Biblical Prosperity

All of my life I had been thinking in terms of just getting enough to get by. For example, in the area where we live it is common to cover the flower beds around the houses with bark mulch to keep the weeds from growing. When I purchased bark mulch to put on the flower beds at our house, I would carefully measure out how many square feet of beds we had and figure how deep it should be covered and then order just the right amount. My intention was to purchase just enough. I didn’t want any extra; because I was afraid it would go to waste. I almost always underestimated and many times did not have enough to complete the task and had to make another trip to get more.

When I began to understand that my God was a God of more than enough, I started to order more mulch than I needed, asking God what He wanted me to do with the extra. Hmm…maybe my neighbor needs some? My thinking was changing.

This revelation of El Shaddai would not go away. I felt stirred in my heart to change the focus of my faith and expectation to El Shaddai. So I did. I prayed and asked the Lord for more than enough. The most amazing things began to happen. Literally within months our personal finances began to change. We began to have surpluses. We started to experience more than just having our needs met.

We find that not only was Abraham blessed, but he also passed the revelation of El Shaddai on to his children. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (and Joseph in a future blog).  In Genesis, we read the amazing story of Isaac prospering in Canaan during an extended season of drought and famine.

Now there was a famine in the land—besides the earlier famine of Abraham’s time…Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him. The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him (Genesis 26:1, 12-13).

After a year I could not keep this revelation to myself. I felt guilty for not telling people about what I had found in the scriptures and was experiencing in my personal life. I had to reveal God’s truth and revelation of His provision to others. To be very clear, the only thing we changed was our faith and expectation of how God was going to supply. I did not get an extra job. No one took an offering for us. We changed what we were expecting and what we were praying and our finances began to change. It was too good to keep to myself.

Bear with me here while I do a little teaching…Many people are already familiar with the names used to describe God’s attributes in the Bible. We have heard names like Jehovah Rophe (our healer) and Jehovah Nissi (our banner). Another one of the early names for God was El Shaddai. Abraham was the one who was first introduced to El Shaddai. Before we discover how God introduced himself to Abraham as El Shaddai, let’s examine Abraham’s first revelation of God. It is found in Genesis 12:1-3.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Here in Abraham’s original promise of God’s blessing is found what I have come to call prosperity with a purpose. This verse states that God will bless Abraham, and Abraham will be a blessing to others. This is still what He is saying to us today, “I will bless you and make you a blessing.” This general declaration of blessing becomes a whole lot more specific in Genesis 17:1-5 when God introduces himself to Abraham as El Shaddai.

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty (El Shaddai); walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.”

This term, “God Almighty” in verse one is the English translation of the term El Shaddai. Wherever we find the term “God Almighty,” it is speaking of the revelation of God using the Hebrew name El Shaddai.

Who is El Shaddai? My favorite definition and the one we will use…El Shaddai is the God of “more than enough.” “Enough” is that which is required to meet our needs. “More than enough” is having extra left over to meet the needs of others. The revelation of El Shaddai brought with it a pronouncement of fruitfulness and prosperity. You are blessed to be a blessing!

Calvin Chiew, from Washington, DC, USA had a desire to do more for God and for others around him. It was after he read my first book on finances that he started a business that has grown to employ others. In a recent conversation he was sharing how blessed he is to provide jobs for others who have lost their jobs because of an economic recession in the USA. He was blessed to be a blessing just like Abraham was. Here are his comments.

For me personally, the book “Prosperity with Purpose” couldn’t come at a better time.  It reclaimed the word “Prosperity” from the lies and misconceptions in me.  I’m a very driven person, probably due to my upbringing and family background.  As a Christian, I always thought there is something wrong with me, that I shouldn’t have this strong desire to succeed in life.  I thought a Christian should be content and stay “low key”.  I have a poverty mindset.

The book showed me that there’s nothing “low-key” about the God we serve.  There is nothing poor about our God.  He is “The Almighty”, “The Magnificent One”, and “The Many-Breasted One”.  I started to think and reflect upon His abundance.  Like a loving parent, He yearns to give good things to his children.  In fact, He is the giver of all good things.  I started to believe He is going to bless me.  And He did.

