“Micah replied, “Stay with me and be my father and priest, and I will give you four ounces of silver a year, along with your clothing and provisions.” So the Levite went in and agreed to stay with the man, and the young man became like one of his sons. Micah consecrated the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in Micah’s house. Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will be good to me, because a Levite has become my priest.”” Judges 17:10-13 CSB https://bible.com/bible/1713/jdg.17.13.CSB

Micah wanted life to go well for him. No doubt Micah wanted a pain free and prosperous life. Everyone wants this kind of life. How do we go about trying to get this life? Micah bought a priest, a Levite, a religious guy and in this way assumed God would bless him. People use religion, giving ten percent, attending church, helping the poor, all good things in their own way, to manipulate God to give them the blessed life. What are you doing, what is your ‘work’ that you hope will manipulate God to bless you? Here’s the truth. The blessed life is not this life. In this world you will have trouble but Jesus promises to be with us in this world. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t bless us, it just means that we cant manipulate Him into giving us a blessed life when He Himself did not live that way among us nor does He promise that life to us now. Jesus, God Himself, lived in obscurity, lived poor, lost His earthly father as a teenager, then was crucified and murdered by men by age 33. Hardly the blessed life. Most of the world does not live the blessed life but a difficult life. The world is broken, that is why our lives are hard which should cause us to seek God for the blessed life to come which is promised by God in Jesus the Savior to all those but only those who humble themselves in this life, deny themselves, and obey His commands which is to love others so that all others are reconciled to God and receive the promise of a blessed life to come.