Young men today face obstacles that are, by measurable standards, worse than those faced during the Great Depression, the Cold War, or even the Second World War. A lower percentage of young men are getting married, having children, and owning their own homes than at any point in the last 150 years. This “war on men” is preventing them from realising themselves as men, sweeping them towards wasted, empty lives far from the meaning that wife, family, and home provide.
There is an answer to this plight, and it is found in God’s Word. It is an open secret, written on almost every page of the Bible, and it is so simple that it may disappoint you. But simple is not the same as easy.
The Pattern: Impossible Circumstances, Transformed Outcomes
Consider Isaac. He was forced by drought into the land of the Philistines, among people who did not share his God or his customs. And yet when he sowed a crop, he reaped a hundredfold. A 100x return on investment, in impossible circumstances. What God did for Isaac, He can do for you today, if you learn how His prospering hand works.
Consider Jacob. Everything was against him: far from home, with nothing but the shirt on his back. Yet he went from owning nothing to millions in wealth in only six years, after finding a wife and having a whole troop of children. Something extremely powerful, above and beyond nature, reached down and transformed the material outcomes of his life.
Consider Job, who went from vast riches to absolutely nothing and back again, ending with double what he had before, more than $40 million in livestock alone in today’s money. Consider Daniel, a castrated exile in the heart of pagan darkness, who rose to second-in-command of the mightiest empire on earth and stayed there despite conspiracies against him. Consider Joseph, sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accused, imprisoned for over a decade, who was elevated to the dizzying heights of political power.
In every case, something above and beyond the natural world was at play. God’s promised blessing, given in response to continuing faith and obedience, transformed certain death and hopelessness into superabundant provision and promotion.
The “If-Then” Structure of God’s Covenant
The mechanism behind all of these transformations can be boiled down to two words: “if” and “then.”
Deuteronomy 28:1-2 reads: “Indeed, if you diligently obey the LORD your God to carry out all His commands that I am giving you today, then the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. Moreover, all these blessings will come upon you in abundance, if you obey the LORD your God.”
If you do the things that God calls good, then He will reward you with good things. If you do the things God calls evil, then He will chastise you with painful consequences. This is the covenant structure that runs through the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.
These blessings are not the special property of the “super saints” of God. They belong to all the sons of God. They are not merely an Old Testament phenomenon, either. Revelation 2 says: “To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life.” If you overcome, then you receive tremendous blessing. Christ did not come to abolish the law of God but to put it into full force, and that includes the “if-then” blessings that are at the very heart of God’s covenant.
The Blessings Are Inescapable
One of the most remarkable features of Deuteronomy 28 is the language of inevitability. The blessings are described as coming for you like a hypersonic missile. When the Lord sees your careful obedience, He gives the command, and the blessing is launched. You cannot outrun it. You cannot dodge it. You cannot bury yourself deep enough to escape it. “All these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you.”
“Blessed shall you be in the city” applies to the Daniel in London, Washington, or Abuja who thinks himself lost in a sea of humanity. “Blessed shall you be in the country” applies to the farmer who thinks there are no prospects where he lives. It does not matter where you are. If you will observe carefully all His commandments, the blessing will find you, even in the most obscure corner of the earth.
What the Saints Actually Did
The question naturally arises: what specifically did these men do that activated God’s covenant blessings?
Jacob obeyed his father Isaac when Isaac sent him away with no money and no help on a perilous 651-mile journey. He spent seventy years serving his father without complaint, despite never receiving love or recognition. He honoured every lawful authority in his life, including the wicked Laban who tormented him for twenty years. He replaced from his own flock any animal lost from Laban’s, even when it was not his fault. He embodied Christ’s teaching: “If you have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?”
Daniel refused to compromise his religion, ever, even when it cost him everything. He insisted on his dietary restrictions in the court of the mightiest empire on earth, at risk of his life. His obedience was not occasional or convenient; it was extravagant and continuous.
The common thread is diligent, costly, sustained obedience to the voice of the Lord. Not perfection. Not sinlessness. But a heart that runs from sin and grows daily in faithful adherence to God’s law and Word, especially in the domain of their God-given work.
The Promise for You
If you have nothing, brother, congratulations: you are pre-qualified for God’s blessing. The true, transformational “invisible hand” can take your nothing and make it into a whole lot of something, but only if you know how the Lord’s prospering hand works.
Some will say that obedience is its own reward and that seeking blessing is somehow selfish. But altruism without incentive is rotten, stinking paganism. God gave us a treasure of incentives in order that we might obey Him. We are fools if we think we do not need what God says we need.
Regardless of your circumstances, your life will be radically transformed, in God’s time, if you will follow God’s formula and prepare your heart to diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God. God is no man’s debtor, and if you obey the Lord extravagantly and continuously, He will bless you to the utmost degree.