the Galatians, which emphasized the scriptural doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. On May 24, 1738, in Aldersgate Street, London, during a meeting composed largely of Moravians under the auspices of the Church of England, Wesley’s intellectual conviction was transformed into a personal experience while Luther’s preface to the commentary to the Letter of Paul to the Romans was being read. From this point onward, at the age of 35, Wesley viewed his mission in life as one of proclaiming the good news of salvation by faith, which he did whenever a pulpit was offered him. The congregations of the Church of England, however, soon closed their doors to him because of his enthusiasm. He then went to religious societies, trying to inject new spiritual vigour into them, particularly by introducing “bands” similar to those of the Moravians—i.e., small groups within each society that were confined to members of the same sex and marital status who were prepared to share intimate details of their lives with each other and to receive mutual rebukes. For such groups Wesley drew up Rules of the Band Societies in December 1738. For a year he worked through existing church societies, but resistance to his methods increased. In 1739 George Whitefield, who later became an important preacher of the Great Awakening in Great Britain and North America, persuaded Wesley to go to the unchurched masses. Wesley gathered converts into societies for continuing fellowship and spiritual growth, and he was asked by a London group to become their leader. Soon other such groups were formed in London, Bristol, and elsewhere. To avoid the scandal of unworthy members, Wesley published, in 1743, Rules for the Methodist societies. To promote new societies he became a widely travelled itinerant preacher. Because most ordained clergymen did not favour his approach, Wesley was compelled to seek the services of dedicated laymen, who also became itinerant preachers and helped administer the Methodist societies. Many of Wesley’s preachers had gone to the American colonies, but after the American Revolution most returned to England. Because the bishop of London would not ordain some of his preachers to serve in the United States, Wesley controversially took it upon himself, in 1784, to do so. In the same year he pointed out that his societies operated independently of any control by the Church of England. Toward the end of his life, Wesley became an honoured figure in the British Isles.

God Knows

At the end of Exodus 2, Moses is a fugitive in Midian, hiding from Pharaoh and the people of Israel are groaning in Egypt, crying out for deliverance from the oppressive, abusive death grip of slavery. And the chapter ends with these words: “God saw the people of Israel — and God knew” (Exodus 2:25). Those words, “God knew,” are pregnant with hope. God Knew God knew. God was aware of each person’s suffering. He understood what was happening to them and how it was affecting them. God knew the dehumanizing degradation and routine rapine that is part and parcel of a slave’s experience. He knew the premature breakdown of bodies ruthlessly subjected daily to exhausting manual labor (Exodus 1:11). He knew the bitter erosion of hope that occurs when all labor only benefits ungrateful abusers (Exodus 1:14). God knew the horror and trauma of legalized, enforced infanticide (Exodus 1:16). And he knew the resentment and anger that is on constant simmer in a culture of hopelessness, sometimes boiling over into vengeful violence against oppressors (Exodus 2:11–12), and other times into tragic violence within the oppressed community (Exodus 2:13). God knew and he was preparing to take action in a way that would leave a permanent, indelible imprint upon the collective memory of the human race. God Foreknew But God didn’t only know this when it all happened. He knew it was going to happen long before it even looked remotely possible that it could happen. Centuries earlier God had told Abram (later Abraham), the founder of the Israelite nation, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. (Genesis 15:13–14, italics mine) The nature and implications of God’s foreknowledge — what he foreknows and how certain this foreknowledge is — have been debated for millennia. Admittedly, this is deep water for human intellects to swim in. But in this text we have a direct quote from God himself on the subject. And he says it so plainly a child could not mistake it: “Know for certain that your offspring will be [enslaved] and will be afflicted for four hundred years.” This was not a qualified expert making an educated guess about the future decisions of free moral agents on the basis of probabilities. This was clear, specific, certain foresight. God certainly foreknew that the Israelites would experience desperate suffering. And his revealed foresight also clearly revealed a divine purpose in this horrible experience, a purpose whose scope extended way beyond just Israel. God Knew What He Was Doing Two verses later in Genesis 15, God tells Abram, “And [your descendants] shall come back here [to Canaan] in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16, italics mine). This statement about the Amorites is a multi-layered gift for the saints of God. To unpack its implications would require a book. In it is a world of God’s precise patience, justice, judgment, and more. But with regard to Israel’s suffering, we see in the Amorite allusion a rare jewel of God’s rationale for his timeline. The enslaved Israelite’s prayers must have sounded much like their future royal kinsman’s: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? . . . How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” (Psalm 13:1–2). God rarely provides an answer to such a question. But here he provides an answer before the question was ever raised. How long, O LORD? Four hundred years. Why so long? Because my purposes involve far more than just Israel and Egypt. They also involve the sin of and my righteous judgment on the peoples of Canaan. When the time is ripe for me to fulfill my covenant to Abraham, it will also be ripe for me to judge the wickedness of the Amorites. In the bloody, sweaty, tearful, agonizing experience of slavery, it would have looked like God had forgotten. He had not. He knew. He had foreknown. And he knew just what he was doing. God Knows The reality expressed in the words “God knows” is a well of profound comfort and peace for us in our afflictions. Yes, there remain unanswered questions. No, they do not themselves remove our pain. But in Exodus 2:25 and Genesis 15:13–14 we see why these words are pregnant with hope. Your affliction has a purpose. You likely don’t know what it is yet, but someday you will. And your affliction has a timeline. You likely don’t know what it is yet, and likely it already seems too long. But someday you will understand. And you will understand that the purposes for both your affliction and how long you were required to endure it extended far beyond the range of your perception. And then it will make sense. Jesus Christ has guaranteed your exodus. And it is a far greater exodus than the mere escape from your affliction. There is coming an end to your sojourning in this foreign land (Hebrews 11:13). There is a Promised Land far greater than Canaan. And when you reach it, no matter what you suffered in this veil of tears, you will have no regrets. God will have worked it all for such good that you will wonder that you ever questioned his judgment or goodness (Romans 8:28). In your affliction, cry out to God for help (Exodus 2:23). He hears. And when the time is right, God will answer you. For God sees you — and he knows. Article by Jon Bloom

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