The Law of Use

There is another law that is known as the law of use. It says that if you use something it will become stronger and grow. If you do not use it, it fades away. 

This applies very much to the muscles of the body. When someone exercises their muscles a lot, they grow larger and stronger. But if they do not use their muscles, they atrophy and grow weaker. 

If you do not keep your body in a state of physical fitness then you lose it. You become physically weak and unfit, and incapable of doing very much. But as you exercise you grow stronger and stronger. 

The problem with this law is that you have to repeat it over and over again. But eventually even repetition is not enough, because you reach a plateau in your physical fitness. You have to increase the load. You have to put more power and more energy in. 

Again it is a matter of putting in and getting out. It is very much like the law of sowing and reaping.

In the end, as you keep putting in you are left with a high potential power. Now you have a muscle that is strong and ready, so that when you need it the power is there. 

How can we apply some of these natural laws to the area of finances and prosperity?

These are some of the things I want to look at here. And although I am speaking in general terms, I will give a Scripture every now and then to support what I am saying. 

You will find a lot of this in Solomon's Proverbs and natural wisdom. A lot of these things are common sense. But I want you to think them through, according to the way God has set things up in the earth. 

We try to make prosperity either totally natural or we make it too spiritual. 

You say, "Well I'm going to trust the Lord for finances. Somebody is going to walk up to my door and say that God told them to give me a million dollars."

Unfortunately there is a little more involved here. There has to be an application of the laws, and what you get out of this thing is what you have put into it. We will look at this as we go on. 

The Principle of Investment

Let's look at the principle of investment. This is one of the first ways of increasing finance.

It is the same as taking a seed, planting it and obtaining a return on the seed. You can take something that you have in the temporal, invest it and gain a return on the investment. 

If you are to reap finances then you will have to invest something in order to obtain a financial return. If you do not invest then you cannot get anything out, because you get out what you put in. 

The Scripture says,

Whatever a man sows, that shall he reap.

It is a universal law. You need to answer some questions before you can invest.

Firstly, what do you have to invest, and then how can you invest it?

How do you go about investing and what kind of return do you get on it? What can you expect back again as a result of your investment? 

You say, "I wish I was a rich person and I had a lot of money to invest. If I did then I could invest a large amount of money and obtain a large investment return. That would begin to grow and it would come in very quickly. 

If I had a million dollars to put in the bank now, I could not only live off the interest that would be generated, but there would probably be enough left over to cause that investment to carry on growing.

My investment return would come so fast that it would come in faster than I could spend it. I would get richer automatically." 

Unfortunately if you invest only 10 dollars you do not have quite the same thing happening. So you pray,

"Oh Lord, if you could just give me the million to start with then we could get this show on the road." 

But what about the person who has a million right now? Did he start with the million? You will find that he started with less and somehow built up to that. 

There are natural laws that natural people are using and they are succeeding using those laws. But the believer has something far greater, because God gives us the ability to take the natural laws and expand them. 

We saw in discussing healing how the body has been given the ability to heal itself naturally. God gives the supernatural power to increase the body's natural healing capability so that the body can heal itself quicker.

The same thing applies to finances. God can give us the power in our spirits to take the natural laws and to make them work more efficiently for us. 

Investing in Time

The first thing that we have to invest is time. Time is the one thing that you get free every day from the moment you wake up. If you wake up late, you have already lost some of it. 

Somebody once said,

"Time is like someone telling you, 'I'm going to give you so many dollars every day, but if you don't spend them today you will lose them.' " 

They worked out the number of minutes that there are in a day and they said,

"Suppose I were to tell you that you were getting so many thousand dollars a day, but if you don't spend them you lose them." 

We are given a certain number of minutes every day, and if we do not use those minutes and invest them then we lose them. There is the saying that goes,

If you snooze you lose.

We all have the same number of hours in a day. There are only 24 hours in a day. You are not going to get any more, so you need to learn to take what is given to you freely every day and to invest it wisely. 

Ephesians 5:15 and 16 says,

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
Buying up the [kairos] time, because the days are evil.

Buying up the time means recouping time. You need to stop wasting time and make good use of it, but how do you do that?

Investing in Work

You can invest firstly in work. Investing your time in work produces an income, especially if you get paid by time. Your financial income will be generated according to the number of hours that you put into your work. 

