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This series is all about living in God Privilege. We’re learning how to live in the promises of God and focusing on three of them: wealth, health, and protection.
So far, we’ve been talking about God’s promise of wealth. And we’ve discovered that it is about more than generosity. We’ve got to learn how to see money from God’s perspective.
God wants YOU to prosper.
The bottom line is, God wants you to prosper. I’ll prove it in scripture, but let me give you my definition of godly prosperity:
Godly Prosperity – More than enough for my family plus an overflow to accomplish everything God asks me to do.
Now, let me show you in scripture:
II Corinthians 9:8 NKJV – God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.
In other words, God wants you to have way more than you need to take care of yourself so that you have the extra needed to help others.
That’s how you know if you are living in the promises of God. If this scripture doesn’t describe your life, then all you have to do is apply what you learn from this series.
It works. I’m not teaching you anything that I haven’t put to the test already. I’ve applied these things to my life. I’ve seen the results of it and I want you to experience the same.
My expectation is for this series to send all of you on a journey with the destination of godly wealth. I’m talking about living debt-free, having more than enough plus an overflow for every good work.
Say this: God wants ME to prosper.
Maintain vs Multiply
Last week, we talked about Divine Multiplication and found out that if we want to be good stewards of what God has given us, we must multiply.
Multiplication is such a big deal to God, that the first thing He commanded us to do was to multiply. And He didn’t just ask you to multiply, He commanded you to multiply.
Actually, if you choose to maintain instead of multiply, you have become a wicked and lazy servant. A hard pill to swallow because we’ve all been wicked and lazy at some point.
Let me explain why maintaining is evil. When you maintain, your goal is to get things from others. You want them to pay for your meal, give you a discount, and let you have a free pass.
Since you are so focused on making sure your bank account always has X amount of dollars in it, you fear every dollar that goes out because you are maintaining.
Alternatively, when you are focused on multiplication, you look for ways to sow financial seed. It doesn’t bother you that your bank account is smaller for the moment, because you know it will multiply later on.
So, you spend the money you have to start a business. And because you serve people well through your business, money is attracted to you and in time, you multiply.
You give to your church because you understand that tithes and offerings are an opportunity to sow financial seed and see a supernatural return.
You invest your money in other businesses and assets that increase in value over time.
It’s time to give up on maintaining. Instead, look for opportunities to multiply. And as you learn to let go of your money in order to multiply later on, lean into God’s grace and wisdom. He’ll help you.
In order to get to a place where we can do this, we have to learn to trust God to provide for our needs. If we don’t trust Him with our needs, we’ll be too busy taking care of our own needs. And that will keep us from multiplying.
So, that’s what I want to talk about today.
God’s Love Language
There’s a song we sing here at church called How He Loves. We sing over and over, “He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us.”
When we were singing this a few months ago, at the end we switched it around and sang, “We love You. Oh, how we love You. Oh, how we love You.”
As we were singing this, I sensed the spirit of God say, “I’d rather you sing, “I trust You. Oh, how I trust You.” In the midst of this, I realized that God’s love language is trust.
He feels the most loved by us when we trust Him. I’m talking about when life seems to be falling apart and we look to God with complete peace and say, “What I see doesn’t bother me because I trust You, Father. I trust You.”
This goes in line with what Jesus called the greatest commandment:
Mark 12:30 NKJV – And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
This is quite detailed. He could have just said, “Love the Lord your God. Period.” But He wanted to give us clarity: with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.
What does that mean? Love God from the inside out. Everything you are, everything you do, every decision you make, your love for God should be involved in all of it.
In other words, you trust God in every aspect of life. You aren’t hiding anything from Him. You aren’t keeping anything from Him. You trust Him with your success. You trust Him with your failure.
Trusting God’s Word
When God’s ways contradict your ways, you trust Him. So, you abandon what you wanted to do and run after what God wants you to do. Why? Because you trust Him. Just like it says in Proverbs:
Proverbs 3:5 NKJV – Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding.
Someone called me this past Friday to express their concerns with the covid vaccine. She was upset about all the mandates.
She has grandkids in California and they are trying to mandate the vaccine for kids to go to school. She has friends who are losing their job because they refuse to get the vaccine.
All of this has become really upsetting to her. And I get it. This is nonsense. They are even categorizing our military who refuse the shot as dishonorably discharged and unqualified for their pension.
