Your Wealth Is Not in Your Income

Hunger after His Kingdom (5)

But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you …Matt 6:33, NKJV

“It’s all very good what you said about seeking His Kingdom and finding the wealth we desire in it. But can you be more specific and tell us what to do?”

In my last post I talked about our desire for wealth and finding its fulfillment in the Kingdom of God. I won’t be surprised if you were to ask the above question, as many have. We are used to being told what to do and what not to do. We find security in this, believing that when we have done what we are supposed to do we shall receive what we desire.  Even when the subject matter is the Kingdom of God, we still think in such terms.

But that is the Old Testament way: to work for God’s favor. The New Testament way is to know that we have God’s favor, then we work from that premise. If we cannot work (that is, all our works are futile that can do us no good) to achieve salvation, can we work to have His Kingdom? Certainly not. It is God’s favor to give us His Kingdom, and He is pleased to do so. So all that is left for us to do is to treasure, choose and seek this favor instead of trying to earn His rewards.

Let me tell you that this is by no means easy. There is a strong gravitation towards the other direction – to do something to earn God’s favor. It will be a big mistake to underestimate our tendency to do something in our quest for His Kingdom. We like to do something and to know that we can do something.  Like I say, we are so used to living like that. We need to have tangible steps to take to have the Kingdom. This is one reason why Jesus used such a strong word as “seek” for something that is readily accessible to the believer. You need to overcome your natural tendency to do something to possess His Kingdom. To put it bluntly, the kind of idea that says that you should serve God fervently and He will reward you with blessings is not “seeking His Kingdom”. It is not what Matt 6:33 means. This is at best Law and works, but His Kingdom is one of Grace and favor.

Abraham was a case in point. God promised him that his descendants would be as many as the stars in the sky. But after decades of waiting he didn’t even have a son because his wife Sarah was barren. So he tried to help God out by sleeping with the maid of his wife. He thought the child that resulted from this union would inherit God’s promise. He thought that by his own effort he could possess God’s Kingdom. But God said no. Abraham had to wait until he was a hundred years old and Sarah over ninety before she conceived and gave birth to Isaac – the one to inherit God’s promise. The Bible says that Abraham’s body was then as good as dead, so there’s no question it was God’s intervention that brought about a miracle. God is able to bring His Kingdom upon us without our help.

It’s plain and clear now that to “seek” His Kingdom is not so much our doing something as it is a changing of our mind. It is not about what we do, but how we think. Let’s take our desire for wealth for example. I believe the way of thinking that is in line with Kingdom principle is this: do not look to our income to supply what we need and desire. Instead, look to God. If God choose to use our income to supply what we want, that is fine. But if not, He must be free to use whatever means He likes. He is very creative and we cannot limit Him. Once we think like this we will not limit the source of our wealth to our income. (Remember, we said that wealth is not defined by the amount of money that we have, but the state of being whereby we have all our need met and more.) We will not rely on our income and work hard to maintain or increase it to obtain what we want. In fact we will find that we become open to opportunities and we are free to enjoy our work without having the pressure to squeeze everything out of it. We will be looking to God alone to supply what we want. We will find our wealth in His Kingdom.

He will supply. His name is Jehovah Jireh – God our Provider.

Photo Credit: Salvatore Vuono on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Your Desire for Wealth

 

 Hunger after His Kingdom (4)

Through the apostle John, God said, “I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.”(3 John 2, KJV) God wants you to prosper – that is, in wealth. In the above verse, the first “prosper” must refer to material wealth, or at the very least includes material wealth, because the soul is taken care of in the last “prosper”.  There is no ambiguity here, you can be certain of it. If you desire wealth, you are simply after something that God desires you to have.

Wealth is not defined by the amount of money we have. Simply put, it is the state of being whereby we have all our material need satisfied and more. The “more” is important; without excess we cannot be said to be wealthy.  In the Scriptures, when God dispensed of material blessing, He always gave more than enough. When Jesus fed the five thousand, there were twelve baskets full of leftover. When He blessed Peter and Co. the fishermen with a miraculous catch, there were so many fish they needed another boat to help trawl them in without the weight of the catch sinking their boat. You see, God has so much in surplus that when He gives He doesn’t give just enough. It’s not His idea that we have just enough. He wants us to have more than enough. Much More.

So, firstly, God desires us to be wealthy. Secondly, to be wealthy means to have more than enough. Bear in mind these two points, and we are in a good position to understand and receive what the Lord wants to tell us about our desire for wealth in His great Sermon.

