“For the Lord God will help Me; therefore I will not be disgraced: therefore have I set My face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed” (
Isaiah 50:7).

Poverty is a form of paralysis.  People desire to get out of it but come against obstacles that restrain them.  Their bodies are able, but their minds are not.  Pain comes along with any life change.  We suffer when we let go of the familiar. Commitment requires a set mind that does not turn back to compromise and apathy.

Poverty of mind holds us back from abandoning the world to love God with all of our hearts.  The chains that bind us, clank within our minds, “I can’t do this” or “This will never work” or “What will my friends think of me.”  Like a man on a tightrope, we stop to teeter- totter to only fall to our destruction.

In 1 Kings 18:21, Elijah the prophet, asked God’s people, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.” Paralyzed they could not even answer him, desiring to worship two masters, the One true God and Baal who represented pleasure and convenience.

The spirit of this world is the spirit of Baal.  How long will you serve the world in religion and pretense and mediocre morality for pleasures, possessions, and positions? The people of Elijah’s day are no different than today.  Nothing was wrong with their body, but much was wrong with their mind.  Is your mindset like flint to follow the Lord or is it spinning its wheels giving you a slow death without direction, purpose, or power?