Focus: Power For Prosperity

Text: Dt.8:18

"But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that GIVETH THEE THE POWER TO GET WEALTH, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day."

The message of yesterday was, 'You Are Blessed,' and it is important that we understand that and have it settled in our consciousness. It is by God's blessing that we can achieve success in this life. The psalmist says that "even the rich among the people shall intreat thy favour" (Ps.45:12). No one is anything without the favor of God. It is by the favor of God that a nobody can become a somebody, and it is by it that someone can become a hero from zero.

It is wrong for a believer in Christ to think of God's blessing only in terms of the spiritual. God's blessing touches and covers every dimension of our life. It impacts on us holistically. Also, it is wrong for a believer in Christ to think that poverty is a virtue, that prosperity is a vice, and that suffering is normal in God's world. God is neither the creator of poverty nor the producer of pain and disease.

God wants you well in every facet of life. If you believe that God heals, it then means that He is opposed to sickness. If you believe that God blesses, it then means too, that God is against misery and penury. Being poor is not the same as being holy. We must reject poverty while loving the poor. We must reject sickness while helping the sick. Every good gift comes from God, and I am sure that poverty, pain and suffering are not part of the good gifts. What God allows is not the same as what He originates. Solomon says, "The blessing of the LORD, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it" (Prov.10:22). Behind your wealth is God's blessing, and sorrow is not part of the package. God doesn't pour sand into our soups. He never gives us snake in the name of fish. God's blessing produces wealth, and sorrow is not a component of divine wealth.

Here is Apostle John's prayer for Gaius: "Beloved, I wish ABOVE ALL THINGS that thou mayest PROSPER and be in HEALTH, even as thy soul PROSPERETH" (3Jh.1:2). The prayer includes material, physical and spiritual prosperity, and Gaius' total prosperity was a top priority for John - "above all things." Our prosperity is God's top priority too. Nothing is as important to God as our wholeness and wellness. 

God delights in our holiness and happiness, and nothing says that the holy cannot be happy. As a matter of fact, God made holiness to be the secret of happiness. Tell me, who is truly happy without being truly holy?

God's blessing is divine enabling. Our text says that God gives us the power to make wealth. By the enabling or empowering of God, the people of God become makers of wealth and managers of resources.

Poverty is the result of a failure in us to utilize God's ability in making wealth. We have God's power in us, but we are not using it. God's power is lying dormant in us. No one prospers that has accepted poverty as normal. We must let our position in Christ influence our condition of living.

Pharaoh said to Joseph, "And if thou knowest any MEN OF ACTIVITY among them, then make them rulers over my cattle" (Gen.47:6). It is said of Jeroboam, "And the man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valour: and Solomon seeing the young man THAT HE WAS INDUSTRIOUS, HE MADE HIM RULER OVER ALL the charge of the house of Joseph" (1Kgs.11:28). God wants His people to be active and industrious - energetic and enterprising. He wants us to be creative and productive, not passive, indulgent, materialistic and consumeristic.

God has given us the power to prosper. Let us use it. Our wealth is for the glory of our God and the advancement of His work on earth. We serve God not only with our hearts but also with our resources. I earnestly pray for your material, physical and spiritual prosperity, and for God to bless the labor of your hands. Amen.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter