Prosperity: Beyond a Blessing

There is actually an exclusive club that you don't want to belong to. It's the “Busted Lottery Winners Club,” and unfortunately it has a lot of members. The statistics vary, but in general, around 50% of winners run through their entire windfall in under 5 years. Follow-up studies of people who acquire sudden wealth indicate a 90% probability that all that wealth is gone by the 3rd generation. That means that even if they had multiple millions, nothing will be left for their grandchildren to inherit.

Why do so many winners go broke? Two reasons appear most common. They lack financial savvy in how to handle money and they often spend lavishly on themselves, family and friends without any long-term planning. They have become very prosperous, but there is no purpose in what they do with their prosperity. They are susceptible to pressure from family and friends and are often seduced into ill-advised investments and outright scams.

Some of them even call winning the lottery “a curse,” and wish they had torn up their ticket. Many get divorced, alienated from family or friends, involved in drugs, and some even commit suicide. Their prosperity obviously did not bring them happiness.

Prosperity is Father God's idea, and from our creation He intended that we would prosper and be blessed (Genesis 1:27–28). But His prosperity has a larger purpose than simply blessing us. He wants to prosper us so we can be a blessing to others. He wants us to partner with Him in establishing His kingdom here on earth. This is His purpose for us, and it gives meaning to everything we do, including how we handle our personal prosperity.

If we will see beyond prosperity as simply a personal blessing, we can enter into an exciting life that is much larger and more rewarding than accumulating stuff could ever be. We can help establish God's kingdom by supporting the spread of the gospel through sending missionaries, planting churches, establishing training centers, even going on short-term mission trips ourselves.

We can use our prosperity to implement God's will on earth by caring for the sick, the poor, the destitute and homeless. We can feed and educate orphans, build schools and universities, construct homes for the homeless, teach people skills and trades and help them start businesses, erect and staff medical clinics and provide disaster relief when needed.

Father God promises us that if we will partner with Him in establishing His kingdom and justice here on the Earth, He will make sure that we have a constant supply of everything we need (Matthew 6:33). We can see that not only does God want to prosper us, but that our prosperity is absolutely essential if we are to fulfill our God ordained purpose here on earth. He wants to continually bless us, so that we can be a blessing to others. This is life with purpose. This is life with meaning.

Please join us this Sunday at 9:00 a.m. or 11:00 AM when I will be speaking on “Breaking the Spirit of Poverty,” part of our current series, “Keys to Prosperity.” Our weekly healing service is at 2 PM.

Pastor Che