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PROSPERITY SCHOOL 101
Part One - Defining the Real Kind of Prosperity

  Beloved I pray above all things that you might PROSPER - 3 John 2

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 By: Dr. Bill Miller                                                 Volume XV Number 40                                                  October 7, 2012

Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!

 

 

This week I 'm starting a new series on the subject of BIBLICAL PROSPERITY that will last for a while until the Lord takes us on to something else. As you can see we're calling it PROSPERITY SCHOOL 101 and the reason for that title is to emphasize that many of us in the Body of Christ STILL have a lot of wrong ideas about money and the use of money vis-�-vis what the Bible actually says about it and we need to have our minds RENEWED. The reason this is important is that we're presently living right into the End Times when the Church of Jesus Christ needs to be able to attract large sums of money to finance the related HARVEST OF SOULS. Unfortunately though, the majority of Believers for various reasons aren't PROSPEROUS themselves and don't see themselves as able or available to fully participate in the ministry of End Times funds-generation.

 

Recently Sherri and I experienced the privilege of attending some services conducted by an internationally known Evangelist-Pastor. He mentioned a statistic that may shock you when you first consider it which is that here in the USA only about 6% of what's known as The Body of Christ gives tithes and offerings to our local churches and other ministries. I don't know how good that number actually is but over the years I've seen even lower projections so I'm fairly confident the 6% is relatively accurate enough to illustrate a point: either the great majority of the body of Believers in this country see themselves as UN-able to give OR they've decided to keep God's provision for themselves. And make no mistake about it, according to your Bible ALL provision comes from God and He has counseled us to consider the Kingdom of God first as we put His provision to use (Matthew 6:33). And so in whatever way we presently see ourselves there's an obvious need to radically CHANGE this picture of the Body of Christ because it's unbiblical and because it's DELAYING the work of the End Times Church.

 

Undoing Some Damage

 

Now I want you to know that I use the word PROSPERITY on purpose because it comes straight out of my Bible and I like to use the same words the Holy Spirit uses so I can be sure I'm agreeing with Him. The English word PROSPERITY in one form or another is mentioned more than 90 times in both the Old and New Testaments and most of those are found in the Old Testament. Consequently, we've had centuries of teaching that financial PROSPERITY is for Old Covenant folks but not for Christians even though there're NO scriptures to establish that divergent principle, even though the New Testament declares about itself that it's a better covenant with better promises than the old one (Hebrews 7:22, 8:6), even though Jesus said He had come with GOOD NEWS for poor folks (Luke 4:18), even though the Bible says that Jesus become poor so that we could be rich/prosperous (2 Corinthians 8:9), even though the Apostle Paul told us that by GRACE we could have ALL sufficiency in EVERYTHING and an ABUNDANCE for EVERY good deed (2 Corinthians 9:8) and even though Jesus said that He had come to give life in greater abundance (John 10:10). Nevertheless, many Believers have come to accept the notion that there's a certain dignity or virtue in poverty that wealthy folks aren't able to aspire to and they reject any association with PROSPERITY because they think it's the righteous thing to do.      

 

Another problem for the word PROSPERITY is that a few decades ago a group of teachers around the Body of Christ were giving us a corrupted version of a PROSPERITY MESSAGE to which the majority in the Church over-reacted and basically tried to ban altogether the use of this very important biblical word. Also of course, that PROSPERITY MESSAGE contradicted the idea that we're all supposed to be poor and I remember 15 years ago when we started this newsletter we felt some pressure to find a different name for it. The word PROSPEROUS was still out of favor but I decided to use it anyway just because I found it in the Word of God and the Holy Spirit led me to do it. Not too long after we started PLN our little ministry was banned from a particular radio station in Florida owned by one of the largest media ministries in America simply because according to them we were teaching PROSPERITY in our newsletter. The Truth is we were teaching PROSPERITY but not the unbiblical, corrupted version they thought we must be teaching just because we insisted on using that dreaded biblical word, PROSPEROUS.

 

Look, it's about time we grew up about this PROSPERITY MESSAGE stigma and discover what's happened. Like it or not this word is mentioned more than 90 times in our Bibles and the fact is the Bible DOES teach PROSPERITY according to a particular set of principles we need to know about. Jesus died so that among other things we could have PROSPERITY made available to us by GRACE and the Apostle John wrote that above everything else he wished for us to PROSPER (3 John 2). Is it possible then that the enemy has worked all these years to separate us from the very idea that GOD WANTS BELIEVERS TO PROSPER and has even influenced many of us to try to throw out the word PROSPERITY from the accepted Christian lexicon?

