Prosperity and abundance are God’s will for every area of our lives—including the area of finances.
God wants His people to live free from lack and poverty, but we need to learn prosperity from a godly perspective. When we learn to prosper God’s way, we will experience supernatural increase and become a channel of blessing to those around us.
The prosperity message has been used and abused by some for personal gain, but we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because someone is poor doesn’t mean they are godly, and just because someone is rich doesn’t mean they are ungodly.
Make no mistake; God wants you to prosper so you can accomplish His will and so you can be a blessing to others. You can’t do either if you’re broke! No one in the Bible ever said, “I would have done the will of God, but I just couldn’t afford it!”
The first step into a life of abundance is to believe that abundance is God’s will for your life. Before you got saved, you had to be convinced it was God’s will. Before you can be healed, you must know it’s God’s will, and it’s the same with abundance. If you don’t believe God wants it for you, you will never have it.
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” —2 Corinthians 8:9
Many mistakenly believe the above scripture is talking about spiritual riches, and on a deeper level, that may be true, but in context, Paul is definitely talking about money.
Some people also think prosperity is wrong, then they do all they can on their own to make money! If prosperity is wrong, why go to work?
However, Jesus did caution us about greed:
“And He said to them, ‘Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.’” —Luke 12:15
Paul cautioned Timothy about it as well:
“But those who crave to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish (useless, godless) and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction and miserable perishing.” —1 Timothy 6:9 (AMPC)
We often hear, even from unbelievers, that money is the root of all evil. They are actually misquoting 1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil….”
It’s the love of money that is the problem. Money itself is neither good nor evil. It’s what we do with it that makes the difference. All the lusts of the flesh can be purchased with money, but none of the gifts of God or the blessings of redemption can be bought with money. So, we always need to keep our hearts pure in our desire for abundance and keep its godly purpose in mind—to bless others and do good things.
God gives us both seed to sow and bread to eat. In other words, money to give and money to supply our own needs. One reason people live paycheck to paycheck is they eat all their seeds. If we don’t sow or give some of what God gives us, we will never live in abundance.
“Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness, while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God.” —2 Corinthians 9:10-11
Abundance is the result of our giving, and giving is the result of our abundance. The two are dependent on each other: We give so we can have, and we have so we can give. And the more we give, the more we will have. This is how God designed it.
“Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.” —Luke 6:38
Abundance means a great or plentiful amount, and plentiful means existing in great quantity or ample supply.
The purpose of abundance is to be a channel of supply for others. Acts 20:35 (ESV) says, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Therefore, we must go from being just a consumer to being a producer. Believing for more to give is right and holy. It’s God’s plan.
Our God is a god of abundance, and we only need to look at what He created to see that He is El Shaddai—Most Powerful, All-Sufficient One—God of more-than-enough!
“The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known.”—Psalm 19:1-2 (NLT)
Here are a few facts to help us just begin to grasp how big our God is:
- The earth is 93 million miles from the sun, and the sun is 1,000,500 times larger than the earth.
- If you were to travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, you could circle the earth seven times in a couple of seconds, and it would take 8 minutes and 19 seconds to get from the earth to the sun.
- It would take 5 hours and 31 minutes to get to Pluto, which is 3,675,000,000 miles from the sun.
- To get to the nearest star that’s within our own galaxy, Alpha Centuri, it would take four years and four months.
- There are 100 billion stars in our own galaxy, and there are 100 million galaxies like our own within known space.
- Known space is only 1 billionth of actual space—all together 10 to the 28th power (something like all the grains of sand in the world).
- There are over 70 million species of animal life and over 30 million species of plant life on the earth.
God created all this abundance, gave us dominion over it all and told us to be fruitful and multiply! (Gen. 1:26-28) Why?
The Word shows us that God is a god of multiplication, and we are created in His image. The principle of multiplication is all throughout the Bible. We saw it in 2 Corinthians—He multiplies our seed sown, in the loaves and the fish (Mk. 6), in Elijah and the widow woman (1 Kings 17) and Elisha and another widow (2 Kings 4).
Poverty is a curse, and prosperity is a blessing, as we see in Deuteronomy. Prosperity comes through obedience (Deut. 28:2) and poverty through disobedience (Deut. 28:15). And while we live under the New Covenant and Christ has redeemed us from the curse (Gal. 3:13), the way to keep the channel of supply open is to be in the will of God, and that takes obedience.
Chronic lack is not God’s will. Many times, chronic lack is a sign that someone is out of the will of God. Finances and obeying God go hand in hand, and no amount of money can make up for disobedience.
Godly prosperity isn’t like winning a lottery—one day you’re poor and the next day you’re a multi-millionaire. That’s not healthy and can have devastating effects. It comes more and more (Psa. 115:14), rather than coming all at once like winning the lottery.
However, you can use the principle of sowing and reaping to accelerate increase in your life. This allows each of us to start where we are. A farmer doesn’t get his entire lifetime of harvest in one year. It increases as he is able—as will godly prosperity.
God is the One who has given us the ability to get wealth (Deut. 8:18), and it’s His desire for us to prosper just as you would want your own children to prosper. He wants to bless us:
“The blessing of the LORD makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.” —Proverbs 10:22
He wants to bless us so we can have an abundance to carry out His will on this earth and be a channel of blessing to those around us:
“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” —2 Corinthians 9:8
There is so much more to say on this, and I cover it in my new teaching and my new book by the same name, Godly Prosperity. Get your free MP3 audios or streaming videos!
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