fbpx

Day 21 – Prove Me Now!

We must keep going and move fully into God’s promises.  Unless we continually renew our minds and embrace a mindset to prosper, we can be captured in old ways of thinking and fail to move forward in God’s cycle of blessing.
  • We must go beyond our current levels of celebration and religious ritual.
  • We must go beyond our way of “poverty” thinking and enter into a “harvest-multiplication” thought mode! Poverty has a voice that says that God is not able. 
  • We must go beyond our debt mentality and know that the Lord can free us to accomplish His purposes.
Poverty Creates an Atmosphere!
The poverty spirit encircles you or your sphere of authority to create lack. No matter how much this spirit attempts to find a foothold in your life, this atmosphere can be invaded with the atmosphere of blessing and glory from heaven. Noah found favor in His eyes, and heaven and earth realigned during his day. We can find favor, and heaven can come into our atmosphere and defeat poverty. We can see His glory in our lives. Glory and wealth are synonymous.

The Body of Christ needs to see restoration in our provision!  Restoration is always linked with multiplication. Debt and past financial defeats in our lives need to reverse. A spirit of poverty that has held our generational bloodlines in captivity, keeping us from the fullness of the prosperity that God has for us, must be broken. The Lord is breaking begging off His people. He is making us a people of faith. He will change the identity of His people from beggars to kings! Ask Him to reveal poverty now. See how poverty works in your life.

Prove Me Now!
The book of Malachi is one of the most incredible transitional books that we find in the Bible.  When this book was written, the people of God had fallen into obsession.  Obsession is where we excessively preoccupy our mind in an attempt to change something, but never really enter into the fruit of the change.  We focus on one aspect of a many-sided paragon but never see the whole figure.  Religious spirits cause us to do this.  Some way or another, the people had a form of godliness but had lost the real understanding of God’s heart.  I believe giving is the very heart of God.  Giving is linked with worship, and we must recognize that the Son of Righteousness really cannot rise within us if we are not giving God His portion. If we are not doing this then we are not worshipping.  We cannot come into our new portion if we rob Him of His portion (Mal. 3:8).  God gave His best to us, so as we reciprocate and give thanks we must give our best to Him.  I want to encourage you to break into a new dimension of giving.  There are five distinct ways of giving that I discussed on Sunday.

  1. Firstfruits.  Look at your lump and give the Lord the best portion you can give Him.  Enter into the celebration of Rosh Chodesh.
  2. Tithes.  Tithing was an instituted covenant practice in the Old Covenant.  In the New Covenant, Yeshua Himself used the concept of tithing to show people where the treasure of their heart was. He addressed the Pharisees and said that tithing was the least they could do, and that they did it to the letter of the law. However, they were missing the greater portion of justice and goodness.
  3. Alms. We should all help those less fortunate than ourselves.  This is the year of being a Good Samaritan.  By giving alms, it insures you of receiving help if you are ever in need.
  4. Special and Memorial Offerings. I take every opportunity I can to give, remembering how the Lord has so brought me out of captivity and blessed me. There are often times when I hear someone speak, and I must give a special offering or memorial offering into the principles they are sharing, to thank God for doing that very thing in me.
  5. The final type of giving is what I want to encourage you to break into in your own life. Paul talks about Extravagant Giving.  I remember when the Lord liberated my wife, Pam, and me to enter into this incredible way of life.
In 2 Cor. 9:6-11, Paul says, Here’s my point. A stingy sower will reap a meager harvest, but the one who sows from a generous spirit will reap an abundant harvest. Let giving flow from your heart, not from a sense of religious duty. Let it spring up freely from the joy of giving—all because God loves hilarious generosity! Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything—every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.  Just as the Scriptures say about the one who trusts in him:
Because he has sown extravagantly and given to the poor, his kindness and generous deeds will never be forgotten. This generous God who supplies abundant seed for the farmer, bread for our meals, is even more extravagant toward you. First he supplies every need, plus more. Then he multiplies the seed , so that the harvest of your generosity will grow.  You will be abundantly enriched in every way as you give generously on every occasion, for when we take your gifts to those in need,it causes many to give thanks to God.”

Day 20 – Don’t Be So Overcome with Wealth that You Lose Sight of the Kingdom

Many times, when people talk or think about prosperity, all they think about is money or wealth.  Luke 18:24-30 says, “’How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ And those who heard it said, ‘Who then can be saved?’ But He said, ‘The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.’ Then Peter said, ‘See, we have left all and followed You.’ So He said to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life.’”  

I think, so many times, we get so immersed in questions like, “How are we going to pay our bills?”, “How can I make more money this year?”, and “Why isn’t God blessing me like He says He promises to?” that we tend to completely miss what God even means when He is talking about prosperity.  During one of the weekly prayer times we have been having, Justin Rana gave some great perspective into how the Lord views prosperity.  He said, “There’s a point that God wants us to get to.  We take all these steps in our lives and there’s a point of fullness that He wants us to get to.  Close your eyes for a second and just visualize the word fullness and what that means to you.  It may be a different picture for everybody.  If you can consider the most beautiful picture of creation — whether it’s a mountain scape or something like that — if you can look at that, and everything that God created, there’s a sense of fullness that comes over you because you can hardly contain what you are seeing. God desires for us to get that way. He wants us to be full of Him and His Spirit, and full in every way.  That’s really what a picture of prosperity looks like.”