In the parable of the talents, the first two servants know the master’s heart and they prosper. The simple truth is, prosperity implies responsibilities.  Therefore, there is no shame in seeking and asking God for prosperity or success as long as we are aligned with Him.  Nehemiah prayed to God for success and asked King Artaxerxes for lumber, not only enough for the walls and gates of Jerusalem, but also for his own house.

The revelation of God that is explained in Prosperity With a Purpose is El Shaddai…the God of more than enough. 

My wife and I have always supported missions as a regular part of our budget. This has been our life-style since the first year of our marriage. Even before we were married, as singles we supported missionaries because we had a desire to see the gospel go to the entire world.

Over the years, we have endeavored to find ways to increase our giving, and a few years ago I had a “great idea” of how we could accomplish it. My brainstorm was for our family to eat rice and beans for a whole month and give the balance of the money we would save on groceries to missionaries. We had visited South America a number of times on mission trips and enjoyed eating rice and beans as the main food staple while there. I thought it would be a great project for us to do as a family and would model a giving life-style for our children. It seemed like a profoundly spiritual idea to me.

When I shared this deeply spiritual idea with my wife, she gave me an incredulous look and replied, “You can eat rice and beans for a month, but I am not, and I am not going to try and get our children to do it.” Quickly realizing that my great idea was not meeting my wife’s approval, I remember piously thinking how unspiritual she was and giving up on the idea. As I look back on this embarrassing incident, I would probably have made a good Pharisee that day.

It only hit me a couple of years later how much the spirit of poverty had affected my thinking. I literally wanted to take food away from my wife and children so that we could give a few extra dollars to missions. Just what was wrong with this idea? I discovered this to be a form of poverty thinking. Let me explain why.

I didn’t believe that God could supply more for us so that we could give more. In my thinking, we were limited to my paycheck. I looked at the income we had and saw that as a fixed ceiling rather than believing God for more money. So I wanted to take food from my children’s mouths and give it to missions. What picture of God (the Father) does that give to my children? It shows them He is a stingy Father, who gives us just enough or barely enough to survive. This is not a biblically accurate picture of God. I realized it was not right for me to show my children this tainted portrayal of God.

Thank God for my wife who could see this was not an appropriate course of action. Although it seemed so spiritual at the time, I should have been raising my faith to lift the ceiling and believe for more—lots more—not just a few dollars to give to missions. The truth is, I don’t want to give $5 more a month to missions. I want to give $50 more a month or $500 more a month. This revelation has helped us to increase our giving significantly.

To be clear the Christian life is one of self-sacrifice and surrender to His Lordship and our children need to see that modeled before anything else. How we spend our finances is part of that and obedience to His direction is essential. If God is directing you to save some money out of your budget by sacrificing something, then do it wholeheartedly. However, maybe you want to pray about increasing your inflow so you can give significantly more.

When my son was learning to play the trumpet we needed to purchase him one. If we bought the trumpet outright and paid for it in full, it would cost us $400. However, if we did not have the $400 and used the $20 per month payment plan the music store offered us we would end up paying $600 for the trumpet. The question is, “Do we want to pay $400 or $600 for the same trumpet?” Four hundred dollars of course!

This is an amazing truth to grasp. When you have money you can live on less! This leaves more money for what we really want to do with it; like give and be a blessing! We have to cross-over from living in lack to experiencing God’s abundance; it will allow us to accomplish more.

Could it be that we have more available to us in the area of financial provision than we have asked for? Listen to Paul’s words as he is writing to the Ephesian Christians. “I pray also 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 the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”1 Somehow the Ephesian Christians were missing part of their inheritance. Paul was praying for their eyes to be opened to it.

Is it possible that we, like the Ephesians, have missed part of our inheritance in Christ? Has the progress of our mission been slowed because we haven’t asked for the tools we need to complete it? Has the spirit of poverty blinded our eyes and kept us from even asking for the finances needed to do the job?

