I feel bad for rsquso. This is the problem with telling people that God wants you to be successful without defining what success truly is. From what I read in the Bible, success in God’s eyes means denying ourselves and taking up the Cross. “Whosover believeth in Him would not die, but have everlasting life.” There is your success. An eternity in Heaven, not a temporary great job or happy weekends at the beach.

I also don’t know where the Bible gives us the freedom to judge who we help and who we don’t help. Love your neighbor as yourself doesn’t give us the right to only help our neighbors who are working hard but just having hard times. It is not our concern as to why they are helpless.

1. an angry preacher ranting about hellfire and damnation to an uptight congregation

2. a gathering of hypocrites

3. a boring place to which your parents dragged you as a kid

4. a group of people who believe they’re right and all those other churches are wrong

5. the place where Fun goes to die

There is plenty of evidence to support each and every one of those ideas. How many people have been burned and turned off on religion by a bad experience at church? Perhaps you’ve been there yourself—have you ever looked at a church and thought, “if that’s what being a Christian is all about, I want nothing to do with it”?

If you think that “church” is about as far away from God that you can get, you’re in pretty good company. Jesus himself had a lot to say about the churches and organized religion of his day. Talking to a crowd of holier-than-thou church attenders, he didn’t mince words:

“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.”

I was studying Isaiah 40, and was reading Matthew Henry’s commentary. Regarding verses 27-31, Henry notes, “. . . Where God had begun the work of grace, he will perfect it. He will help those who, in humble dependence on him, help themselves. As the day, so shall the strength be. ”

Matthew Henry was trying to point out Isaiah’s instruction to lean on God’s grace for all our daily needs. But given man’s fallen nature, if you simply omit the humility of one’s self, we end up with a mis-quote from Matthew Henry, and a lie of God.

The timing of the attribution to Ben Franklin (and also Thomas Jefferson) is about right. Both post-date Henry, and might have read his commentaries, or quoted others who themselves mis-quoted Henry.

Thank you sir,

It amazes me the amount of “opinions” people have about God without ever knowing who he is or what his opinion is. The gentleman you spoke of who insisted that all he had to do was ask for 1 mil dollars and God would give it, he must have overlooked the scripture which insists that we have not , because we ask amiss attempting to conceive it upon our own lust. everyone has an opinion, including GOD……since he created everything and we know so little about anything, it is safe to say the truth lies in his opinion and not ours….therefore there is a right way and a wrong way, we only become right when we align our opinion with the one that is true!