Sunday, April 6, 2014

KINGDOM PROSPERITY

Prosperity is the will of God for His children. God wants His children to prosper in every way! Irrespective of any man’s opinion, it is God’s will for His children to walk in all that He has made available to us through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. The finished work of Christ is the foundation for Scriptural prosperity. Those who say they don’t believe in prosperity or who condemn the prosperity message, they’ll do little or nothing for the Lord here on earth. People who think and talk that way are either selfish or myopic (short sighted, lack vision). Prosperity is part of the Gospel! The Sovereign Lord of all the earth says “My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad; and the LORD shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem.” (Zechariah 1:17). Recently, the Lord opened my eyes to something amazing I had never seen along this line. As I read through the above Scripture, the Lord immediately referred me to Matthew 5:14 which says: “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.” And He brought my attention to the phrase ‘A city’ and it suddenly dawned on me that the Lord actually called us a city! What does that mean to us in the light of this? When the Lord said “My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad;…” He wasn’t referring to locations, structures or buildings but to His children. This simply means that God is spreading us, His children, all over the world through the provisions He has made available to us through His Son Jesus Christ. This means, the Lord is making us so big to take over nations for Him because we shall serve Him and do big things for Him lacking nothing whatsoever! Then we can answer the question: shall a nation be born at once? (Isaiah 66:8). I don’t know about you, but that’s good news to me! Praise God! Now, to a large extent, I understand why some believers kick against the prosperity message. They do that because it’s been so abused by so many preachers and believers alike. But that doesn’t justify that. The fact that something has been counterfeited doesn’t change the fact that there is the original. It’s so unfortunate that many times the false precede the true. Well, I believe in prosperity because God wants me to prosper and to be big for Him and His cause here on earth! What we need is to have a renewed mind on the subject of prosperity just as in other subjects of the Bible. What is a renewed mind? To have a renewed mind about something is to think like God about that thing. We must then search the Scriptures and see the mind of God about that thing. The Words of God are the thoughts of God! We can know God’s mind concerning anything through the Word. Instead of going by the opinion of the majority, we can choose to find out God’s mind on the matter for ourselves and connect with Him on that. Understand that Kingdom prosperity is not just about money, it is all encompassing – spirit, soul and body. We get into error when we narrow it down to just one thing. I believe this is one thing that marks Kingdom prosperity from what the world calls prosperity. When a man has money but lacks peace of mind he isn’t prosperous. Or when a man has good health but he isn’t saved that’s not prosperity. But you see, only in Christ we can have all together – totally whole spirit, soul and body! The Gospel is all about prosperity – God’s plan to make His man whole and entire once again! God wants us to be complete – nothing missing, nothing broken! That’s His will for us. The word ‘salvation’ is from the Greek: ‘Soteria’ which implies total wellbeing or wholeness in our temporal stay on earth and for eternity. Apostle Paul, speaking by the Spirit, in Romans 1:16 tells us that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation! What’s the Gospel? The Gospel is simply all that God accomplished IN CHRIST for humanity, which works for anyone who believes! There is a reason why God wants His children to prosper. I believe this is one area that the Church has missed it. We have emphasized a prosperity that is void of purpose. When a man thinks of prosperity without focusing on the purpose of it, he becomes selfish, greedy and entangled by materialism. 2Corinthians 9:8 tells us the purpose of Kingdom prosperity: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.” Right there is the purpose of Kingdom prosperity. We must never forget that we have all sufficiency in all things in order to have abundance for every good work. Praise God! However, when it comes to the monetary aspect, Haggai 2:8 declares “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts.” Our Father owns the ‘box’. It belongs to Him! We would become good stewards of the money we receive from the Lord when we walk in the consciousness that He owns it all. Money is not the root of all evil but the love of it (1Tim.6:10). Money is a good servant but a cruel master. Money is neutral just like time and decision. It only takes on the character of its owner. For instance a gambler spends his money on gambling and a soul winner on soul winning. Money never defines a man but men define money because it is only a tool, an amplifier! Today, so many worship money because they’ve been made to believe that money answers all things. Unfortunately this error has been sponsored by the Church. When the Bible tells us: “A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.” (Eccl. 10:19), contextually, it was simply telling us that the feast and the wine are the function of money and when you observe carefully from the KJV translation you’d discover that the word ‘things’ is in italics, meaning that that word was not in the original manuscript but was added by the translators to aid understanding. In fact, it is so ridiculous to even think that money answers all things. We’ve seen people with lots of money but so miserable. Some even commit suicide because they’ve been made to believe that once they had the money they had everything, only to discover that there is so much money cannot buy. Yes, money can do a lot in the natural, but it can never buy spiritual things! Money has its limits too. Time is even more precious than money. Well, let’s look to the Father as our Source for everything. Let’s receive all He has made available to us through Jesus Christ and reach out to a dying world!