Section 05 – Walking in Prosperity

Deuteronomy 8:18:

But you will remember the LORD [Yahweh] your God: for [it is] he that gives you ability to gain wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he swore to your fathers, as [it is] this day.

How often have you woken up in the morning and wished you did not have to go to work? Do you wish you had your own business, or that you were your own boss and did not have to go and work for somebody else? 

Do you ever look at wealthy people and envy them? Have you ever complained to the Lord because you are battling financially and everybody else seems to be prospering? I think we have all been there. 

These are things we face on a daily basis and every day we need to make choices. So the key question you need to ask yourself before you even start is,

"Does God want me to prosper financially?" 

Your answer to that question is going to decide how you look at life, how you look at the Word, and how you handle every problem that you face in the area of finances and prosperity. 

We have looked at how God wants to bless us and how He has already blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.

We have looked at healing and we have looked at releasing power into the earth. Now I want to look in detail at the subject of finances.

Where does the Bible stand on this? Does God want the Christian to be rich, or are we supposed to be poor? Is poverty a blessing?

Prosperity from the Start

As we go back to the book of Genesis, we read that God made the earth and He created a beautiful, luscious garden. It must have been the most beautiful place on the earth where the very best that God had created could be found. 

When God made man He did not put him in the desert and say,

"Do you see that beautiful garden over there? You are not allowed to touch that because it is evil." 

The Bible says that God took His man Adam and He put him in the best place, amongst the best creation, amongst all those things that God had looked down on and pronounced as good. God did not put him into it and say,

"Now you're allowed to look at it, but you can't touch it." 

He didn't say,

"Well Adam, you can have a couple of fruits there, and you can take a few of these things here, but you mustn't overdo it. You are only allowed so many hundred calories per day.

You're on a restricted diet here. This is your fixed salary and you're getting no more." 

Everything is Yours

When God put Adam into the garden He said,

"You're in charge. It is yours; have whatever you want and do whatever you want. Take freely from everything that is here and is available to you with no restrictions." 

God made the earth and all of its treasures for His highest creation, man. 

I can remember a time in my life when we were battling financially and we were waiting for direction from the Lord concerning work and ministry. There were no finances, I did not have a job and I was looking to the Lord for where to begin in ministry. 

I was walking up and down the beach complaining to the Lord and saying,

"Lord, you brought us here. Father you have to provide because we are battling." 

The Lord stopped me in my tracks and said,

"Stop right now and look all around you." 

I stood there and looked all around me. I could see the ocean and the beach. I could see a car park and some buildings all around. I could see the road with a mountain nearby. There was the city in the distance and a hotel on the beach. 

As I looked at the whole surrounding area I said,

"Okay, Lord I see it. What of it?" 

He said, "Everything that you see belongs to you." 

"What do you mean, Lord?" 

He said, "Who do you think I created this earth for? I created this world for my highest creation that was made in my image - man." 

He said, "This world was made for you. Everywhere you look; everything you see I made it for you. It belongs to you and Satan has stolen it.

Wherever you look and whatever you can touch, everything was made for you. I want you to have the best because I made the best for you. I don't want you to settle for second best because I don't give bad gifts. I give good things." 

I started to rethink the whole subject of prosperity. I came to realize that Christians often think that the things of this world are not be touched by the child of God. You will hear people saying something like,

"Well they are just worldly things, brother. You're not supposed to hanker after the things of the world. We are supposed to set our eyes on heavenly places. 

Our treasure is in Heaven one day. What do you want treasure down on this earth for?

These are just worldly things. We must leave this behind for the world, the unbelievers, the unsaved - for the devil and all those who follow him. 

They are the ones who lust after these things. We as believers should not. We shouldn't want these things because they are evil." 

The Lord said, "They are not evil. I made them and I made them for you. But the church is gladly giving it up and giving it away." 

Who is the church giving it away to? It is giving it to the one who stole it from us.

What would you do if someone walked into your house, picked up your stereo and started walking away with it? Would you stand there and say,

"Oh well a stereo is just a worldly thing. I shouldn't really covet it and desire it."

Then you watch him walk out the door with it. Is that what you would do? 

But that is what many believers are doing. They are letting the devil steal from them everything that God has given them, and they are just being so humble and spiritual about it.

As a result of not having their needs met they are not able to be effective for the work of God. They want to help the work of the Lord, but the ministry suffers because they are unable to give. 

Some say, "Well I can't afford to give. I can't afford to support the ministry. I can't afford to help that person who is starving down the road there. I can't afford to help brother so-and-so who has just lost his job, because I have enough problems of my own." 

We are happy to settle for the little bit that the devil dishes out to us, instead of realizing that God made the good things in this world for us and He wants us to enjoy them.

There are no conditions or price, because when the Lord gives to us He always gives freely. 

Natural Financial Laws

We saw that there are laws that govern the natural world. We also saw that there are laws that govern the spiritual world and we looked at some of these spiritual laws.

I would like to look at some more spiritual laws now. They are actually both natural and spiritual laws because they overlap. They work in the natural and in the spiritual and they work where finances are concerned. 

The Scripture says that there comes first the natural and then the spiritual, so I will start with the natural and move over into the spiritual. I will start with the way God set this world up to function in the natural. 

We will look firstly at how prosperity is generated in the natural. Then we will see how we can move it into the spiritual and obtain all that the Lord has for us. 

We live in a natural world, so if you are to prosper financially you will do so in a natural world. Therefore we will have to use the principles that God has set in this world, in order to receive the natural blessings and not what Satan has set in this world.

The Law of Sowing and Reaping

Although God gave Adam and Eve freely everything that was in the Garden of Eden, they still were not free of that arduous thing that we call work. 

You say, "Oh I wish I didn't have to go to work." 

Then you might as well die, because the Scripture says,

If any man will not work, neither let him eat.

Do not think that you will enter into a state of spirituality where your financial prosperity will come upon you so that you will never have to work again. This would violate a principle that God has set in the earth. 

God placed Adam in the Garden, to keep it and to dress it and to look after it. Adam had a job to do. Work did not start after the fall; it just changed bosses and grew more difficult, that is all.

Work was there from the beginning. It always had to be, so the first natural law is the law of sowing and reaping. 

A Lesson From Chemistry

One of the subjects at school that I really did not like terribly much was chemistry. This was largely because there were so many things to learn.

I must admit it, I hate learning lots of things. It takes too much effort and too much work. But I learned something back there that I remember. 

They said, "You set up a chemical equation just like you do any equation in algebra. What is on the one side of the equal sign has to equal what is on the other side of the equal sign. You have to maintain equilibrium." 

So if you put two chemicals together and a chemical reaction takes place, what comes at the other end might be a different substance. But it will have the same energy quotient, the same quantity as what went into the chemical reaction. 

If you mix two chemicals together and they react and produce a lot of heat, what comes out at the other side is a new compound plus heat.

If you mix the energy value of the compound with the energy value of the heat, it is equal to the same amount that you put in. 

In other words, what you put into the thing is what you will get out of it. There are no losses or increases along the way. In computer terms they call it, 'Garbage In, Garbage Out'.

What you put in you will get out. It might come out in a different form, but ultimately the same quantity that you put in is what you will get out. 

If you consider the law of sowing and reaping, it can be said in different ways. You may have heard this expression:

You get nothing for nothing. 

Well that might be a worldly statement, but it is true. You cannot obtain anything for free. If you are to get something out, you will have to put something in. It is the universal law of sowing and reaping. You will get out what you put in. 

I can see you beginning to question me already and say,

"Yes, but if you plant a seed you get out a plant that yields a lot of seed. You get back a lot more than what you put in, right?

Isn't that the law of sowing and reaping? If you sow a seed, the seed is multiplied and increased and gives back more." 

Different Yields

Jesus told the parable of the sower that sowed the seed. Some fell by the wayside and yielded nothing, because the seed was taken away immediately.

Others yielded just a little bit and some were choked. But even the seed that fell into the good ground yielded some 30, some 60, and some 100. 

The yields were not the same all the way through. What made the difference?

It was the soil the seed was put into. When you put in the seed, the soil has to add its part and then multiplication takes place. 

What comes out of the plant is actually what was in the soil, not what was in the seed. This is not some magical thing where the seed somehow multiplies itself all alone.

It has to pull resources out of the soil to build up the plant and produce further seed. Something else has to be added. 

Whatever happens in the earth, the same rule applies. If you take matter and destroy it, it is just converted into another form. All you are doing is transmuting from one form into another, but the material is still there. 

We spoke about this when we discussed creation. We spoke about taking materials of the creation and causing spirit to come upon those materials, in order to create something with them.

All that happens is that the materials are changed into something different. Ultimately what you put in is what you get out. This is the universal law of sowing and reaping.

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