God has asked His church to fulfill the Great Commission. Would God ask us to fulfill the Great Commission and not provide the resources that we need to complete the job? I do not believe He would. It is against His nature, as I understand it from the scriptures, to frustrate and tease us by asking us to complete a job and then not give us the tools to accomplish that task. Money is simply a tool the church needs to complete its job description. As we examine the scriptures, we will find good reason to expect the financial provision needed for us to complete the task assigned to us.

As you read these blogs I hope that you are developing a healthy dissatisfaction with your level of income and your ability to finance God’s Kingdom at the level you would like. Dissatisfaction with the status quo is a very helpful first step to bring about change because it will generate desire and passion; which in turn will cause us to focus on solutions, which is what is offered in this book

The scriptures teach us in Timothy that godliness with contentment is great gain. I believe this means we should not complain about the place God has us in life. However contentment does not mean we should pick up the paralyzing animistic belief of fatalism; the idea our state in life is fixed and should not be improved. We should desire to advance and improve our life and the lives of people around us. It is a good and godly desire to prosper. It is good for you. It is good for your family. It is good for your neighborhood. It is good for the Kingdom.

Research shows that Christian women are 300% more generous than the average American. This is according to the National Christian Foundation website. In a nationwide study, over 7,300 women shared their opinions about why they give and why they don’t.

According to the survey, “Women own it, marry it, inherit it, earn it, save it, and spend it. As much as 90 cents on every dollar will pass through the hands of women. She inherits the family wealth: An estimated 70% of $41 trillion in wealth transfer will go to daughters. She receives the marital assets: The average age of a widow is 57. And she’s growing in personal earning capacity: 70% of women work outside the home, one in eleven working age women is an entrepreneur, and the majority of degrees are earned by women. Women are increasingly becoming the richer gender.

In a recent blog we discussed a wealthy woman who cared for the prophet Elisha. The Bible also talks about women traveling with Jesus and providing for him. We know one of them, Joanna,  was wealthy as she was married to Herod’s steward Chuza.

…The twelve were with Him, ² and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary who was called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, ³ and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who were contributing to their support out of their private means. Luke 8:1-3  NAS

The same survey indicated the #1 driver for generosity among women is personal spiritual discipline – As women grow in Biblical knowledge, their giving grows in lock step. Those that rated themselves as high on biblical knowledge gave an average 13.6% of income to charity.

You Go Girls!

http://www.nationalchristian.com/1351

In these posts you have read me referring to the spirit of poverty. I realize that not everyone is familiar with this terminology. Let me give some explanation. I call it a “spirit” and it is demonic but it is usually appears more as a pattern of thinking that is ingrained into our thinking, like a rut or groove from which we cannot escape. What is it and how can we identify it? Let’s consider what Darrow Miller, in his book Discipling Nations, talks about concerning patterns of thinking that define the existence of peoples around the world.

So why are people poor and hungry? Except for catastrophic events such as war, drought, or flood, physical poverty doesn’t “just happen.” It is the logical result of the way people look at themselves and the world, the stories they tell to make sense of their world. Physical poverty is rooted in a mindset of poverty, a set of ideas held corporately that produce certain behaviors. These behaviors can be institutionalized into the laws and structures of society. The consequences of these laws and behaviors is poverty. Those with a poverty mind see the world through the glasses of poverty. They say or their actions say for them, “I am poor. I will always be poor, and there is nothing I can do about it….”   

Rick Joyner, in his book Overcoming the Spirit of Poverty, takes this definition a step further. He states “the spirit of poverty is a stronghold established for the purpose of keeping us from walking in the fullness of the victory gained for us at the cross, or the blessings of our inheritance in Christ.” The accuracy and truth of this definition resonated inside of me when I read it.

