[presently no screen name]

particularly with some folks along some of these lines and issues.

Possibly, but I was addressing Kandy. When one knows Him, one knows HE doesn't hold one good thing back from His children. However, we can get tangled up with receiving it. Not that we can, we do. And there HE is, again, helping us with that if we let Him.

[boatbums]

When one knows Him, one knows HE doesn't hold one good thing back from His children. However, we can get tangled up with receiving it. Not that we can, we do. And there HE is, again, helping us with that if we let Him.

Scripture says, "No good thing shall he withhold from those who walk uprightly". Sometimes, in God's time frame, sickness, want, need, suffering IS the "good thing" for us at that time. It is ALWAYS for our best, He works all things for good. Don't shortchange God.

[Quix]

TRUE. TRUE.

[metmom]

When one knows Him, one knows HE doesn't hold one good thing back from His children. However, we can get tangled up with receiving it. Not that we can, we do. And there HE is, again, helping us with that if we let Him.

Indeed, that is true, however, neither does any parent who wants to raise mature, disciplined children cater to every whim and demand the children make on them.

God not withholding any good thing from His children does not equate to holding God hostage to giving us what we want because WE think it's good for us.

Luke 11:13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

The good gift that God gives us is the Holy Spirit. Nothing else matters in comparison. But if God becomes nothing more than a giant pez machine, dispensing *good thing* (as WE think they are) to us on demand, well, any child raised like that becomes a spoiled brat with entitlement mentality, and that is EXACTLY what I've seen so many Christians in churches becoming.

The problem is is that materialism has become so rampant in the church today that people think they're entitled to perfect lives here on earth, that they have to have prosperity and health, and think that all that counts is physical comfort and physical blessing. They have totally lost sight of the spiritual aspect of it with their soul prospering.

When I said to a friend once that I considered this eating issue like the refiner's fire and that I saw it as something God was using in my life to draw me closer to Him, she said, "No, no, no, no,....." and rebuked that kind of thinking in typical name it and claim it fashion. That was until she went through her own health crisis and saw what God did in her through that instead of instantly healing her as she was demanding and *claiming*.