May 23
TAKING POVERTY OUT OF OURSELVES

Guatemala, my country of origin, is a beautiful country with only one problem...its inhabitants.

It is a country of incredible beauty and tremendous contrasts, extensively blessed with wonderful weather, rich soils, great resources and abundant water. It borders on both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. It is only two hours away by air to the biggest market and source of technology in the world, the USA.

In midst of the abundant beauty and resources, evil is rampant. This "garden of Eden" is kept from developing to its full potential by the curse of poverty, both materially and spiritually. In his book, Doing Business God's Way!, Dennis Peacocke, states that poverty is a disease of the spirit. In other words it is a disease deep-rooted in our hearts, minds, and souls, that becomes a way of life expressed by attitudes such as laziness, fear, envy, greed, disobedience, resentment, violence, dishonesty, corruption, idolatry, adultery to name a few.
To be able to eliminate poverty, we have to uproot it from inside of us and change. The moment we start our journey to a new life, we must renounce those harmful and sinful attitudes or we will find ourselves trapped in the same situation we are trying to escape. We have two options to accomplish this. We can either try to reform ourselves outwardly or we can allow God to take control of our life and reform us from inside.

"Jesus takes poverty out of people, not people out of poverty."--D.Peacocke

"Now the works of the flesh are....adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, wrath,... seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and the like........ But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control... "Galatians 5: 19-22