There is a longing placed deep within every human heart for a satisfaction this world is simply incapable of providing. No matter how much effort a person may expend in seeking to obtain it, ‘disappointment’ is the only word to describe the experience of so many today. And yet they continue to strive on, in a world that preaches that all will be found by ‘getting’.
Early confidence
If willing to bare their heart, they would no doubt tell us that they set out in life full of confident expectancy. But as time passed, in all their receiving, the realisation just didn’t live up to the expectation. The syndrome is nothing new. Philosopher Joseph Priestly wrote (over two hundred years ago!) “Living in the age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch”.
Receiving by giving?
Going against all our fallen nature feels – and reinforced all around us on a daily basis – Jesus Christ taught, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”1. Paul the apostle then later reminded us that Christ 
practiced what he preached, ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’2 Christ was rich where we are poor. Rich in holiness, love, obedience and mercy. Whilst we, by nature are poor, clothed in the rags of self-love, living in the hovel of sin, failing to love God and each other as we ought.
The great exchange
Christ descended to the lowest place that we might be lifted to the highest. He came that we might receive his perfect, spotless righteousness and then share his eternal glory. He loved us before we loved him and died for us when we, his enemies, were without strength. By faith in him we might have a wealth bestowed upon us that is beyond our wildest imaginings.
Early Church Father Jerome put it quaintly, “Christ was born on a dung hill, in order to lift up those who came from it…(and then quotes the psalmist) ‘He raises the poor out of the dust and lifts the needy out of the dunghill’”3
Are you wealthy?
Search your own heart. If you lost every material possession this day, would you feel that you were the richest person on earth? If not, then you have not yet received the wealth Jesus Christ came to provide.
Listen to Mike’s message on this HERE
1 Acts 20:35 2 Corinthians 8:9 3 Psalm 113:7
