Hello,

If you are going through hardship, I can relate to your story. I too have gone through decades of hardship that put a strain on the family. I looked at the causes and saw that a series of bad decisions on my part were very much to blame. Yet there were also many places along the way where it just seemed as if I was not in the favor of God. At the same time, I had dedicated my life to serving Him.

The point of my story is not to try to give a solution to your situation. It is that God knows what is going on and He has a plan. Your life is likely quite different from mine, but God is the same.

I actually would not have minded being poor. We always ate, but it was often soup. We never had the nicer things. We didn't go out to McDonald's let alone a real restaurant. And that was fine. In fact, God said to me that it was not a sin to be poor. Yet, others in the church kept making remarks that seemed to indicate that gain was Godliness. And they would ask whether I was tithing. I was. I always felt condemned. It was implied that lack of wisdom or work ethic was the problem. There is really a problem when people try to guess what someone else is doing wrong that is causing the circumstance. In fact, the Book of Job tells us that just because one person is having the good life while another has hardship; this doesn't mean that the person at ease is a better person than the person suffering.

Decades later, I was pondering my plight. Things would seem to break through for a blessing, and then something would destroy the blessing. God spoke to me as I thought about this and said, "Honor thy father and mother that it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long on the Earth; how's it going?" There, I finally understood that my relationship with my father wasn't right and that this was blocking God's blessing. There are many things that can block God's blessing. For instance, God says that a man should treat his wife properly lest his prayers be hindered. The interesting thing is that I repented of my attitude, and from that day my life was a step-by-step process of increasing blessing financially. Not that I didn't have any problems. Problems will be many, especially if you follow Christ closely. It's not about avoiding problems. It's about learning to hear and acknowledge His Voice and respond in submission. The blessings will follow, but we don't want to fall into the trap of expecting to live up to someone else's standard of what blessing is.

So, I don't really have a solution, but Christ does. Continue to pray. Seek God's leading and expect it. Everyone who does this has many pleasant surprises concerning the will of God and the specific way in which He leads. Whatever is not of faith is sin, and faith comes by hearing the Utterance (rhema) of God. That means, that whatever you think, say, or do that doesn't come by the Holy Spirit is sin.

Blessings!

Bob