Sometimes I feel sorry for God. I really do. I mean, think about it. Here is the Creator of the universe, the Maker of everything, and He just can't seem to get His creation to think good things about Him! Everywhere you go, people are always blaming Him for something.

It seems like God has gotten a bad rap for centuries. Throughout time, He has been lied about, labeled and criticized. He's been blamed for everything from catastrophes and sickness to death and poverty. Rarely do we hear anything good about God.

Why do you think that is? Is it because God really does cause destruction, disease and poverty? Or do you think that perhaps the people who say He's doing these things really don't know Him at all?

As you might have guessed, I'm of the opinion that those who bad-mouth God don't know Him at all. They may know about God, but they don't know God. Knowing God and knowing about God are two totally different things. You can know about God simply by being raised in a Christian home or reading a couple of chapters from your Bible each night. You can know even more by going to church every time the doors swing open or enrolling in a good Bible college. These things will guarantee that you know about God. But they won't guarantee that you'll really ever know God. And that is what you need to do if you want to see any manifestation of His power in your life.

Knowing God doesn't just mean being "saved," which is the modern-day Protestant church's terminology that means you've accepted God's redemptive plan and have accepted His Son, Jesus, as your personal Savior and Lord. If you are to really know God you must spend time with Him, and not just in mindless lip service, but in real communication. If a real relationship is ever going to form, communication has got to be two things: frequent and fluent. And that is where most people who think badly of God go wrong. They might pray frequently, but it's rare that they have conversation that could be called fluent.

In fact, over my 20 years of ministry I've found that people who have a bad opinion of God usually don't have that fluent communication with God. Sure, they're good people. And they're praying good prayers. But the reason why they don't succeed in having what God's Word says they can have is this: they don't have real, biblical hope... and because of that, they aren't able to exercise faith.

Now, I know that is strong. And I promise you that I am not cutting "good people" down. But, hope is critical. Hope is "earnest expectation" that God can and will do what He said. It comes before faith. It paves the way for faith. It's the preparation for faith. Without it, faith can't emerge. And faith is what makes things happen!

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1).

Faith is so critical because it works things out in the supernatural realm so that the answer to your prayer can come to fruition in the natural realm. In essence, faith moves God's hand on your behalf. Nothing pleases Him more than when His creation believes Him.

Frequent and fluent communication with God will help you to know God. So if you're thinking that God is too majestic and powerful to talk to "little old me," you're stifling your own ability to hear God's voice. Get into your Bible and study. Find out what God has to say about prayer, about communicating with Him. It'll be enough to blow your mind! Prayer is a whole other book entirely!

If you don't find out what the Bible says about communication with God, if you don't search to know God, then you'll only have your own ideas about God to go on. And you want to go deeper than that.

So Who Started the Rumors?
So who started all this bad talking about God? Who gave everybody the crazy idea that God is out to give us sickness and poverty to teach us something? Well, think about who started the first rumor on earth. You know who it was. The devil! Satan started the first rumor by lying to Eve about God's plan. I can just hear the devil saying, "Go ahead and take a bite, Eve. You won't die! God just doesn't want you to eat it because if you do, you'll know as much as He does." There you have it, rumor numero uno: God is a liar and He wants to deceive you to keep you under His thumb.

Did God ever give Adam and Eve the impression that He was like that? No! Never! God set them in the most lush and beautiful garden on the whole earth. He let Adam name everything alive and then visited the both of them just about every afternoon. He was not only their Father, He was their best friend!

Does that sound like a scheming, poverty-loving, sickness-embracing god to you? Does that sound like a cruel, evil god to you? Of course not! It sounds more like a loving and generous God who likes seeing His children enjoy His creation.

The devil started a rumor about God. Eve bought the lie and bit the fruit. She gave the fruit to her husband. He ate and they both died spiritually that day. Until Jesus shed His precious blood, everybody born inherited their spiritual death.

But God had a plan! His only Son, Jesus, came to earth and died on the cross a sinless and blameless man. As the supreme sacrifice for the sins of the world, Jesus' redemptive and life-giving blood enabled every person on earth to be washed clean in God's sight! Once we receive (or accept) Jesus as our personal Savior and Lord, we can come back into right standing with God! We can once again experience what God originally intended! Except now, there is a twist.

The Twist
The twist is that we're not in the garden anymore. We're still living in a world run by Satan until we die or Jesus comes back, whichever comes first. We live in this world as lights in a dark place (Eph. 5:8). Because that is what the world still is: a dark place.

There are still people who haven't heard the Good News. There are still people searching for the answers to life that can only be found through Jesus. If there weren't, we'd just die and go to heaven right after accepting Jesus because there would be no use for us here on the earth. But there is a use, a purpose, for us and it is the most important of all. What is it? Spreading the Good News about God and His plan of redemption through Jesus! Letting people know that God is good and His mercy endureth forever! But how can we spread the Good News if we're not sure that God is even good? How can we bring in the light if we're barely shining?

It's time to put the lies and rumors of Satan to rest... to lay aside tradition and find out the truth... to stop pointing the finger at one another and start pointing our finger to the originator of all lies. And who might that be? Go ahead, say it out loud: the devil! What a creep.

Why Would Satan Even Care?
The devil and his demons continue to be the sole rumor-starters about God on this earth. They lie about everything to anybody who will listen. But over many centuries they've learned to be cunning about it, and disguise many of their lies. They've gone so far as to even get some of their lies in the church. Satan has gotten people believing all kinds of negative trash about God so that he can keep them down in the dumps all the days of their lives. He's got preachers teaching that God sends sickness.

Why? So that you won't believe God for your healing, and consequently will live defeated, which is a slap in the face to Jesus who died on the cross to take on sickness! Remember, Satan doesn't really care about you. I hate to break it to you but, on your own, you aren't that important to him. In fact, he probably wouldn't even mess with you if you weren't God's creation. See, it's God he hates. And it's God who he's trying desperately to get back at.

So, what will he do about it? He'll try to destroy God's people - that's you and me - by tying our hands in this life, to make the Gospel message ineffective to the rest of the world who might be won to God otherwise. And what would be the best way for the devil to do that? Get into the church system. Get church folks to do his dirty work.

One of the biggest lies Satan spreads is about prosperity. He's been working on that one forever. Why do you think it's such a hot topic among Christians?

He's been trying to nip prosperity in the bud for centuries. If you look to the Bible you'll find out why. Deuteronomy 8:18 says, "But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day."

Establishing God's covenant (getting the Gospel message out) is an expensive venture. Why is it so expensive? Because we were also given the command in Mark 16:15 to Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. Going into all the world takes bucks!

So, what do you think is the first thing the devil is going to do about those Christians who take Deuteronomy 8:18 and Mark 16:15 seriously? He's going to try to stop them! He'll try to stop you from succeeding financially so that you can't establish God's covenant within the earth. Because the devil knows that if you could, you would! Makes sense, doesn't it? Better yet, that devil had a plan to make poverty religious! Can you believe it? He actually sold the lie that it's holy not to have and prideful to have! What a load of bunk!

It is almost comical when you hear it put that way, isn't it? But truth is truth: the devil is a con artist. And he is trying to con you out of every blessing Jesus has died to give you. One of them is prosperity, both spiritual and financial. In fact, that idiot has your money right now. Yeah, that's right. According to Proverbs 13:22, the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. So he has your money. He's spending it right now. And that's not funny!

Source: God is Not Enough, He's Too Much! by Jesse Duplantis
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers