Biblical Prosperity

 If we have a scarcity mentality, it will lead to us just barely getting by and our finances will be scarce. We must understand from a Biblical perspective that God is a loving, abundant provider. His heart emerges so clearly as we read the Psalms. First we read that He delights in the prosperity of his servant.

Let them shout for joy and rejoice, who favor my vindication; And let them say continually, “The LORD be magnified, Who delights in the prosperity of His servant.” Psalm 35:27 NASB

So what does that mean…“He delights in the prosperity of his servant”? It means it makes Him happy to bless us financially. Instead of a scarcity mentality God wants us to have an abundance mentality. We also read in Psalms that God wants to give us the desires of our hearts.

Psalm 20:4May he give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed. You have granted him his heart’s desire and have not withheld the request of his lips. Psalm 20:4;21:2

Is this some kind of license for us to give God a list of our desires? Of course not…he wants to put his desires in our hearts and then he wants to fulfill them. So it might include something practical like a motorcycle or car for transportation but it is so much more. It is God’s dream and vision for our lives. So we shouldn’t just think in terms of a single item. That is way to small! We should think in terms of what we need to fulfill our destiny.

What about Jesus in Luke 10, he said the fields were white on to harvest. He saw the potential for abundance. More on this next week…

In his book Overcoming the Spirit of Poverty, Rick Joyner describes the spirit of poverty as a stronghold established to keep us from the fullness of victory gained at the cross or the blessings of our inheritance in Christ. Could it be that some of us are not fully receiving our inheritance in Christ?

Apparently this was true for the Ephesian Christians. Paul in writing to the Ephesians says he is praying for them “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people…”There was part of their inheritance they were not seeing. We will need all of our inheritance to fulfill our role as sons and daughters in the Kingdom. Sons and daughters have confidence and dominion because they are owners. But how do we get there?    

I have spoken about buying a Lily to help take dominion over financial worry. Why does a Lily help us overcome the spirit of poverty? It is because beauty feeds your soul. We will discuss more about this in upcoming blogs, but for now understand that beauty is one thing that helps us to have a prosperous soul. A prosperous soul has dominion over financial worry.

Psalm 131:2 describes this prosperous soul that is at rest as like a weaned child. “But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.”A spirit of poverty leaves you with the anxious feeling that your finances are out of control. The money just comes in and goes out. Here are some practical steps to take dominion over your finances:

(1) Understand what the tithe is and do it in faith. Give 10% to your local church.

(2) Deposit your money into a savings account and “own it” for a while before moving it into a checking account to pay bills.

(3) Pay a bill early.

(4) Set aside money so you can pick a small debt and pay it off. Then go celebrate.

(5) Buy a financial book and read it.

(6) Take Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University.

(7) Plant lilies around the front door of your house.

Take a practical step forward and take dominion over your finances today.

Don’t worry about money…is that really possible when money is so tied to everything we do? Possible yes…easy no. We have to go to the scriptures to at least see the possibility. Here is what Jesus had to say in Mathew 6:25-33. He actually addresses worry in regards to financial provision four times.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worryingadd a single hour to your life?  

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?^’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

How does this work in a practical way? Somehow we want to take dominion over our finances. Let joy replace panic; trust replace greed and peace replace worry. We want to take dominion over our finances. The spirit of poverty makes you feel like your finances are out of control. Let dominion over your finances replace that feeling that they are out of control. Jesus said…these things will be given to you.

Here is a practical method I learned from Harold Eberle. Go buy a lily and put it on your desk where you pay your bills. Serious. As you pay bills…look at the flower and let worry be gone in Jesus name. Another translation literally says, “Consider the lilies of the field.” This is not some new age experience. Jesus said to do it.

Go buy a Lily (or another flower depending on the nation where you live because lilies might not be native to your area).

I am still finding and deleting poverty thoughts from my mind. Just recently the Lord showed me some poverty thinking, things I believed, that I had to get out of my head. One way that poverty thinking gets in our heads is through the words of financial lack that others have spoken over us. We sometimes innocently believe and accept these words and it becomes a word curse that needs to be broken. For example a family member might say something like, “You will always work that same, dead-end job.” If we accept this and believe it, then it can become a limiting stronghold in our lives.

Also we tend to speak negative financial words over ourselves. We might say something like, “ I will never get a ahead. Everyone else seems to get a promotion at work but I am overlooked.” These words poverty thinking words need to be deleted and here is how we are going to do it. Let’s take some practical action with the following exercise. Get a piece of paper and lets get to work.

Ask the Holy Spirit to show you words of poverty thinking that you have spoken over yourself or others have spoken over you. Listen to the Holy Spirit and then write those specific words out as shown below. We want to cancel their effect and break their power. (Write them down and then draw a line through them, breaking their power in Jesus’ name! Sign and date.)

Ex: “I will always work this dead-end job!               

1.

2.

3

4.

These words have no power over me in Jesus’ name!

Date:

Name:

Next let’s replace those words. What words will you replace them with? See the example below.

Ex: “I will get ahead.” Ex: “I will get a promotion” or “I will do what it takes to get a better paying job.”           

1.

2.

3.

4.

Boldly say these words aloud right now! Do it!

Ask the Holy Spirit to teach you to prosper!

The apostle John said Biblical prosperity comes from deep within us, so we will prosper no matter what our situation, culture or circumstances. Literally…“prosper as your soul prospers”. Think of Joseph, he seemed to advance in whatever situation he was in because he had a prosperous soul. Our soul is deep within us and includes our thoughts of how we see the world and how we see ourselves.

For our soul to prosper we have to learn how to identify and replace poverty thinking with a more prosperous way of thinking. So our beliefs, our thoughts and our words will all agree with what God says about us and produce the fruit of prosperity in our life, including but not limited to our finances. We identify and eradicate poverty thinking that will hinder our destiny as well as our finances.

For example, we must be fully convinced that poverty is a curse. In Job 1:9-10 we see that the devil interrupted God’s blessing when he came on the scene. It was when Job was under attack from the devil that he was poor, sick, etc. Sometimes Christians get confused and think that it is more spiritual to be poor. If this were true, the nations mired in poverty such as India would be the most Christian and Godly places in the world. Instead we find India mired in the curse of Hinduism and pagan idols. One trip to India will convince you of the close association of dead religion, poverty, sickness and death.

If financial lack is our current situation we must understand that God wants us to advance out of it. In Genesis 1:28 God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply.  The spirit of poverty makes us feel trapped in our current situation. But God does want us to advance. If we have an advancing mindset (a prosperous soul) our current financial situation will change. Change your thinking. Renounce poverty and lack, and ask God to show you steps forward.

Our youth are constantly being bombarded with pro-socialist messages from Hollywood, the music industry, professional sports and their teachers and professors. In an August 2018 Gallup Poll, 51 percent of young people aged 18-29 said they have a favorable opinion of socialism, compared to just 45 percent who said they view capitalism positively. Despite mountains of historical evidence revealing the dangers associated with socialism support for Karl Marx’s collectivist ideas is still being discussed.

Why say “no” to socialism? As I have discussed in these blogs, it is unbiblical and ultimatley immoral. Let’s define socialism. It is the collective ownership and management of property. In a purely socialist society – an idea Karl Marx called “communism” – all or nearly all property is owned and managed by the collective. Under such a scheme, people have very little power over their own lives. Even their homes are owned collectively. Samuel warned the children of Israel about this when they were asking for a King. He said they would become slaves to the king. Self-responsibility, individual liberty and freedom to buy and sell are eliminated.

In the case of democratic socialism, this means that people are forced to live according to the desires of the majority. With this model in place, minorities don’t really have any rights. If the majority thinks people should live or work in a certain way, everyone is required to obey, even if it violates their deeply held beliefs. For example, in a socialist country, vegetarians would be required to be part owners in a slaughterhouse.

Charity and generosity, as taught in the Bible, is a better answer than government coercion. Socialist ideas are appealing because they genuinely want to help those who are suffering. Advocates of freedom do support helping others; they just don’t believe the government is best equipped to do it. Charity is morally positive, because it means people are voluntarily helping those in need. A society will either have big government and little people or little government and big people. Generosity brings a collective self worth to a community.

Why is money better in the hands of people than government? Socialism is just inefficient. In an effort to encourage firms to hire more workers, France imposed a 35-hour workweek to make overtime labor prohibitively expensive. However like most efforts to enslave free markets to government control, it ended up doing more harm than good. Now it’s the main barrier to hiring in a country where the unemployment rate is stuck north of 10%.

Source:

How to get your child to just say no to socialism by Justin Haskins. Feb. 3, 2019

This weekend is one of the most watched television events in the world. Over 100 million people will watch the Super Bowl, which is the championship game for American football. A team that appears in this championship game on a regular basis is the New England Patriots. So whether you like the Patriots or not (I do not) you still have to be impressed with their success and observe what can be learned from it that might positively affect us and our financial future. Since the early 2000s the Patriots have been to the playoffs 15 times, won nine conference championships and five Super Bowls. How can the Patriots be so good for so long? Delayed Gratification.

The Patriots learned years ago that other NFL teams display a high degree of impatience to win. They found that almost all NFL teams overconfidently believed they had a realistic chance to build a Super Bowl team immediately; to the point that during the draft of new players from college teams, they anxiously traded to get higher round picks. To do this they agreed to give up high draft picks in future years. For example, a team wanting a second-round pick in a given year’s draft would be willing to give up a first-round pick in the next year’s draft.

To give a real life example to illustrate this for those of you around the world that are not familiar with American Football, in 2012 the Washington Redskins desperately wanted a college quarterback from Baylor University, Robert Griffin III. They acquired the No. 2 overall pick in the draft to get him by giving the then St. Louis Rams four very high-value draft picks over three years—first-round picks in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and a second-round pick in 2012. Mr. Griffin played only three seasons for the Redskins before suffering a series of injuries and is no longer with the Redskins.  The trade left the Redskins in a hole for many years, without draft picks to sign new talent. Can you picture Esau trading his birthright for a hot bowl of soup when he was hungry?

A smart NFL front office could exploit the other teams’ impatience by systematically trading higher-round picks for more, lower-round ones and the current year’s picks for higher-value ones in future years. The Patriots head coach Bill Belichick used this insight by trading down first-round draft picks in seven of the 18 NFL drafts during his tenure with great success as stated.

I call this delayed gratification. The will to give up short-term “feel good” moments for long-term success or simply stated, giving up short-term reward for long-term reward. So for someone in Africa this means not buying a new suit with the proceeds of their corn harvest and instead buying a cow what will provide income for years. After ten years this person can buy as many new suits as they want. For others in the Western world it might mean not spending all their income and saving 10% to invest for future income. Perhaps forgoing the cost of a vacation and investing that amount of money to have the possibility of many vacations in the future or as Christians to have the possibility to give more in the future.

This is a practical, Biblical financial insight that will bring you prosperity.

Source:

Behavioral Economics May Make Champs of the Cleveland Browns…Following the advice of an academic paper, the team improved from 0-16 in 2017 to 7-8-1 last year.By Jon Hartley. Feb. 1, 2019 Wall Street Journal

Doctors speak about good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. Some people say there’s a good kind of socialism, democratic socialism that is different from the bad kind, the Marxist-Leninist variety. Let’s take a look at that claim.

Socialists are hazy on the details of a socialist economy. The first step is “state ownership of certain industries.”  Democratically elected workers supposedly would decide what to make and what prices to charge. Would you prefer to buy goods at state-owned stores and eat at state-owned restaurants? Something inside of us knows that we would not be happy with this.

The more the government interferes in the market, the less competitive an economy will be. Let me give and example. Let’s say there was one phone company making phones instead of the two major companies we have now…Apple and Samsung. One state owned company would not be pushed by a competitor to make better phones or at a cheaper price. I think intuitively we know this is true. If the state owns corporations, there is no competition, only rivalries among people with political power.

Contemporary democratic socialists have a concrete agenda: They want to eliminate capitalism. The Democratic Socialists of America say: “In the short term we can’t eliminate private corporations, but we can bring them under greater democratic control. In the long run, democratic socialists want to end capitalism.”

What democratic socialists don’t realize is that a strong market economy is a necessary condition for freedom. Democratic socialism is a contradiction in terms. In relations to oft mentioned Sweden as example, “Sweden allows property and profits,” notes economic historian Deirdre McCloskey. “It allocates most goods by unregulated prices.” The U.S. bailed out General Motors, butSweden didn’t rescue Volvo or Saab.

Don’t get me wrong…capitalism as we see it in the Bible must have a soft, social side to it. Capitalism needs to be applied with compassion. Some social responsibilities can be delegated to the government, but history tells us the family, church and individuals who are successful at applying the principles of capitalism will always carry on the most effective social programs.

We should cultivate a Biblical society that values free individuals impacting society for the benefit of all.