The very first group of people that Jesus addressed in His great Sermon are those who desire to be wealthy. Blessed are the poor …(Matt 5:3, Lk 6:20). In fact at the outset of His public ministry Jesus proclaimed that the Gospel of the Kingdom would be preached to the poor (Lk 4:18). “Gospel” means good news. Why is it that the coming of His Kingdom is good news to the poor, except that they will be made wealthy when the Kingdom has come on them? Is it good news to you when you need money someone come and tell you it’s okay because you will be rich when you get to heaven? Of course not. You would probably slap him and ask, “Do you want me to die now?” Jesus has better sense than that. So when Jesus said “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3, Lk 6:20) he means when the Kingdom comes on them in the here and now they will find in it the wealth they desire. The wealth that we desire, just like any other need, is found in the Kingdom.  

But you cannot serve both God and Mammon (Matt 6:24). Mammon is not money. It is the economic system of this world, the Babylonian system. You can almost say that it is a person, a spirit. God’s Kingdom is different from this world. If we desire something in His Kingdom, we cannot get it from this world. The world’s system of getting wealth by toiling and worrying is not God’s way. When we are determined to do it the world’s way, we are joining ourselves to Mammon and automatically severe ourselves from God’s Kingdom. When we invest in the Babylonian system of this world to accumulate wealth for ourselves we are laying for ourselves treasures on earth (Matt 6:19). Clearly the system doesn’t work as we can see from the frequency of financial crisis, famine and strife everywhere. In this system, moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal (Matt 6:19).  

If we want true wealth, wealth that doesn’t diminish whatever the condition of the world economy, we must join ourselves to the Kingdom of God. It is a superior kingdom and recession-proof. “How to have the Kingdom?” you asked. You can only receive His Kingdom; you cannot obtain or achieve. A prerequisite in the economy of this Kingdom is that we recognize God as our Father. A father always provides for his children. It is far more important to learn how to receive than how to achieve. Our Father God is such that He even takes care of the lilies in the field and the birds in the air, how much more will He take care of us. Do not worry or toil, it will do you no good (Matt 6:25-30). All you need to do is to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you (Matt 6:33, NKJV). Yes, all that pertain to be wealthy, to have more than enough.

Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. (Luke 12:32, NKJV)

Photo Credit: tungphoto on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com 

C. S. Lewis on Grace

Years ago a group of British thinkers on comparative religion furiously debated whether one belief set Christianity apart from other world religions. C. S. Lewis wandered in late, took a seat and asked, “What’s the rumpus about?” They told him they were trying to determine Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Without hesitation he replied, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

I read of the above somewhere and jotted it down; I cannot recall where.  Known as the greatest defender of the Christian faith in the last century, C. S. Lewis wrote many books including The Chronicles of Narnia that have been made into movies and TV series. I love his books, particularly The Screwtape Letters. It takes the form of letters from a senior devil to a junior devil. It’s fun to read.

To Lewis, there’s no question what is it about Christianity that sets it apart from the rest. It’s Grace- God’s favour to undeserving mankind.

What do you think?

By the way, what do you think of the photo?

Your Desire for Righteousness

Hunger after His Kingdom (3)

A note on the series Hunger after His Kingdom.

The present series Hunger after His Kingdom evolves from my sermon of the same title, which I delivered early this year. My objective is to make you hungry for more – more of His Kingdom. The reason is simple: all that you need and desire are found in His Kingdom.    

I am aware that many of us are not used to understanding the Kingdom of God this way. More likely than not we think of giving to and for His Kingdom instead of receiving from it. I am not trying to be different for the sake of being different. But the more I study on the subject of the Kingdom, particularly the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7), the more I find evidence for the fact that Jesus wants to give us the Kingdom for our sakes, rather than asking us to give of ourselves for the sake of the Kingdom.

To think of it, isn’t this most logical? How preposterous is it to think that we can do something to add to His Kingdom. Does God Almighty need anything from us to make Him complete? Simple questions like these put us in the right perspective about His Kingdom. It’s about your need, my friend, and not the need of the Kingdom.

Righteousness.

Righteousness is your foremost need and desire, whether you recognize it or not. Else Jesus would not spend so much time talking about it in His great Sermon. More than half of Matthew 5 talks about righteousness, and in Matthew 6:33 Jesus said to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Righteousness simply means the ability to stand before the throne of God without any sense of guilt or inferiority, (which Man used to be able to do before sin came into the world through Adam), knowing that you are accepted. Why is righteousness our foremost desire? Because Man is created to have fellowship with God and to enjoy Him forever. How can one stand before God and enjoy Him if he thinks that he is not accepted?

