Righteous livingly has everything to do with your ability to prosper in God’s Kingdom. Religious nonsense is what has made Christians poor in the world today. A religion with the fullness of Christ gives us life always. It makes you prosperous and fruitful in every areas of your life.
But it is possible to have an outward appearance of holiness, while the heart is so full of lies and deceits. This is the reality of our Christian world today. The Devil is very crafty. He wants you to miss out of God’s blessing through his lies and deceits.
Apart from this a self righteous man may be living in poverty; due to his lack of knowledge, in the workings of God’s wisdom to prosper himself. He knows what God’s word says about prosperity, but his theological philosophy opposes it. So he struggles with it daily. He finally chooses rather to accept poverty, as the will of God for his life due to his own ignorance. God did not make Him poor. His ignorance made him poor.
He is not different from the elder brother in Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal son. The scriptures says about him in the Parable:
“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
“‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” – Luke 15:28-32 (NIV)
This is the way a self righteous believer reacts to the prosperity of a man of faith. Everything that the Father has belongs to him; but in his self righteousness he will not accept prosperity, as God’s will for him. So he will trash talk those who are using their faith in prospering themselves, instead of rejoicing with them.
In most cases this self righteous believer sees financial prosperity, as a hindrance to his ability to live righteously before God. He doesn’t believe that a believer can be rich and righteous at the same time. Such a Christian sees financial prosperity as a deception of Satan to lure him into sin. That was the mentality of the elder brother in this Parable of Jesus.
But the Bible actually says that:
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
1 Timothy 6:10 NIV
It is “the love of money” that is the real root of all kinds of evil. There is no evil in money. The only evil in it is the one created in the negative attitude towards it. Money is necessary for you to live in this world. In fact Jesus said to give Caesar what belongs to him – that is the money to live with in this world. And also to give God what belongs to Him also – that is your life with all of your heart (Matthew 22:17-22).
The scriptures also says that:
“Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.”
Ecclesiastes 5:10 NIV
And again:
“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:5 NIV
In other words contentment with the prosperity of the Lord, in godliness or righteous living is of great gain (1 Timothy 6:6). You were not created in the image of Christ, for the purpose of amassing wealth for yourself. You were created in the image of Christ, to be a blessing to your world by investing in other believers’ lives.
Those who do see the doctrine of prosperity as being evil, are buying into the lies of the Devil. He doesn’t want you to have the resources needed to fulfill the will of God. Being rich is not evil, but it is the greediness for money, that has made being rich in itself evil.
There are many Preachers today who are living in poverty because of this lie of the Devil. These are people who are really righteous and dedicated to the service of the Lord. They are committed to God. They love God with all of their hearts. But because they lack the knowledge of the will of God to prosper them, they are living righteously but in deep poverty.
Divine Prosperity comes from your heart to your world
God’s promises to prosper you has nothing to do with your geographical location. God will prosper you wherever you are located right now, as long as you are busy doing His perfect will for your life. The economy of the country where you are living now, has nothing to do with the prosperity of the Lord for you. God’s economy is never dependent on the world’s economy.
God can bypass every economic statistics, just because He wants to prosper you financially. But you must first accept and believe that your ability to prosper, is spiritual and not dependent on your geographical location or economic circumstances. God’s ability to prosper you is above and beyond all of these. You are functioning on heaven’s economic agenda, and not on this world’s.
God’s plan for you has everything to do with you, accepting the truth that it is God’s will to prosper you. You either will have to believe in it with your heart; or you can just accept the Devil’s lie, that poverty is God’s will for you. The choice is always yours!
You see in many of the nations that the Lord had been sending me to, I have seen many Preachers of the gospel; who are really living a lifestyle of prosperity. And one thing that is common with all of them, is that they first had to accept prosperity, as part of the package of God’s blessing into their lives.
If you can’t believe it with your heart, then you can’t accept or receive it; even though Jesus had done everything to make it available to you. He did not die and rose from the death for you to be poor; but for you to be able to have access into the goodness of God towards you by faith. It is only by faith that you are able to gain access, into all of the blessings of God to prosper you.
But at the same time there are those Preachers in economically advantageous nations, who are living in poverty also. I have seen them living like beggars in the midst of abundance. You see financial prosperity is a mentality culture. If you are thinking like a poor man, you will be talking like a poor man. That’s how people become poor.
We definitely can’t fix stupid; but we can at least help ourselves, by living an exemplary disciplined lifestyle of a prosperous righteous man. How can you be living like a beggar, when God sees you blessed already? Change the way you see yourself. Change that beggarly mentality into a blessing mentality. You can’t be effective in what you had been called to do in God’s Kingdom, if you are always at the mercy of mere men.
The scriptures says:
“And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith.” – Genesis 15:6 (NLT)
And again:
“But the just shall live by faith [My righteous servant shall live by his conviction respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, and holy fervor born of faith and conjoined with it]; and if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him.” – Hebrews 10:38 (AMPC)
Abraham was a righteous man. His lifestyle of faith made him righteous, and positioned him for the blessing of the Lord. He became richer than everyone who lived in his time. We can say the same about Job, David, Solomon and others. It is righteous living that positioned them all in the blessing of the Lord.
They were not perfect people, but their righteous living by faith was what pleased God, in making them rich (Hebrews 11:6). Each one of them had their own faults in their walks with God. But God overlooked all of their faults, because of their faith in Him. Faith in God made them righteous before Him. Being a man of faith doesn’t means that you are perfect, but it means that you are justified before God, because of your faith in Him. God now sees you perfect, because of your lifestyle of faith in His promises to you.
Jesus remains and forever will be, the only perfect man that ever lived on earth. You have no perfection, except in Christ Jesus. These men of faith made mistakes just like us. But their honesty and sincerity in returning back to God quickly in repentance, helped them to keep living a righteous lifestyle in a world of sinful men.
The scriptures says:
“God is mighty, but despises no one; he is mighty, and firm in his purpose. He does not keep the wicked alive but gives the afflicted their rights. He does not take his eyes off the righteous; he enthrones them with kings and exalts them forever. But if people are bound in chains, held fast by cords of affliction, he tells them what they have done— that they have sinned arrogantly. He makes them listen to correction and commands them to repent of their evil. If they obey and serve him, they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity and their years in contentment. But if they do not listen, they will perish by the sword and die without knowledge.”
Job 36:5-12 NIV
This is why you’d been called by God to live righteously – for you to prosper. He wants to use your life to preach the message of the blessing and righteous prosperity in prospering your communities. The people you are preaching to on a daily basis, will need to see you prosperous; before your testimonies will start turning their hearts to Jesus, for the new life in the blessing of the Lord. They will be blessed and become prosperous, as they follow you; just as you are following Jesus. You can transform any community or nation in this way.
David said:
“He (God’s presence) refreshes and restores my soul (life); He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake…
… Surely goodness and mercy and unfailing love shall follow me all the days of my life, And I shall dwell forever [throughout all my days] in the house and in the presence of the LORD.”
PSALM 23:3, 6 AMP
God’s presence led David to live righteously, and God’s presence led him into prosperity. Are you practicing God’s presence daily? He will lead you and guide you into your prosperity.
Remember:
“The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, “The Lord is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”
Psalm 92:12-15 NIV
