Success and Spiritual Growth

I wanted to expound upon a friend's comment during the financial crisis that "A lot of people lost tons of money--probably good for their spiritual lives," in the previously posted "Financial Meltdowns and Moral Hazards".

I hate to say it, but I absolutely have seen an inverse correlation between my own success and my spiritual discipline. My heart is deceptive that it overrides my intellectual knowledge of my constant reliance upon God with the belief that things are good and I can handle things by myself. There's a reason why Jesus said that "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19), and a large part of that is that the illusion of self-sufficiency pulls people away from the Gospel, which is at its core a humbling message that we actually need One outside of ourselves. At least I'm in good company - the Israelites frequently fell into disobedience and rebellion in times of plenty. The bad news (or maybe it's good news) is that God often brought them back though loving discipline through a brutal foreign occupation or similar attention-getting event. But that's sometimes what we need, isn't it? If I'm honest with myself, many of the greatest times of spiritual growth have been in the midst of intense emotional hardship, when I am figuratively and literally face down on my knees in surrender.

As an old InterVarsity staff worker friend once mused to me, "Don't you hate it when you ask God to break you and He does?"