Jesus sure understands this. He said: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (Matt 5:6, NKJV) He knows that we hunger and thirst for righteousness, He knows that we desire to be able to come before Him knowing that we are fully accepted. And He promises that our hunger and thirst shall be filled. 

After Adam’s fall, religion came into play. All religions have one goal ultimately: to find acceptance before God. They perform good deeds. They offer sacrifices. They do penance. They give money. They refrain from killing. They kill. They fast. They serve in church. They do social work. And the list goes on. All these they do hoping that they may find God’s acceptance. They hunger and they thirst for it and pursue it with great zeal and fervency. But no amount of their self-effort could make them succeed. The reason is simple. In the quest to become righteous through their own effort, they are saying that they can be like God – perfect, for this is the requirement set forth by Jesus if they want to attain righteousness by their own effort: be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matt 5:48, NKJV). Can anyone succeed? (See my earlier blog posts – The Three Kinds of Righteousness series March 2 to March 30 – for more discussion.)

How then are we to be righteous? We have already established that Jesus promises all our needs and desires are to find fulfillment in His Kingdom. There is no difference with regard to the desire for righteousness. So He said about this hunger and thirst: they shall be filled. They shall be filled when His Kingdom comes upon us, for it comes equipped with a Savior and His blood, powerful enough to reconcile us to God once and for all. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor 5:21, NKJV) This is His righteousness that He gives us. And it’s free.

Doubt not and fear not, in Christ you are righteous.

His Kingdom and Your Desires

Hunger after His Kingdom (2)

Christianity has nothing to say to the person who is completely happy with the way things are.

-          John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire

If you open up a red letter Bible (those with Christ’s words printed in red) to the New Testament, you will soon come to the first large chunk of text in red: Matthew chapter 5 to chapter 7. You won’t miss it. This is a record of Jesus’ sermon which is known as the Sermon on the Mount. Straightaway you are given a good idea as to who Jesus has always wanted to speak to and what He has got to say. There is no ambiguity here.

Blessed are the poor… those who mourn…the meek…those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … and the list goes on (Mat 5:3-10). These were the kind of people Jesus was addressing then and the kind of people that even today He wants to speak to. One condition stands out among these people: all of them hunger and thirst for something and all of them want their needs met and their desires fulfilled.  They have Jesus’ primary attention, as you can see how He started His sermon focusing on them. In fact, before we come to Matthew chapter 5, we read in Matthew 4 that right at the start of His ministry Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people (Mat 4:23).  And right after the Sermon, we find in chapter 8 Jesus again healed all who were sick who came to Him (Mat 8:16). What was Jesus doing? He was fulfilling the needs and desires of everyone He met. What He preached correlates to what He did. From the passage leading up to the Sermon and from the passage after the Sermon we can establish the context of the Sermon, and like I say there can be no ambiguity who Jesus wanted to speak to. He always gives His attention to those who hunger and thirst.

So how can we qualify to have God’s attention? Simply come before Him with our needs and desires. In fact God can smell them miles away and He will come running towards us.

The next question is what He will say to those who hunger and thirst. Did Jesus tell these people to be content with their lot? Did He accuse them to be too desirous to be good? Some would have us believe that Jesus would talk like that; the problem is that we can’t see this in the Bible. For each and every need and desire that He identified in His audience, Jesus promised a solution and a breakthrough: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…they shall be comforted…they shall inherit the earth…they shall be filled…and so on. Jesus wants our desires fulfilled. 

Now we come to the most exciting part. Jesus said our desires shall be fulfilled, but did He tell us how they would come to us? Yes, you bet He did! It is by way of His Kingdom. Read Mat 5:3-10 carefully. You will notice that the specific solution stated for the first and last problem is the kingdom of heaven. It is like it envelops all the rest in between. This is the manner of preaching Jesus’ audience was used to. What Jesus means is this: all the solutions for the individual need raised are included in His Kingdom.  Once we have the Kingdom, we have the solutions, we have all we desire – they are all found in there. That’s why Jesus went about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and He commanded His disciples to go preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, and commissioned us to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom.

It is simple and beautiful. If you are not convinced, you need look no further than this verse:

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Mat 6:33, NKJV)

Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com

God Wants Your Needs Met, Your Desires Fulfilled

Hunger after His Kingdom (1)

Everyone has dreams and desires; this is perfectly normal. After all, you are alive! Only dead people have no desires. Look at the vast number of books out there purporting to teach us how to achieve our dreams and fulfill our desires – the “How to…” books coming under the category of “Self-Improvement” or ‘Self-Help” - and you will agree that I am just stating a fact. They sell well because people want to have a crack at fulfilling their dreams. Don’t be deceived, the goal is never just to improve. Ultimately it is to have what we want, what we desire and what we need.