 

Here's a generalization I do NOT have statistics to back up but it's an empirical observation based on 26 years of financial counseling: after almost 20 centuries of focusing on NOT being PROSPEROUS, the Body of Christ finds itself at its lowest level of financial influence in its history and American Christians are individually as bad off financially as their non-believing counterparts and in some respects worse off. Friend, I believe it's time to set this thing straight and that we begin to pursue true biblical PROSPERITY as something God intends for us to have, not to consume on ourselves but for the purpose of building the Kingdom of God. We need to listen respectfully to our teachers but then go and check out for ourselves what they tell us in order to find out what the Word of God actually says about these important concepts. By the way check me out and see if I'm right!

 

A Working Definition

 

Friend, God wants you to PROSPER because He loves you (1 john 4:10). What kind of a Father would want things for His children that came from the Curse and the devil, the very things that Jesus came to destroy (1 John 3:8)? Poverty which is the absence of PROSPERITY is not from God and it never has been. It wasn't from God under the Old Covenant and it's certainly not from Him now under the New Covenant that Jesus shed His blood to ratify. No, biblical PROSPERITY has been made available to every Believer by GRACE through FAITH and it's an essential expression of the LOVE of God. Indeed, the LOVE of God is incompatible with the Curse because the Curse came from sin and death; God's way is ALWAYS Blessing and life.

 

And so when the Bible talks about PROSPERITY, it's ALWAYS conveying a concept of more than enough, a surplus, abundance, an overflow, a sufficiency in everything plus some additional amount. God wants you to PROSPER on His terms by abiding in and working through Christ so that your needs will be met and you'll still have a surplus left over for every good deed the Holy Spirit will lead you to perform (Ephesians 2:10) that will glorify God by producing Thanksgiving from those you've blessed (2 Corinthians 9:8-12).

 

PROSPERITY is not about how much money or possessions or things you can accumulate. It's not about how big your house is or how expensive your car is or how much money you have in your checking account or whether or not you have a lot of people working for you. It's about building the Kingdom of God through good works and blessing others. It's about staying close to the Holy Spirit so you'll know what He wants you to do with the funds He's allocated to your account to STEWARD over. Those funds don't belong to you, they belong to Him and He's retained the right to direct you in their use. You're a STEWARD, an administrative Manager over what belongs to God and He'll hold you accountable for how well you do the job. If you're a good STEWARD you'll get more to STEWARD over and a bad STEWARD gets less (Matthew 25:21-29). Good stewardship comes from managing God's property according to His financial principles that you can find by studying His Word. Increasing PROSPERITY is the reward for being a good STEWARD.

 

I hope this gets us started. PROSPERITY isn't a dirty word. No, it's a great word straight out of our Bibles that we need to understand so that we can aspire to it and use it correctly. If you have any questions let me hear from you because I believe this is a really, really important subject for these times we're living through. Stick with it and let's see where the Lord leads and what He teaches us about it!

 

Thanks for stopping by tonight. We'll be looking for you again next Sunday night on October 14. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing and cause you to PROSPER in every area of life.

 

Sinners' Prayer

 

If you've never invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life, you need to and you can do it today just by saying out loud the following simple prayer:

 

Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.

 

If you were sincere as you prayed this prayer, God has already come into your life and you are a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.

 

And, when you get a chance have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer today and believing what you said:

 

Romans 10:9

2 Corinthians 5:17

Ephesians 2:8

 

Prayer Requests

 

If you have a Prayer Request, please connect to the Link below and follow the promptings. The PLN staff members pray over Prayer Requests every Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM eastern time. Agree with us for God to answer your petition.

 

http://www.creditcounseling.net/prayer-request.aspx

 

Donations

 

If you've been edified by Prosperous Life Newsletter, you may want to consider making a SEED FAITH offering to support the Ministry (Galatians 6:6-7). God has instructed us to simply provide folks with an opportunity to sow seed into good ground so in due season you'll be eligible to reap a harvest and the rest is up to you as the Spirit leads. For your information PLN is a nonprofit gift to the Body of Christ so your financial offerings will usually be tax deductible (consult your tax advisor). Just go to the secure Shopping Cart on the Cornerstone web site by connecting through the following link. We appreciate your support and generosity.

 

http://www.creditcounseling.net/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1

 

 

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