Wealth is a gift from God
It would appear that the Bible condemns the accumulation of wealth. Many passages of Scripture seem to suggest that the accumulation of wealth is evil while being poor is virtuous. It would appear that the Bible condemns the accumulation of wealth. The Biblical perspective of money should present wealth in a different perspective.
The Bible distinguishes between possession of wealth and love of wealth. Only the love of money is condemned. The love of wealth and desire to become wealthy bring a variety of negative challenges that have the potential to shipwreck one’s spiritual walk.
A person’s attitude towards money and generosity with one’s wealth are fundamentally conditions of the heart that have not changed since the ancient world. Regardless of our level of wealth, we are still expected to depend on God and not on money for our spiritual destiny.
God is not opposed to riches. In fact, He is the originator of financial blessings.
Proverbs 10:22 - The blessing of the Lord makes one rich and He adds no sorrow with it.
Psalm 35:27 - Let the Lord be magnified, Who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant.
The first time the Bible mentions someone with a lot of money, it speaks of a righteous man, Abraham.
Genesis 13:2 - And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.
Abraham was wealthy and the father to all believers in Christ.
You cannot begin to release your financial potential unless you believe that God wants to bless you in every way possible with physical things. It pleases Him to heap blessings upon you.
God has not placed you on the earth to struggle financially. He is looking for ways to bless you. Of course, He does not want you to chase after money, but wants you to chase after Him and to build a relationship with Him. If you chase after money, money will elude you. If you chase after God, money will chase after you and the things that come from the Lord will not cause any sorrow.
Matthew 6:33 - But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
When we understand wealth as the gift of God, we understand that it comes from God and it belongs to God. This is a very difficult attitude for the world to adopt. But the Bible makes it clear that God created everything, God sustains everything and God owns everything.
God is not against money. However, God is against loving money. Remember, God will not give us more than we are able to handle. Change your view of money and when it is in your hands, use it to accomplish good things. But never make it an object of your worship and do not become obsessed with money.
The real question we need to think about is, why does God give us this wealth? Does He give us this wealth to build large mansions and live in luxury? No. It’s all about stewardship. God is looking for people He can trust with large amounts of money to build His Kingdom.
Stewardship is all management and not ownership. A steward is someone who manages another person’s property, finances, and household. The steward owns nothing, but is in a position of authority as if he or she is the owner of it.
We are simply stewards or managers of what God has placed in our trust. Stewardship is a call of God for His people to assist in managing the affairs of the earth with Him. That has always been His plan from the beginning of creation and it has never changed.
A steward is someone who does not do anything for himself or herself but does that for another. If you are doing things for yourself you have missed what God wants for your life.
Our purpose and calling is to finance the advancement of the Kingdom of God.
We are living in the last days and the Gospel is going to be preached in every nation. We are going to see millions upon millions of souls come to salvation and the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Matthew 24:14 - And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
This is going to take huge finances in order to supply resources for the needs for the coming harvest of souls across the earth. That is why God gave us the ability to create wealth. With this ability, you are empowered to advance God’s work. This revival will require significant levels of resourcing like we have never seen before. God is about to restructure national economies to allow the flow of resources to strategic end-time financiers of the Gospel. Giving is so critical to the Christian faith. The giving of financial resources is fundamental to the establishment of the Kingdom of God.
There is wealth that God is going to transfer into the hands of His people especially when they discover their purpose as it relates to the end-time plans and purposes of God. Your arrival on earth was not an accident. It was planned by God because He has a divine plan for each and every one of us.
There is no greater level of blessing and provision that you can experience when you find out what God wants you to do with your life. When you know who you are, you can become bold and confident and you can militantly follow the dream that God has for the nations. You can step out fearlessly because He will provide for you.
Luke 14:28 - For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it.
Here Jesus teaches us that it is absolute important to budget before you start a large project, because without finances, you will not be able to complete the project. Think about it – you are God’s project and before He started building your future, He made sure that there was financial provision for it. Our arrival here was carefully planned by God and He knows what He wants us to do for His Kingdom. We are not here for ourselves.
