Читать книгу Path to Prosperity - Jeanel Champion - Страница 5

It’s enticing; it’s luring. It calls to you with desire, saying “Pleasures are in my hand, to you I will give grandeur. Eat of my fruit at any cost and the world will be yours. Drink of my drink and your desires come to reality. I am the answer to it all. The friend of the great, the leader of the stars. I call and they answer, they do as I tell them. Their reward is in my hand, the world I give to them.” But be wise. To eat its fruit is delicious but to love it is death.

Money is a hot topic in society and the Church. As my poem above states, it possesses the ability to give wealth, luxury and make many dreams come true. However, the place money has in our hearts is very important to understand. We want to be people who are wisely able to build wealth and use it to further the Kingdom of God, our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, but we do not want to fall into the trap of loving money. As the poem says, we can enjoy the fruit it gives but the love of money leads to dangerous evils.

“For the love of money is the 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)

Many have incorrectly quoted 1 Timothy 6:10 as reading money is the root of all evil. What the Scripture actually says is the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Emphasis should be placed on the word love. We see this in society today when people set aside their moral values in order to gain money. Bribes, deception, murder, jealousy, and envy are just some of the evils that the love of money has brought into society. According to I Timothy 6, money is not the issue nor is it the focus of this Scripture. The place money has in our hearts is the real issue.

God never commanded us to love money; He commands us to love Him and to love each other. Loving money is against the will of God and therefore is sinful. To love money is to lust after it. You become a servant to it, making money your master. If you love money, you obey the call to gain money over fulfilling the will, purposes, and intents of God: But this is in fact the great deception of money. The truth is, when you chase after the will of God to bring about His purposes, money and provision will naturally follow.

Before we move on, let us understand one thing. The love of money is not simply a concept. It is a stronghold of the mind. It can also be referred to as the lust of money. The lust of money, or the strong desire for money can lead someone to the point of putting financial increase above their relationship with God and family, and money then becomes an addiction. The lust of money puts someone under the illusion that money is above everything and will satisfy all their needs. This is an evil mental influence and straight deception. Many today have all the riches they desire, yet they have lost their health, their marriage, and relationship with their family. The love of money can seem pleasurable and rewarding at first, but leads to a miserable end; an end the enemy of your soul desires for you. Is not loving money, after all, a demonic stronghold? Many need to be delivered from the demonic stronghold of loving or lusting after money.

For everything in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - does not come from the Father but from the world (1 John 2:16). Is not lusting after money led by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life? Indeed, the lust for money is to please the fleshly needs, to look good and have things that look good, and obtain a high stature in the sight of others. This also reveals that lusting for money is rooted in pride. It is self-seeking which is against the character of The Father, who exemplifies humility and love. This is the kind of love that instructs us to meet the needs of others (1 Corinthians 13:4). As you continue reading this book, you will see that God does want you to have the best of the best. The point I want you to see here is in your desire and pursuit. Desire God and purse His will for your life; do not lust after money and do not make it your number one priority. When you chase God, riches will chase you.

The spirit of loving money is indeed at the root of much of the evil we see in the world today. People go to various extremes just to make money. Some even sell their souls to the devil because money means that much to them. The problem with this is that the soul is exceedingly more valuable than money and anything money can supply. To sell one's soul for money is like trading in the most expensive diamond in the world for a handful of cement, yet the soul is not even comparable in worth to the most expensive diamond in the world. The soul is very powerful and gives us our God-like qualities. No amount of money in the world is worth your soul.

In this chapter, I want you to check your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to search your heart and reveal any area where the love of money may be. Open up your heart to Him and be attentive (very attentive) and receptive to what He shows you.

Below are some examples of how the love of money operates:

1 Companies are dishonest about their products in order to generate more sales.

2 Someone murders a loved one to get life insurance money.

3 A leader accepts a bribe and acts illegally or dishonestly.

4 Making decisions solely based on money versus seeking the counsel of God to find out His will.

5 A Christian singer or speaker will only minister at events that can pay them a high fee, versus ministering where God leads them to, even if it means doing so for free.

6 A person who is able to and has the opportunity to give to charity and the needy but constantly refuses to.

7 Not wanting to be separate from your money, including a fear of investing, giving money away, or tithing.

8 Jealous of what someone else has financially or materially and hating them in your heart or planning evil against them.

