Prosperity is guaranteed by God Himself revealed through His Word. Most Christians believe that God wants them to prosper, and rightly so. This is because in the Bible God tells us He not only wants us to prosper but also that He plans for us to prosper. Yet prosperity has eluded so many, not because of lack of desire but because of lack of understanding. In search of this dilemma, they look for Scriptures to guide them. They find that the answer is not found in one topic or one scripture but scattered throughout the Bible in over 1,500 Scriptures dealing directly with the subject. There are approximately 1,000 more dealing indirectly with prosperity in some form. My research has taken me through all of those Scriptures and put together an understanding that is easy to follow from one chapter to another, revealing in Scripture in such a way that answers any question you may be facing in your own life that may be preventing you from achieving true prosperity. There are many misconceptions and teachings on the prosperity doctrine that miss the mark and turn off many believers and nonbelievers alike. This book reveals the false teachings of prosperity and how to detect the difference at a glance. No matter where you are in your Christian walk there is something here for you. Remember, it is what you learn after you know it all that makes the biggest difference in your life. If you do not consider yourself a Christian, don't let that deter you from reading this book. After reading this book, you may just want to become one. Don't waste another minute. We know that God never lies, God never fails, and God truly wants you to prosper. Suggested Reading Trust God for Your Finances by Jack Hartman The Generosity Factor by Ken J. Blanchard and S. Truett Cathy The Blessed Life by Robert Morris
SHOULD CHRISTIANS PROSPER?
Teacher/Student Study BookBy James H. HooksAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 James H. Hooks
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4772-8401-8Contents
Preface...........................................................7Introduction......................................................13Chapter 1: Who's in Control?......................................19Chapter 2: To Whom Does the Earth Belong?.........................45Chapter 3: How to Be Successful Where You Are.....................67Chapter 4: Instructions from God's Word...........................101Chapter 5: Needs and Greeds.......................................121Chapter 6: Rules of Engagement....................................139Chapter 7: Take Action............................................155Chapter 8: Tithe..................................................171Chapter 9: Gifts and Offerings....................................189Chapter 10: Sowing and Reaping....................................211Chapter 11: Biblical Value of Our Gifts...........................229Chapter 12: God's Bank............................................245Appendix..........................................................265References and Suggested Reading..................................273About the Author..................................................275
Chapter One
Who's in Control?
We are living in a blame-game age. When something goes wrong, we want to blame it on someone or something—our past, the way we were brought up, our employers—anything but ourselves. We are even so bold as to blame God. We want to pass the blame in some other direction rather than accept it as ours. Blaming someone or something removes guilt from us. As long as we can pass the blame, we never have to deal with the problem, so things will never change. Problems do not mysteriously go away. If not dealt with, they will be there waiting for us when we get out of bed the next day. Our daily activities then revolve around our problems in life. It is not that we love the problem so much that we want to keep it around; we just never learned how to deal with it. In order to deal with it, we need to know our part in the blame game.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
You may not feel that you are on an equal playing field with the rest of the world. You may not have a natural talent or a brilliantly creative mind. You may not feel that you have a chance at a prosperous life when there are so many others more qualified. There was a program on TV many years ago titled The Equalizer. This was a mystery about a man who was dedicated to law and order. He was of average size and not the strongest person in the world, but he knew how to handle his gun and was very good at it. They called him "the Equalizer" because no matter the size or shape of the enemy, his gun and his knowledge of self-defense made him equal. Not only equal, it gave him the advantage.
Within every child is a potential for greatness.
We have an equalizer that places us on a level playing field with everyone else in the world. That equalizer is God. We are all created equal in His sight. It is up to us to develop our knowledge, talent, and skills to use these gifts effectively. Being that God is our equalizer and the Holy Spirit is our trainer, we need to look to Him as our source of authority. To obtain the promised results, obedience is required in developing those skills. We need to follow His instructions, which are outlined in His Word, in that development. As we read His instructions and practice His Word, we not only become equal to the rest of the world but we are also given an advantage by access to God Himself. "If God is for us, who can be against us" (Rom. 8:31B)? What we have or what we become in life depends upon how well we develop our skills in using the Equalizer to combat the enemies of our souls. So if you have ever felt inferior to others, remember this: within you is a potential for greatness.
This first chapter will really get you thinking. It will give you answers to some questions you may have been asking. It will also let you see things in a light in which perhaps you haven't seen it before. It will create some questions. As you move through each chapter, the total picture will become clearer. The answers may not be what you expect, but they will be directly from God's Word.
God Speaks
"The words of the LORD are pure words ... Like silver tried in a furnace of earth, Purified seven times. You shall keep them, O Lord, You shall preserve them from this generation forever" (Ps. 12:6–7).
