God Wants You To Be Rich
We, Word of Faith guys, get a lot of flack for teaching that God wants his people to prosper. (Imagine that a God who wants it to go well with people who serve him, what a concept.) It was even the subject of a Time Magazine cover story in September of this year. Time sums it up this way: " Does God want you to be rich? Yes say some megachurches. Others call it heresy. The debate over the new Gospel of wealth."
After studying this topic for many moons there is one thing of which I am absolutely certain: the Bible teaches… religion may not teach it, tradition may not teach it, philosophy may not teach it, but the Bible teaches that God wants us to prosper. So in this series of lessons I’m really going to go over the top and show you from the Bible that God wants you to be rich. In fact what you’re going to see is that the Bible says that God has sworn an oath to give his people power to become rich. But I don’t just want to convince you that the Bible teaches this, I want it to get inside of you. I want you to come a point where you expect God’s power to prosper to be available to work on your behalf.
1. What does your tomorrow hold?
(Here’s the Audio of #1 in MP3 format Large (Good for burning a CD) Small (Good just for listening). Following is the explanation.)
In order to receive anything from God we have to learn to receive it by faith. This is how Abraham received blessings from God and this how we, as Christians, are going to receiving blessings from God.
Galatians 3:9 So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.
Faith begins with seeing into the future. (Or into the invisible realm but when we’re talking about finances we’re talking about the future.) Your predictions about tomorrow reflect what you believe in your heart. Until you know what is going to happen in the future you can’t begin to walk by faith.
Here’s another way of thinking about it. God’s promises let us know what the future holds for us. If you don’t know what’s going to happen in the future it’s because those promises have not gotten into you, they’re not real to you. The Bible says:
That scripture paints a picture of a future without lack for the person who is shepherded by The LORD. Paul says basically the same thing:
My God shall supply all of your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
He’s telling us that God’s going to take care of our needs. Jesus says something pretty similar,
Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.
These promises, if we believe them, paint a picture for us of our future.: God will see to it that we never lack, that our every need is supplied and that all our material needs are provided for. Until your picture of the future is formed by these and God’s other promises you have not entered into faith. Or to put it differently you don’t believe them.
So what does the future hold for you? What are you expecting to happen? Specifically what are you expecting with respect to your finances? Faith for financial prosperity begins with expecting that God is going to prosper you. I don’t just mean wishing that he’ll prosper you, or daydreaming that he’ll prosper you but actually expecting that God will work on your behalf to cause you to prosper.
The most important part of my job as a pastor is to develop in you this picture of your future. To paint in your heart a picture of what you can expect to happen in your life. The Bible word for this picture is hope. Hope in the Bible does not mean just a wish, like we might say: “I sure hope I win the lottery.” or “I hope I get the job.” But the Bible uses hope to mean something you confidently expect. Here’s an entry from a Greek lexicon (The oldest copies of the new testament we have are written in Greek.) for the word hope. Right now we’re talking about prosperity so if I do my job right and you do your part at the end of this series of lessons you will be expecting God’s power to prosper you to be working on your behalf.
This is the Sunday, August 13 service it lasts about 40 minutes.
Audio MP3: Large (Good for burning your own CD) Small (Good just for listening.)