I love what he said during that prayer meeting and I love how it can be applied to this passage in Luke.  We are a part of ALL the prosperity that God created and we are part of the covenant of prosperity that He established with Abraham.  That’s thousands of years of prosperity that God is trying to bring us into!  The prosperity He wants us to come into is one of the FULLNESS of His promise.  He doesn’t want to only give us a portion.  He doesn’t want us to only think prosperity is linked with wealth or money.  The fullness of His prosperity is the fullness of His creation and the desire He had when He created man.  Ask the Lord to clear your mind of all the distractions of this world and bring you into the fullness of prosperity that He desires for all of us to walk in!

Day 19 – Prosperity Lies Within Your Heart

We all know that God desires to prosper us.  He delights in seeing His children prosper and He delights in us giving Him praise for all that He has done in our lives.  So many times, we forget to thank Him for all that He does.  I know that I have forgotten to do that numerous times in my life, and when I do, I immediately understand why something hasn’t gone according to my plans, the next time I do it.  That is just a snare that the enemy has set for us.  He tries to tell us that when we have succeeded at something once, we don’t need to continue thanking God for it and we will continue succeeding at it.  That’s not the way it works.  In order to live in the full prosperity that God is calling us into, we have to shift our hearts to be perfectly in line with His.

In Matthew 6:19-21 Jesus says, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  What is Jesus trying to tell us?  Is He telling us that we aren’t meant to be prosperous or have an overabundance of what we need?  No, of course He isn’t!  He is telling us that there are many snares that the enemy has in place to distract us from what God has planned for our lives.  He is imploring us to put our faith, hope, and trust in God (whether we are wealthy or not) and we will be rewarded with everlasting life in Him.  He is saying that, although we are meant to prosper, we are not meant to put the earthly possessions or wealth or prosperity we have accrued ahead of the plan that God has for our life, which is eternity spent with Him.

Read Matthew 6.  Tell the Lord that you desire Him above anything else and walk diligently with Him to make your way prosperous.  God wants to see us prosper just as any father would want to see his children prosper.  It makes Him proud when we respect what He calls us to do and it makes Him even more proud when we honor Him by praising Him for what He has given us.  Align your heart with His and He will make your way prosperous!

Day 18 – Wisdom Gives Life

What is our ultimate goal in becoming prosperous?  That is a good question to ask ourselves while we are going through the discipline of pressing into a better understanding of prosperity.
  • Do we want wealth?
  • Do we want a long life?
  • Do we want a stronger spiritual connection with the Lord?
  • Do we want a healthy and prosperous family?
  • Do we need healing?
As we have discussed, prosperity covers an immense scope of possibilities.  God desires for us to be prosperous in ALL things, but He also will not let us forget that He is the reason we have everything we have gained.  We have to be diligent in our pursuit of Him in ALL that we do to see the prosperity that He gives us continue to be poured out.Solomon was not only one of the wealthiest men to ever live, but he was also the wisest man living in his time.  He was prosperous in everything that he did because of the wisdom that the Lord gave him.  However, he eventually got so blinded by wealth, women, false gods, and plenty of other things, that he started to turn his back on God.  Ecclesiastes 7:11-12 says, “Wisdom is good with an inheritance, and profitable to those who see the sun.  For wisdom is a defense as money is a defense, but the excellence of knowledge is that wisdom gives life to those who have it.” 

Solomon had everything (and a lot more) that anyone could ever desire.  Money, fame, fortune – almost anything imaginable.  However, he finally realized in his old age that those things weren’t as important as a life spent loving and honoring the Lord.  I love the passage, “But the excellence of knowledge is that wisdom gives LIFE to those who have it.”  That’s a pretty profound statement coming from someone that had everything!  Yes, God desires for us to be prosperous and for us to be wealthy and for us to have a happy family, but He doesn’t want us to get so caught up in those things that we forget about Him.  He is the reason we have all that we do, and He deserves the credit for anything we accomplish, whether we see it that way or not.

Ask God to give you the knowledge so that you can gain the wisdom that will give you life!  God desires us, not only to live full lives, but to live prosperous lives.  He longs for us to understand His wisdom that will bring us into the full prosperity that He desires for our life!

Day 17 – God Delights in Our Prosperity

God doesn’t always want to go to incredibly drastic lengths in order to get us to come into the place He desires for us.  Yes, lots of the stories in the Bible are very tragic, but that doesn’t mean that it always has to be that way.  Unfortunately, most of us (me for certain) are just too darn stubborn to get to our calling the easy way.  That is one thing that I love so much about the story of David.  Yes, David was full of faults and he did a lot of things wrong.  However, he never really complained about what he was going through.  He loved the Lord more than anything else in the world and all he wanted was for God to be happy with him.  David was a man that put the Lord above everything else.  If he messed up, he was quick to repent.  He worshipped the Lord every day and gave thanks to Him for all that He had done.  God loved David and delighted in blessing Him because of the obedience, love, and faithfulness that he showed the Lord.

Psalm 35:27-28 says, “Let them shout for joy and be glad, who favor my righteous cause; And let them say continually, ‘Let the Lord be magnified, who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant.’  And my tongue shall speak of Your righteousness and of Your praise all the day long.”  That is just an amazing picture of how God desires to bless us.  God delights in seeing us prosper!  He doesn’t want us to have to endure the trials and the tests that we go through all the time.  He desires for us to trust in Him and have faith in Him so that He can pour out His blessings on us unconditionally.

Spend time reading the Psalms and praising God for all that He does and continues to do for you.  Fill your atmosphere with a spirit of admiration for the Lord.  Let Him delight in the praise you are giving Him and begin to watch His blessings pour out on you!

X