These self-help books could be useful; I have read my share of Dale Carnegie and Anthony Robbins. But they are what they are: SELF-help. You need to rely on your own strength and you need to slog it out.  What if I tell you there is a better say?

“Are you saying that we don’t have to work hard for what we want?” You may ask.

Hold on, I am not proposing some get-rich-quick scheme to you. When I say there’s a better way, I mean you don’t have to do it all on your own. You have God with you, and He wants your needs met and your desires fulfilled. “This is indeed good news,” some will say. More than that, when you know that the almighty God is on your side, you know that you are sure to succeed. You cannot fail, because God cannot fail.

A long time ago a man named Jabez found himself in a very unfavorable condition. His mother even gave him a name which literally means “he will cause pain”. You can read all about him in 1 Chron 4:9-10. In his desperation he cried out to God, telling Him his desires. He had no qualm in asking what he wanted from God, holding nothing back. One by one, his desire was that God bless him, enlarge his territory, put His hand on him, keep evil away and let there be no pain. What was the result? The Bible put it very simply: God granted him what he requested. If God did it for Jabez, surely he will do the same for you.

There is one thing that I need to point out: we shouldn’t make too much a distinction between needs and desires. I don’t think there is a clear-cut line. To Jabez, which one was his need and which one his desire? Some people put it this way: God will give you all that you need, but He is not bound to give you all that you desire. At first look, it seems reasonable. But actually this kind of thinking belies a view of God that is far from the truth. To one who thinks like that, God is either not too generous or else His resources are limited. But we know that neither is true from the witness of the Bible. Jabez is a good example of God’s generosity and willingness to bless. Jesus also told us that if our earthly father knows how to give us good things, so much more our Father God. It is hard to imagine our Father God withholding any good thing from us.  Also, the apostle Paul said that whatever we can think of asking God, He is able to do far more. There is no limit to God’s resources.  

Believe that God wants your needs met and your desires fulfilled, and you are positioning yourself to be greatly blessed.

Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com

God Restores Our Loss

Have you ever experienced God’s supernatural power in restoring loss? I bet you have. But if you have not, know this: God is in the business of restoration. It matters not whether it’s your money, business, relationship, marriage, health or any other things.

Jesus said, "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." (John 10:10, NKJV)

The “thief” in this verse refers to the devil. His job description is to steal, and to kill and to destroy. If there is a devil loose out there you can expect to suffer some loss some time, especially if you have never taken God to be your refuge. Well, it’s not always the devil’s fault; I think about 99% of the time only. Somewhere else in the Bible we are told that the job description of Jesus is to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). So to put things in perspective, to have life … to have it more abundantly would have to include restoration of all things lost.

A few days ago I got to listen to Bill Johnson’s sermon that he delivered on Easter (Apr 24, 2011). I tell you, it was a sumptuous treat to the spirit. He gave many true-life testimonies as is his habit when preaching, but this time the testimonies on restoration are simply mind-boggling! I don’t know what word to use to describe them, let me relate just two of them to you as accurately as I can.

Bobby Conner, a fellow minister close to Bill’s ministry, once lost a pocket knife given to him by another fellow minister. The knife carried a lot of sentimental value to Bobby because it’s given to him by a good friend. One day some time after the loss, he suddenly thought about it and he didn’t know why but just blurted out, “Hey, I want my knife back!”  Instantly something fell out of the air above his bed and dropped on the bed in the centre of the room – it was his very knife! This incident happened a few years back and Bill had also shared it amongst many other testimonies about supernatural restoration by God in his famous 2008 Easter sermon.

A few weeks ago one of their students (Bill’s Bethel Church) lost his lap-top. It was stolen. The computer was of course valuable, but what he felt most frustrating was that the file of his college dissertation was stored in its hard drive. He didn’t get back his computer so he bought a new one. He had heard Bill share about the “I want my knife back” testimony. As he opened up the new computer, he said, “I want my dissertation back.” Guess what? He found his old file in the new computer! This is an astounding miracle! How would this be possible except it be God’s doing?

Take heart my friend, especially if you have lost something precious. This is my favorite verse regarding restoration:

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.

And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. (Joel 2 :25-26, KJV)

(To view part of Bill Johnson’s Easter 2008 sermon, Click Here)

(To listen to Bill Johnson’s Easter 2011 sermon, Click Here or Click Here)