Success In Riches

Two sides to the financial coin

Many years of experience show that if money does not serve the Kingdom, then it perverts, spoils, and destroys its owners. Therefore, your motives should be right. If you feel that you got off track, humble yourself before God or make a covenant with Him. One woman in our church made a covenant to give God all her earnings and leave only five percent for herself, and God blessed her with many deals and wealth. Why? Because she put herself in a position of total reliance on God. She keeps five percent and gives God ninety-five percent. These boundaries protect her from any kind of traps. If our hope is what we have in the physical world, such as our house, car, summer cottage, insurance, etc., then how poor and vain is our faith? This makes us the most pathetic of people! Of course, we need all these things in life, but the point here is that these are just things that make our life easier. Life is more than the things we own. If a man classifies his life by the things he owns, he is a lost soul who does not have hope, and is as any other unbeliever. The Bible teaches us that everyone who has something should behave as if he does not have anything – this should become our life’s creed. Having material things, we need to see ourselves in the right perspective without them, but, if you see yourself thinking and daydreaming about your money, then you have allowed mammon in your heart and you need deliverance.

If money does not serve the Kingdom, then it perverts, spoils, and destroys its owners.

Search your heart. Imagine yourself without your car, without your nice clothes, without your beautiful house, how would you feel? Miserable? Then you have failed the test. If a man depends on his outward visible things – then he is not free but enslaved, and has the love of money, which is the source of all evil. That is why Jesus told the young rich man to go sell all his possessions before he could get to heaven. He failed the test because he was attached to his riches.

Often, we think that people who have money are the ones with the love of money, and since we do not have money, then we are free. We are deceived! Predominantly the rich are free from the love of money; that is why they have it. They usually do not suffer from this disease, but those who dream, think, and worry about money are one hundred percent addicted to it. Now, the problem the rich really have is that they often trust in their riches, making it their fortress instead of God, hence the rich man would not give out to the poor. We are not to be servants of money; that is not our calling. We are called to be masters of money.

We are not to be servants of money; that is not our calling, but rather to rule and manage it.

We are not supposed to try and protect our children with money. What we are learning here is to rule over money. If money means more to you than just a piece of paper, then I am sorry. You must be depending on it one way or another. Money is only a tool, a means by which we meet our ends and accomplish the purposes of God in the earth.

We used to have a currency in Ukraine called “karbovanez” then it was replaced by the present day “grivna”. Why did the “karbovanez” stop having value? Because the government changed the law. For instance, Germany used to have a currency called “marka”, but now “marka” are just pieces of paper with pictures on them. We need to learn to look at our present day currencies the way we would look at past currencies that have no value today, just pieces of paper.

Imagine that in the attic of your grandma’s house you found a big suitcase with money from the past, which has no value today. Then imagine you found the same suitcase but with American dollars inside. How would you feel? If this thought caused you to lose your mind, and you started rushing through everything you wanted to buy in your head, then you are still under the power of money!

What is money anyway? It is just processed wood, and yet people risk their lives for this wood. They serve it instead of serving the Creator. Some people think they have freedom because they have capital. Is capitalism the way out, or an illusion? We should not be living by the laws of capitalism or communism, but according to the laws of freedom, in other words, the laws of the Kingdom; putting the values of God above all earthly things. When our earthly life is over, we will be living in eternity by the laws of the Kingdom, the condition is that we start living by these laws from now.