Source:

The Fantasy of ‘Democratic Socialism’ If the state controls the economy, competition is replaced by rivalries among politicians.Miller. S. Wall Street Journal Oct. 26, 2018

Nearly half of millennials say they prefer socialism to capitalism, but what do they mean? Generally is stated as what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland and in Sweden.

To take a look at Sweden we find they are moving away from the socialism once championed. Sweden’s experiment with socialist policies was disastrous, and its economic success in recent decades is a result of free market-based reforms.

Bear with me as we look as some shocking numbers…until the mid-20th century, Sweden pursued highly competitive market-based policies. By 1970 Sweden achieved the world’s fourth-highest per capita income. Then increasingly radical Social Democratic governments raised taxes, spending and regulation much more than any other Western European country. Economic performance sputtered. By the early 1990s, Sweden’s per capita income ranking had dropped to 14th. Economic growth from 1970 to the early 1990s was roughly 1 percentage point lower than in Europe and 2 points lower than in the U.S. In actuality these socialist, command-and-control economic policies undermined Sweden’s prosperity.

In 1991 a market-oriented government came to power and undertook far-reaching reforms. Policy makers privatized parts of the health-care system, introduced for-profit schools along with school vouchers, and reduced welfare benefits. To increase incentives to work, Sweden reduced unemployment benefits and introduced an earned-income tax credit in 2007. The electricity and transportation industries were deregulated in the 1990s, and even the Swedish postal system was opened up to competition in 1993. The corporate tax rate was cut from its 2009 level of 28% to 22% today, and is scheduled to decline to 20.4% in 2021.

The result? Since 1995, Swedish economic growth has exceeded that of its European Union peers by about 1 point a year. Sweden is now richer than all of the major EU countries and is within 15% of U.S. per capita GDP.

What is happening in Brazil?

A few weeks ago Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s 36th president. The new president made promises to shrink a monster, centrally governing state that devours the dreams of people. Mr. Bolsonaro won because he promised to abandon socialism. It goes to the heart of what Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises called “human action.” Brazilians are demanding their basic rights to property and life. The new president pledged reforms to open the economy, privatize and deregulate, and rein in government spending.

Brazil has let go a primal scream for freedom. One person said, ‘Socialism just didn’t work out around here.’ A nation wants to try something new and to enjoy freedom for economic opportunity.

Sweden and Brazil are moving away from socialism to a more Biblical approach to their economic development.

Sources:

How Sweden Overcame Socialism. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde and Lee E. Ohanian. Wall Street Journal. Jan. 9, 2019 7:06 p.m. ET. Mr. Fernández-Villaverde is a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ohanian is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of economics at UCLA.

Brazil’s Primal Scream…‘Socialism just didn’t work out around here.’ A nation wants to try something new.Mary Anastasia O’Grady. Wall Street Journal. Jan. 6, 2019.

Permit me to introduce a term that many Christians consider to be a selfish, secular term—financial independence. Let’s define “financial independence” as having the resources on hand that will be needed to obey God’s voice. Too many times we have dismissed or not taken seriously the visions and ideas God has given to us because we do not see a way for them to be financed. Our excuse for not obeying God is a helpless, “That would be great, but we can’t afford it.” It is essential that we permanently delete the words “we can’t afford it” from our vocabulary. These words should be replaced with a positive petition, expecting God’s provision, by asking instead, “How is God going to provide?”

Let’s look at Noah, when God asked Noah to build the ark, He was at a place in his life of sufficient resources to obey. He was financially independent. There are no scriptures indicating Noah awakened one day and the ark was miraculously finished. There is no record of ravens flying in with pre-cut gopher logs to be fitted into place. The ark was built with manual labor over a period of years. Actually, it seems like Noah did not work on the ark much himself because he was busy preaching. So either his family or hired laborers constructed the ark.

It took significant financial resources for Noah to obey God. Could it be that God wants to provide for us in a similar way? I believe He desires that we have the resources on hand to accomplish His purposes as He reveals them to us.

A similar example from the New Testament is that of Joseph from Arimathea. He was a rich man, a member of the Sanhedrin, who was a disciple of Jesus. Joseph was ready and available when called upon to take Jesus’ body and give it an appropriate burial in a rich man’s tomb that had never been used before. This was significant because in Bible times, tombs were used multiple times. His availability and his financial resources played an important role in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the unfolding of the kingdom of God.