If God
• is the creator of all that we can see and what we cannot see,
• is sinless and pure,
• formed man from the dust of the ground,
• set the sun and the moon in the heavens,
• created all that is living upon the earth,
• truly spoke all into existence in six days and rested on the seventh day, and
• is the author of truth,
we can then conclude that there is nothing God cannot do. However, God cannot go against His own Word and still be God. If He went against His own Word in just one area, He would be a lie, and the Bible would be like any other book—unreliable as the ultimate authority.
We should be able to go to God's Word and use it as the ultimate authority for settling any dispute of man and soul. Men have tried for centuries to challenge the Word of God and disprove its contents by proving discrepancies. In so doing, they have added more proof that the Bible, which was written by forty different authors over a period of 1,400 years, had to be inspired by one mind, a mind that has never been proven wrong—the mind of God.
Over the centuries, there has been significant proof that this Book is the infallible Word of God. Being that man could not prove the Word wrong and his intentions are vile, he has tried to change the words to mean something different than what God originally intended. Good translations change the words without changing the spiritual meaning. Whatever translation you use, make sure you do your research. Compare Scripture with Scripture by using Strong's Concordance to compare specific verses in the translation you want to use. The translation should withstand the test of truth of God's Word to be God's Word.
Remember, there is a way that seems right unto man, but the end is destruction (Prov. 14:12). Make sure the translation is the inspired Word of God. Accurate translations are simpler to read but don't water down the Word. Translations exist, however, that watered down the Word, changing the spiritual meaning to cause people to think they can serve God and go to heaven without changing their ways of life.
It is natural for man to think highly of himself, looking for a God that conforms to his lifestyle instead of man having to conform to the Word of God. Man often looks for a god to serve him instead of looking to serve God. If you are looking for a god to conform to your lifestyle, you are in the wrong book. On the other hand, if you are truly looking for the truth in biblical prosperity, read on. As we move farther into this first chapter, we need to know beyond a doubt that there is nothing man can do to change God's Word. Attempting to do so is like trying to mop up the ocean with a sponge. It cannot be done. Words themselves may be changed, but the Word of God itself will never change. The problem associated with the super knowledge mankind has been able to achieve is that some people actually believe they can change God. Their efforts are futile.
"And God said; Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness" (Gen. 1:26).
Will every man remain pure and sinless because God created him that way? I have a brother who works in a coal mine. He gets up in the morning, takes a shower, puts on clean clothes, and heads down the road to work. When he comes out of the mine at the end of his shift, he has black coal dust all over him and looks like a large lump of coal with lips and eyes. Do you think he goes through life that way? If he gets in his car with coal dust all over him, what is the car going to look like? When he gets home, do you think he's going to get through the door?
When he comes out of the mine, he has to realize that he is dirty and cannot go home covered with coal dust. So he takes a shower to wash off the mine dirt. Now that he is clean once again, he can go home, knowing he'll be allowed entry into his own home.
Although we were created in the sinless image of our God, we cannot go through life without getting soiled with sin. If we somehow convince ourselves that we aren't dirty, if we don't even realize that we are dirty, we don't think we need to get cleansed. Wherever we go in life, though, we soil everything we come in contact with, such as our spouses, children, and people with whom we associate on a daily basis. We also deceive ourselves into thinking we can enter into the gates of heaven dirty and soiled. The only way we can enter the gates of heaven is to be washed clean of our sins.
Believing something does not make it so. Only believing God will bring it to pass.
"... [L]et them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" (Gen. 1:26).
Having dominion means being in charge. God put Adam in charge of the earth and every living thing on, in, and flying over it. The man, Adam, was the representative of mankind and God's children and the physical father of all humans on the earth for all generations.
God gave His spoken Word. He put man in charge. This means God cannot intervene or supersede in the affairs of man without the express permission of man. He can work in our lives or decisions only to the extent we allow Him. God will not force Himself on anyone, but He will work in our lives to the extent we ask Him to do so.
God doesn't work like the CEOs of a lot of corporations. A CEO is placed in charge, and then a board of directors is elected to tell him or her what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. The board of directors determines the vision of the company and how to reach that vision. They will also remove from power any CEO that doesn't obey the board. Reaching the goal or vision is not guaranteed. The board may make mistakes because, after all, they are just human. Who has to pay for the board's mistakes? The CEO is the one who gets blamed. So the real purpose of the CEO is to have someone to blame when things go wrong, when the desired goals aren't reached.
God works differently. God casts the vision, gives instructions on how to achieve those goals, and offers help in any area in which we need His help. He will go before us when we ask for help to overcome obstacles in our paths. If we follow God's vision and leadership through instructions from His Word, we are guaranteed to reach the goal. The only way we can miss the goal is to not follow God's Word.
So when God puts man in charge, he is free to make his own decisions and mistakes without interference from his Creator. God has also given us the assurance that any time we get in trouble we can ask God and He will help in any area we need. He knows from the beginning that we are going to mess up, and He knows what to do to make it right. However, we then have to decide whether to listen to God or continue doing things our way.
