About a year ago, a fellow minister made a statement to me that I found rather shocking. He told me that I was a “really lucky guy,” to have a life and family and ministry like I have. What, I thought?
There are several reasons why that statement shocked me, the first one being that there is no such thing as luck. So, I assumed that a man who had spent several decades in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ would have stumbled across that little fact somewhere along his life’s journey. But obviously he had not.
My next thought after he said that to me was that I had paid a severe price and worked very diligently to be this “lucky,” because absolutely nothing ever came easily.
The Bible does promise us some enormous blessings however, but that is not the same as luck. And those blessings are contingent upon our being diligent in the Word of God. The following verses demonstrate this for us.
“1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: 2 And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.” Deuteronomy 28:1-2 KJV
Those who are diligent to do what God says will be overtaken with blessings, is what these verses promise us. Because diligence and effort must be applied to the promises of God to receive the rewards the Lord promises. And since many Christians appear to only desire to put forth the minimum effort in spiritual things, they often experience very few of God’s promises manifesting in their life.
But let’s be clear about this: luck has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Another reason his statement bothered me, was that when you say that someone is just lucky, it implies that everything that happened to them was a random act which they themselves had nothing to do with. But that is just nonsense.
Let me assure you that if you are going to have a strong marriage and family, luck will have nothing to do with it. You will have to pay a price to have those, and it is a price that many people, including some ministers, have been unwilling to pay. You will have to diligently pursue God’s way, and take great pains to keep the world’s ways out of your family. You will have to get a firm grip on God’s standards and hold tightly to them, regardless of how many other people’s marriages and families are falling apart all around you.
Perhaps if a person’s marriage is falling all apart, it isn’t really the results of neglect but that they are simply unlucky. I guess they are not one of the lucky ones who have a solid marriage handed to them on a silver platter.
Or, if their kids don’t want to serve God and attend church because all of their lives they witnessed their parent’s lifestyle at home being a complete contradiction to their claims of Christianity, it is just an issue a bad luck. And since their entire life their parents put sports, theater, fishing, hunting, camping, and any and everything else ahead of the House of God, and now their grown children want absolutely nothing to do with serving God, then surely it’s not a matter of a lack of diligence and effort in the things of God that has caused this. That family is simply unlucky. Really?
If God has called you into a certain aspect of His ministry, or has placed you in the business world or the workforce of some company, these things too, will require great amounts of diligence and effort to be successful. In fact, you’ll probably have to sacrifice your hind end off more times than you will ever want to just to make things work. But luck will have nothing to do with it.
“6 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: 7 Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 8 Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” Proverbs 6:6-8 KJV
The ant doesn’t consider itself lucky or unlucky, it simply does what it has to do, without excuse. The ant is self-motivated. It requires no overseer. And it stores up a supply in harvest time.
The ant works together with its co-workers in singleness of purpose. And the ant carries its own weight and much more!
“9 How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? 10 Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: 11 So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.” Proverbs 6:9-11 KJV
The person who is lazy toward the things of God will never pay the price that is necessary to experience and enjoy the blessings of God upon their life. Yet often, these same people will point to the good things happening in someone else’s life and envy them for their “good luck.”
However, if you want to experience a strong marriage and family, and be successful in what God has called you to do, you can’t just sit idly by and wait for your ship to come in. Because with that approach, no ship is coming for you.
Instead of being deceived by the lucky and unlucky approach to life, become diligent in God’s Word and the things of God consistently, until you are overtaken with His blessings in abundance (see Deuteronomy 28:2 above). Let’s at least be as smart as an ant!