But there is one problem with investing your time in work. It is the fact that you only have a specific amount of time available every day. There is therefore a limit to what you are able to generate in income based on work. You can say,

"Well I want to work harder. I'll put in an extra hour or two. I'll go without sleep and I'll work longer." 

That will only generate a little extra income and nothing more. There are many people who work hard and with long hours, but they are still battling financially.

Financial prosperity does not come from hard work, contrary to what most workaholics believe. Hard work is not enough to produce financial prosperity.

Investing in Study and Training

You can invest your time in study and training and so increase your capabilities. When you do that it produces in you a greater quality of work. In other words your time becomes worth more. It increases your value. 

I remember the days when I used to sell life assurance. The statistics showed that you could obtain a certain number of sales per week, if you worked at it consistently, saw a certain number of people a day, etc. 

They had it worked out on an average and it did not fluctuate much from person to person. The more successful sales people did not necessarily obtain more sales. 

I remember seeing a movie at that time on the man who was known as the world's top life assurance salesman. This guy would pull millions from every deal that he finalized. But one piece of information about him really blew me away. 

They said, "Do you know how many policies he sells a week? The same number as the average sales rep." 

I thought, "So how come he's a millionaire from selling a couple of policies a week, and I'm battling to make ends meet also selling a couple of policies a week?" 

There was one subtle difference. Mine were worth 100 dollars but his were worth a million. I was selling small ones and he was selling big ones.

The number of policies was the same, but his had a bigger value. He did not knock on the door of the family man to try and sell him a little policy. He went to the millionaire corporations and sold a huge one to them. 

He had increased his capability and his value. He invested time into his profession and rose up higher. And so it is with every single person in this world. 

You hear people complaining because they have a bad lot in life.

They are complaining because the guys at the top get all the big salaries and they are the workers down at the bottom getting paid nothing. But if they would increase their quality then they would find that they would get paid more. 

Work Smart

How do you increase your quality? You will have to invest time into studying. You will have to invest time into working not just hard but smart. 

There are millions of people who are prepared to work hard. There are lots of people who are prepared to work as laborers and do the difficult jobs for a pittance. But you have to search to find somebody who is capable of doing the job well. 

Everyone clamors for that kind of person. They will offer him the earth, just to get him to come and work for them. Solomon expressed it well in the book of Proverbs. He said in Proverbs 18:16,

A man's gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men.

You say, "Well I don't have time to study. I'm getting on in years now. I have to work hard all day and earn my income. I have to support my family and put bread on the table. Where do I have time to study?" 

Well if you do not have time to improve your quality, then you will remain poor. It is as simple as that.

You will have to make an investment that goes beyond just the production of income. You will have to invest time in yourself, in increasing your capabilities. 

Actually it costs you nothing because time has been given to you freely every day. Yes it is going to cost you a little bit of effort, but what you put into it in studying is going to be like exercising that muscle. 

You say, "But I hate exercise. What am I doing these stupid exercises for?" 

But doesn't it feel good when you reach the point where you roll up your sleeves and flex your muscle, and everybody says,

"Wow, how did you get a big muscle like that?" 

Or you grab something heavy with just one arm. You pick it up and everybody says,

"Wow you are strong hey?" 

You have potential power and capability, and all you need to do is maintain that. You have built it and people can see it and will use it. This applies spiritually too. It is exactly the same. 

You say, "I wish the Lord would bless my ministry. Nobody ever wants to listen to me preach." 

Have you ever heard yourself preach? Would you listen to you for an hour or two at a time? Try listening to yourself. Look at yourself and ask,

"Can I do this better? Father, if only I had a greater anointing of your Spirit.

Lord, if I had a greater knowledge of your Word so that when I come to sharing and ministering with your people I know what I'm talking about, maybe somebody would come to me for counsel."

But they don't come to me because I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't know the Word. I don't have the answer to their problems. I have never spent time in prayer waiting on the Lord to hear His voice on behalf of others.

You will have to invest if you are to prosper, and prosperity is not always financial. Although we are looking at that here, whatever you are to prosper in, you will need to invest something into it to increase that capability.

You will have to build up that resource. You will have to make it more powerful before you will be able to reap anything back from it.

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