As believers in Jesus Christ, we live according to His will. He has a plan for all of us and we must find out what that plan is and live accordingly. When we allow money to lead in our decision making, we have bowed to it as lord. For example, a minister is invited to speak at two locations on the same date. He has to choose one as he cannot be in both places at once. If he decides to go with the option that pays the most simply because of the additional cash, then money is lord of his life. He obeyed the “voice” of money and essentially went with the option money told him to go with. If Jesus is his Lord, then he would have prayed and found out where God wanted him to go and would have followed that path. Maybe God still would have sent him to the higher paying option but by seeking and following God’s will, this minister was not allowing money to rule over him. In his heart, he was motivated by his love for God and his willingness to minister to God’s people. He was not motivated by the amount of money he would make. In this same scenario, if God tells the minister to attend the event that paid less (or one that did not even pay at all) and he obeyed, then his love for God is above his desire for money because he obeyed God even when it meant he would receive less money.

The opening verse, Matthew 6:24, makes it clear – you cannot love both God and money. There is only one throne in the heart of a human being and that throne must be reserved for God. Two gods cannot sit on that throne. One will have to give up the throne if another arrives. When we love money, we impeach God from His throne in our hearts and we give money His place. Money takes rule and our decisions are based on money and not on the will of God. When this happens, evil can easily take over our lives as we begin to compromise to make more money. Small compromises then lead to larger compromises.

The Role of Money

I am excited for you to get into the next chapter to understand God’s perspective on money. Right now, let us be sure we know the role of money in our lives, as God intended. Keep this in mind – money should not be lord over you, instead you should rule over it. As a human being, you have been given dominion over everything on the earth to rule over it and this includes money and wealth. You control your finances and it should not control you. You are a king or queen over your life and resources and you should reign over your finances. I want to teach you how to rule over your money well and thereby increase it and no devil in hell can stop you.

Please understand the following:

1 Money is meant to advance your life so you, your family, and community can be blessed by your wealth. God wants us to have the best. He said that if we would follow His instructions we would eat the good of the land (Isaiah 1:19). God wants you to have more than what you have. In fact, the increase you daydream about and wish you had, is nothing compared to the increase God desires for you. He wants more wealth for you than you want for yourself and I will teach you in this book how to become wealthy God’s way.

2 Money is meant to advance the Kingdom. Have you noticed who is advancing in society? The most influential people are the wealthy. Could you imagine if executives of the largest companies, politicians, lawmakers, celebrities, entertainers, etc. were all people who loved and served God and people who lived righteously and obeyed God’s Word? Our society would be much different. When God’s people are wealthy, they are more influential in the world, and therefore are able to bring Godly standards to the arena they operate in. Our society, laws, schools, companies, television programs, culture, music, entertainment, sports, etc. will reflect Godly principles. This is what God desires. This establishes His rule in our world. How deeply can we impact society at large with God’s standards when majority of the church is poor, broke, just getting by, and barely surviving? As we learned in chapter 1, money opens doors to put those who hold it in the face of decision makers and culture shifters. If more Christians had wealth, then more of the decisions made and more of our values and culture as a society would reflect our Godly standards.

3 Money helps us take care of each other. It is at the heart of God that we love one another. In fact, Jesus said this is the way the world will know that we are His disciples (John 13:35). It is our love for one another that sets us apart from the world. I have learned that when God blesses one, it is meant for others also. For example, Tara is praying for God to provide her with a car. Lisa gets a significant pay increase and wants to give herself a luxury car as a reward. God tells Lisa to buy two cars – one for her and one for Tara. If Lisa is attentive to God’s voice and her heart loves Him, she will obey. Tara has received her blessing, not by God giving her a car directly, but by Lisa obeying and giving Tara a car. What Lisa needs to understand is that when God gave her the financial increase, He calculated Tara’s car into it. It is not Lisa’s money because all that we have belong to God – He gave her the money to meet her needs and the needs of Tara. Scripture says,

“But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” 1 John 3:17 (NKJV)

Loving God means we take care of the material and financial needs of each other. Well, how can we do so if we are only making enough money to just get by? Your financial increase means that you have more to give to those in the Kingdom of God who are in need and this is one of the reasons why God wants you to be rich. There are others whose blessings are tied up in your prosperity, like Tara in the example above. As we read earlier, God told Abraham that He will bless him so that he can be a blessing to others.

Please refer to the Workbook, chapter 2 for soul searching exercises and prayers to help you discover and deal with the love of money in your life.