God doesn't force us to do it His way or make us go in His direction. However, He does remind us that we can never get to God's destination or complete His vision without following His Word. He allows us to mess up, go it alone if we want, even hate Him and despise His instruction, but He won't force us to go His way. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end is destruction (Prov. 14:12). He loves us when we mess up, when we are so dirty that we cannot stand ourselves. He loves us too much to want us to remain that way.
He will strive to bring you back in line, but He won't force you. When God put us in charge of all living things, He put us in charge of the physical realm, what we can see, touch, taste, and smell. He expects us to do our best, and He will do the rest.
"Then God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful, and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it: have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth ... Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps upon the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so" (Gen. 1:28, 30; emphasis mine).
When I was younger, I was not very good at English. That probably hasn't changed much. What I lack in expression of words, I have to make up with common sense. I do have enough common sense to know that "have given" is past tense. It's not present or future but past. We as Christians spend much of our prayer time with God, asking Him for things He has already given us. God really must be patient. He sometimes may wonder, What do I have to do to get them to understand? Do I have to hit them over their heads with a brick? You will hear the words have given throughout this book. Remember, we can take God at His Word. If it says have given, we just need to accept it. If we keep praying for what God has already given us, we do so only because we do not believe His Word. Do you see that when we pray that way, we doubt God's Word? If we doubt, we can never move any further in our walk or achieve what we pray for. We have already doubted God. Remember, God needs to say it only once for it to be true.
"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Gen. 2:7).
Dust just blows in the wind; it has no substance to hold it. It is dried-up dirt. When God placed dust and soul together, Adam became human, hu referring to the dirt and man referring to the soul. This was after God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. It is from that breath of life that man became human, body and soul. When God made man in His own image, it certainly wasn't the physical image. There is no part of God that is dirt. He had to be referring to His spiritual image. God left what to do with that image to man.
Being that we are made from dirt, we have to wonder how important we or our prayers are. Prayer is a two-way communication with God. We pray and listen. We were made to listen to God twice as much as we talk to Him; otherwise, He would have given us two mouths and one ear.
The Fall
• Satan used a serpent, a living creature, to deceive Eve.
• Satan could not come as himself because he is spirit and God had given authority of earthly affairs to man. Satan could not override that authority.
• Satan used God's creation, over which man was in charge, to deceive man.
• When Adam disobeyed God and listened to the woman who was deceived by the serpent used by Satan, man surrendered his spiritual authority to Satan. He also yielded his members and his God-given authority of the earth to Satan.
• God had to judge. Judgment began where sin began.
Satan has no control over God's anointed and those under God's protection. He had to get God's children to turn away from God themselves. He uses the same tactics today as he did with Adam and Eve. He used partial Scriptures in a devious way to get to Adam. Those tactics are still being used today—on us. Satan knows our weaknesses and our strengths. He uses our weaknesses to break us down or turn us away from following God's Word. Everyone has different weaknesses. That is the area of attack used to bring down the strong. Knowing this, we need to shore up our weak areas and increase our strengths, one of which is an unconditional and unquestionable belief in God's Word.
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gen. 3:15).
God Passes Sentence
The origin of sin is the devil. There is no remedy for the curse God brought upon Satan. The ultimate outcome of sin is death. It is good for us to know that sin always has a penalty. We live in a carefree society that has been deceived into believing sin has no penalty. The devil and his angels know their destination. They know that God has spoken His Word and will not reverse it. God has prepared a place for Satan and his angels. A place of eternal torment. A place where there will be suffering in an eternal flame. A place where there will be no rest from agony. A place where there is no love and total darkness.
In a recent survey, pollster Ellison Research in Phoenix found that 87 percent of U.S. adults believe in the existence of sin. The poll, taken from 1,007 adults demographically representing the United States, has a plus or minus of 3.1 percent error. It found that people interpret sin from their own perspective instead of from God's. In other words, an individual decides what is and is not sin. Those polled had varying degrees of different types of sin. Yet 65 percent believe they are going to heaven, and only .05 percent believes they will go to hell. This shows that 34.05 percent believe we have no eternal destination and death is the end. This is an atheistic belief. To me, the results of this study indicate that most people believe there is no eternal punishment for sin.
"Fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor shall children be put to death for their fathers: a person shall be put to death for his own sin" (Deut. 24:16).
"Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; And sin, when it is finished, brings forth death" (James 1:15).
The devil has deceived mankind into believing there is no such place of eternal torment and that God would never send anyone there. That is partially true. God will not send anyone there. God gives us a choice of where we want to go and shows us the way.
God has prepared a place for the Christian. A place of eternal happiness and peace. A place where we will receive all the good we have ever dreamed of. God has not entered into the heart of man what He has prepared for us in heaven, a place of eternal life (1 Cor. 2:9). God has prepared a place for us, so He prepares us for the place. I truly believe the reason it is not revealed to man is because if we know what He has in store for us in heaven, we won't want to spend another day on this old ball of dirt.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from SHOULD CHRISTIANS PROSPER?by James H. Hooks Copyright © 2012 by James H. Hooks. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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