The spirit of poverty is a specific and strategic obstacle from the enemy to keep us from growing and prospering. Is it more spiritual to be poor? I used to think it was. But the Lord has convinced me otherwise. I discovered that it does not take much faith to be poor and in lack. It seems to happen automatically. In fact, I started to wonder, “Is it really selfish and lazy for us to settle for just barely enough finances to meet our needs?”,  especially when we have the capacity and ability to raise our faith and believe for much more in order to advance.

Discipling Nations, Darrow L. Miller, (Seattle, WA: YWAM Publishing, 1998), p.67.

Overcoming the Spirit of Poverty, Rick Joyner, (Charlotte, NC: MorningStar Publications, 1996), p. 4.

Someone recently suggested to me the idea that function can sometimes follow form, though somewhat counter intuitive it is worth examination. In the Wall Street Journal this week (May 21, 2012) is an example of a steel mill in Burns Harbor, Indiana that was bankrupt in 2002 but is now in full production by twinning with a steel mill in Belgium and implementing Belgium technology.

In 2008, Burns Harbor was “twinned” with a hypermodern mill in Gent, Belgium. The weaker mill is ordered to copy the practices of the better mill, while the stronger is told to keep its edge. Over 100 U.S. engineers and managers were flown across the Atlantic and told: Do as the Belgians do. Change in technology became the core transition with Burns Harbor moving from 80% back and 20% brain power to 80% brain and 20% back power.

In an interesting twist of the traditional form follows function linear theory, a new form was imported and resurrected a function that was dead. As Miller (2012) states in his article:

“Burns Harbor now enjoys record output. Its furnaces…are run with software developed in Belgium. Robots are in. Pencils are out. Workers are learning to make the same amount of steel with nearly half the people it employed three decades ago. Productivity is nearing Belgian levels”.

Though often criticized as the destroyer of US manufacturing, in many cases globalization puts pressure on U.S. factories to become more efficient to keep up with global competition, making it possible for them to survive. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great describes Kimberly Clark’s decision to sell the mills and focus on consumer products as one that would pit them against “world class competition…and would force them to achieve greatness or perish” (pg. 20). Ultimately Kimberly Clark did achieve greatness and became one of Collin’s Good to Great companies. Though Kimberly Clark did this voluntarily, Burns Harbor was forced by bankruptcy, and a new owner, to compete globally and to survive. The jobs of 3,700 people were preserved.

Though the general pattern of form follows function will remain the standard, in some cases this is reversed and with great benefit.

References

Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great : Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t. New York (NY): Harper Business.

Miller, J. (2012). Indiana Steel Mill Revived With Lessons From Abroad. U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, May 21, pg.A1

C. Thomas Anderson is the founder and senior pastor of The Living Word Bible Church in Mesa, Arizona. He tells the story of a young man from his church who chose not to attend a wealth seminar they were putting on at the church.

“With a tone of superiority in his voice, he explained that he had not been to any of the sessions, because he was not interested in money. That wasn’t where God was leading him. Exactly twenty-four hours later he was back at the church with tears in his eyes, asking if the church could help with some money for his neighbor. A fire had destroyed everything she had owned and she was left destitute with several children to care for. Suddenly money mattered. If this young man had seen the importance of money in ministry somewhat earlier in his life, he might have been in a better position to minister to his neighbor without having to ask others who did care about money.”¹

In 2 Kings we find Elisha had a wealthy woman who took care of him so he could be effective in his prophetic ministry.

One day Elisha went to Shunem. And a well-to-do woman was there, who urged him to stay for a meal. So whenever he came by, he stopped there to eat. She said to her husband, “I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God. Let’s make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp for him. Then he can stay there whenever he comes to us” (2 Kings 4:8-11).

How could this woman and her husband add a room on to their house for the prophet? Simply stated, they had the financial means to do so. This arrangement was a blessing to Elisha and also to the well-to-do woman as she later had a son that was raised from the dead by the prophet. A proper perspective on finances will help us to have the resources needed to obey God when opportunities come our way.

1 Dr. C. Thomas Anderson, Becoming a Millionaire God’s Way, (New York: New York, Faith Words, Hachette Book Group USA, 2006), p. 19