How do we get to the full prosperity that God is calling us into? The prosperity that God calls us to achieve is never intended to be easy to come by. While that might seem frustrating, God wants to see our desire to prosper in order to make us prosperous. For instance, take a professional golfer. He works, and he practices, and he plays in tournaments in order to make a living for himself and his family. If he, or she, truly wants to be prosperous as a professional golfer than they need to put the work in. That means hours upon hours of work practicing and preparing in order to just try to make the cut to the weekend of a tournament so they even get a check to support their family. So how can we relate this to our everyday lives? We need to be diligent in what we desire in order to see God make us prosperous. Yes, God desires for us to be prosperous, but He doesn’t give it out freely without seeing us put forth the effort.
Consider the life of Solomon. 1 Kings 3:7-9 says, “Now, O Lord my God, You have made Your servant king instead of my father David, but I am a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And Your servant is in the midst of Your people whom You have chosen, a great people, too numerous to be numbered or counted. Therefore, give to your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?” Not only is Solomon asking for the wisdom to judge God’s people, but he is also asking for God to be patient with him while he learns the proper way to judge and rule them. What does that take for him to learn that? It takes practice. He is asking God to give him wisdom to practice and not to be judged WHILE he is practicing. Solomon desires to succeed above anything else, but he wants to please God while he is doing it. That is why God blessed him so much with all of the riches he eventually had.
Read 1 Kings 1-4. See how Solomon practiced the wisdom that he was given in order to become one of the greatest rulers that the world had ever seen. Understand the practice that he put into perfecting the wisdom that was granted to him and let’s all put that practice into our own lives in order to prosper in the way that God has intended for us!