We are called for big things that require huge resources. When we pursue our purpose, we are fulfilling God’s plan for His Kingdom and He will provide those needs. Just as a large project requires large finances, so do our individual purposes require supernatural finances.
Your purpose will have everything to do with building God’s Kingdom and not your own kingdom. There are only two kingdoms and anything that does not build His Kingdom benefits Satan’s kingdom. Your purpose is to benefit God’s Kingdom.
The Bible teaches us that the wealth of the unrighteous will be transferred to the righteous. Who are the righteous?
Matthew 6:33 - But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
I personally believe that this passage of Scripture applies to those who find and pursue their purpose. God reveals His plans for us through His Spirit and when we believe Him, it is accounted to us as righteousness. He begins to add things such as finances which enable us to accomplish those things He has planned for us.
When Jesus fulfilled His Father’s plan for His earthly life by dying on the cross, He took poverty and nailed it to the cross. There is therefore no poverty in your purpose because God used Jesus to destroy poverty when He fulfilled His father’s plans.
Believers who do not know God’s plans for their lives will live an aimless life. Moses was absolutely lost until the age of eighty. But all that changed when God revealed the plan He had for Moses. Until that happened, he lived a seemingly fruitless life by starting out in Pharaoh’s palace and ending up looking after his father-in-laws’ sheep in the desert. It is never too late to find out who you really are.
When Moses obediently pursued God plans, he left Egypt with all the wealth that had been accumulated by the Egyptians. This wealth was accumulated way back when Joseph made Pharaoh one of the richest men who ever lived, because of the wisdom God gave Joseph.
The Egyptians paid for the journey with their gold and silver. When you obey God’s call for your life, God will make sure you have the finances for the journey. All the riches of Egypt left with Moses when he obeyed God.
Do you have any idea how much wealth and blessings God is about to pour out onto your life when you begin to trust Him and believe in Him and when you take that first step of faith? Perhaps you are working so hard to create a financial nest egg for your future that it is consuming your entire life and the rewards really are pitiful. Just think how much God can do for you when you obey Him.
God loves people especially those who are bound by religion, politics, tradition, and poverty. God has cities and nations that He wants us to restore that have been destroyed by Satan. God called Nehemiah to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. He had a comfortable job reporting directly to the King. Yet he obeyed God and took an uncomfortable journey to Jerusalem and viewed the state of the city at night.
That journey must have been very risky and dangerous, yet God protected him. When you take action, God takes action. Nehemiah did not have to look for finances because the king financed the entire project. There are men and women in high places that God has positioned especially to finance God’s plan. But you have to take the first step of faith.
The king was an ungodly man, yet he opened up the treasure vaults of his kingdom. Nehemiah was just an ordinary person but his purpose caught the attention of the king. Just think how much it must have cost for a project that size in today’s terms. It involved restoring an entire city. Ten million dollars? One hundred million dollars? It does not really matter how much it cost. God had already commanded someone to provide all the finances necessary for Nehemiah to do what he was called to do. Does this encourage you to start thinking big?
Think about all the wealth Moses took with him into the desert. In today’s terms, it must have been over a billion dollars. You are no different to Moses or Nehemiah when you are obediently fulfilling your divine assignment.
Proverbs 13:22 - But the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous.
There are so many Christians who quote this passage of Scripture over themselves for the future. But I believe this is not something that will happen in the future. It can be a reality today for those who discover their divine purpose and obediently follow the call.
The main reason why God blessed Moses was to prepare the people for possession through Joshua. When you prosper you have wealth. But when you have possession, you have power, because you preside over a portion of God’s Kingdom. That is power! That is our apostolic mandate: That is our apostolic mandate which extends our influence to the ends of the earth!
Now is the time to study the economy of the Kingdom so that we can adequately prepare for the exciting future which lies ahead of the true church of God.
