Envy and Jealousy

The next thing that comes in is envy and jealousy. You say things like,

"You know she is just so lucky. Just look at her; everything goes her way. Whatever she does prospers. People just fawn all over her. They think she is wonderful and they just throw money at her feet. She's so lucky. I wish I had what she had."

Or you say, "I wish I had what he had. Wouldn't it be nice to have the kind of car that he drives?"

Then we take it to an extreme and we have what is called 'keeping up with the Jones's'.

You say, "We are living in this community where everybody is driving a Mercedes and I am still riding a bicycle."

You say, "I'm driving this clapped out little car because I am poor. You know it is making me look bad. I need to just get something good so that people will at least respect me and look to me."

All of these things are caused by envy and jealousy. We just allow it to build up in our hearts.

And we know that it is sin so we don't admit it. But our hearts and minds deceive us and we can't help it. We turn green with envy when we see someone getting something that we have always wanted.

Then we get spiritual about it and say,

"Well they are unbelievers and they can have it. They have their wealth. I will have mine in heaven one day when I walk the streets of gold."

You won't need it then. You need it now because God has called you to do something. He has called you to be a shining light in this world and to extend His kingdom in the earth, and you are not going to do it in poverty.

Strife and Vainglory

The other negative thing that comes in so subtly is what the Bible calls strife and vainglory. The Scripture says,

Let nothing be done through strife and vainglory.

Those are old English words, but they basically mean this. Strife is when you see someone else holding a position that you want. Then in your mind you want to pull them down and take their place.

You say, "I hope he gets fired so that I can get his job."

That is strife and vainglory.

Or you say, "I hope they kick that deacon out so that they can promote me to deacon."

We keep seeing ourselves as having to push somebody out of the way before we can step into their place.

But you know there is enough to go around for everybody. We don't have to make other people poor so that we can become wealthy. There is more than enough in this world for all of us to become wealthy.

But you see your poverty mentality has made you think,

"Well she's just lucky. She has it and it is just not fair because she doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't have what I have. I think that I should be up there and not him."

Watch out for these things. They come so subtly, even to you as spiritual as what you are.

They will catch you unawares, and before you realize it you will find yourself talking negatively about somebody else. And really the main reason you are talking negatively about them is because you wish that you were in their position.

Satan has you under his control. He has taken your eyes off the Lord and got you into sin. The moment he does that he has you in his clutches. And he will give you exactly what he plans for you, not what God has planned for you.

Fear and Worry

And then we have these very subtle forces called fear and worry that we try to make excuses for.

We say, "You know I can't help it, I'm afraid because I have really had some bad experiences in life. And you know I'm just afraid it is going to happen to me again like it did before."

Who would ever think that fear was sin, but the Scripture says,

Fear not.

So if you disobey His command that is sin, right?

You say, "How can fear be a sin? I can't help it. I never caused the fear. It is what happened to me."

You see fear comes as a result of looking back on past experiences and allowing those experiences to stop us from moving forward.

The other force is worry, which is slightly different even though it seems very similar. Worry is anticipating the problems that are going to come tomorrow when they haven't even arrived yet.

You say, "I am not going to reach out and start this new business, because what happens if it crashes? What happens if everything goes wrong and if nobody buys?"

You can have two different attitudes. The one person can look at the state of the economy, wring their hands and say,

"What if we all get poor?"

Another person can be waving their hands and saying,

"What if we all get rich?"

Fear and worry will steal and incapacitate your soul so that you can't use it to be produce.

You see fear will paralyze you. Worry on the other hand will get you doing nothing today, because you are busy trying to solve tomorrow's problems that haven't arrived yet. So you actually don't do your work for today.

Worry will produce laziness and will make you unproductive.

Bitterness

Then there is one that very few people will admit they have a problem with. It is called bitterness. They say things like,

"I am not bitter. I'm just disappointed. I'm just a little upset but I'm not really bitter."

The moment you speak negatively about someone else or have an attitude against other people the Bible calls it bitterness, and bitterness is a sin.

It doesn't stay there though does it? We get bitter against people because they are wealthy and we are not. We get bitter against people because of what they did to us and about how they stopped us from walking in blessing.

Eventually, because our bitterness is not accomplishing anything, we take it and point it upwards. We aim it at the Lord because it was His fault. We start to say,

"Why did He allow this? Why did He allow those people to do that to me? Why has God not done anything? God where are you? I've tried to serve you and you have done nothing!"

Then you say, "I can't understand why I am battling financially."

You have bitterness in your heart. And you just gave Satan all the license that he needs to steal every blessing that God has for you, just like he did in the Garden of Eden.

Satan's Demonic Forces

Satan has demons that he uses to steal from us. We looked at the origins of sickness and disease and saw that there are spirits of infirmity associated with it.

In the same way there are demons that are specifically designed to make us go poor and to go without the provision that the Lord has for us.

Sometimes God gives me pictures in the Spirit and I see these demons portrayed in different ways. In the past I have seen two different spirits of poverty and lack that I want to share about very quickly.

The Michelin Man Spirit

The first one I saw looked like a great big bloated creature. He kind of looked like an ad that has existed for years by Michelin tires.

Have you ever seen the logo of Michelin tires? It is a picture of a little man made up of tires. There is a big one in the middle and small ones around it, and he looks like a big ball, like he is blown up with the tires. He is the Michelin man.

Whenever I see this demon in the spirit I call him the Michelin man spirit. My apologies to Michelin; no offense to them.

This is a demon who has stolen all the provision that God had for us. When I see this I know God is showing me in the Spirit that Satan has actually prevented the provision from getting to us.

All the provision that God has tried to give us has been diverted elsewhere into the Kingdom of Darkness, and somebody else has got it. Satan will steal from you, and someone else will get what was meant to be yours.

The Anorexic Spirit

The other spirit that I saw looks like a skinny, emaciated, almost skeleton-like creature. It is almost like an anorexic person who is thin and all dried up. That is a picture of Satan directly stealing from us and making us incapable.

It is a spirit of poverty; a spirit of thinking small. It is just like the anorexic person who thinks small and thinks thin. They never allow themselves any liberty. They walk in poverty and starvation.

And so the spirit of poverty will make people walk in poverty. They will think that this is a good thing, and not realize that they look like a walking skeleton.

Watch out for these things. These are demonic forces that are arrayed against you and that are trying to prevent you from walking in the blessing of the Lord. Satan wants to produce inferiority and insecurity to stop you from walking in the blessing of the Lord.

These are the attacks of Satan on our souls. And I have gone into this in a lot of detail because the soul is our control tower. And if our soul is immobilized, nothing can get through from the spirit to the body.

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