If you want to get the vaccine, that’s your business. But we have to get into agreement that this mandate nonsense has to stop. We should all be praying that Biden’s mandate is overturned.
We should also be making it known to our employers, friends, and family that we don’t agree with the mandates. You don’t have to be ugly about it. People just need to hear it so they know they’re not alone.
So this person who called me was conflicted about it all. On one side, she didn’t agree with the mandate. On the other, she worried about how those losing their jobs would feed their families.
So, she asked the question, “Is it right for these people to put their family at risk of going hungry because they don’t want to get the vaccine?”
She proceeds to explain how it’s easy for me to encourage people to stand against the mandates because I am in a position where the mandate doesn’t affect me. I own my own business. We homeschool our kids.
But the reality is, resisting the mandate affects all of us. It causes flights to be canceled, truck drivers to go on strike, and hospitals to be understaffed. But it is a battle worth fighting.
If we give in to this, what is the government going to do next? If they can force us to inject something into our bodies, is there really anything they can’t force us to do?
I can actually tell you what’s next. They are going to use the climate change theory to try to control you. And it’s all about money.
Oil and gas is a very lucrative business and there are people who want that wealth. So they made up the climate change theory in an effort to shut down oil and gas companies so their alternative yet inferior energy sources could thrive.
I hope you’ll join me in standing for freedom. I refuse to sit on the sidelines while America becomes a communist nation. I’ll do my part to protect freedom so my kids and grandkids can live in a free America.
God Supplies
Back to the question about people losing their jobs, it made me think, “I sure hope people know how to trust God for their needs.” Because here’s the truth:
Philippians 4:19 NLT – God will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.
God supplies how many needs? ALL your needs. Where does He get the resources to supply your needs? From His glorious riches. Do you have to earn it? No. It was given to you in Christ.
Someone needs to get a revelation of this. We shouldn’t waste one moment consumed in our own needs. Why? Because God supplies ALL my needs.
And this doesn’t even depend on my behavior. He supplies my needs because of who I am in Christ. Speaking of, here’s how Jesus explains it:
Matthew 6:26 NLT – Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?
So why are you so concerned about your needs being met? I can tell you why. Because you are trusting in yourself instead of trusting in God. You are obsessed with meeting your own needs when you should be trusting God to meet your needs.
For all those who are losing their jobs because they refuse to give in to the vaccine mandate, you don’t have to go without. Trust God with all of your needs.
There are so many ways He can get them to you; through others, a better job, a genius business idea, the list goes on. Don’t limit how God takes care of your needs, just trust Him to do it.
And if you’re thinking, “Kade, this is easy for you to say. You don’t have to worry about losing your job by refusing the vaccine.” Well, let me tell you a story.
God Makes A Job Change
Three years into a job I loved that paid me really well, God led me to quit. I didn’t particularly like His request, so I thought I would stick it out just to make sure it was really God leading me to do this.
God has a sense of humor. Somehow He managed to shift this job from something I loved to something that was extremely aggravating.
I was the business manager and was responsible for reporting to the board each month on the details of our financial situation. This was never a problem until after God led me to quit.
A new board member joined at that time and became a thorn in my side. Usually, if a board member had a detailed question about financials, they’d ask me ahead of time so I could prepare.
Not this guy. He would wait until the meeting, when I had fourteen people staring at me, to ask questions that I couldn’t answer without research. He was on a mission to humiliate me.
Then, my workload for my own business increased significantly. So I found myself struggling to stay engaged with both. It all became very aggravating.
It was so aggravating that I finally said, “Alright Lord, I get it. I’ll put in my notice and leave this job that pays me really well to do something I enjoy.”
But I was still nervous. Considering they paid me so well, I wasn’t sure how I was going to make up the income. I had a mortgage to pay, a wife to take care of.
Nevertheless, I put in my notice. Just a few days later we found out Beth was pregnant with our first child. Once again, God has a sense of humor. I wasn’t laughing, but I’m sure He was.
Before Beth and I got married, we had agreed that she would be a stay-at-home mom as soon as we had our first kid. So now, I not only needed to replace my income but her full-time income as well.
I had a choice to make. They didn’t want me to go, so I could have kept the job even though I already put in my notice. And in my own thoughts, it seemed like the right thing to do. But:
Proverbs 3:5 NKJV – Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding.
Thankfully, I chose to live out this scripture. I trusted what God asked me to do even though it didn’t make sense at the time. There was no indication that I would be able to replace my income.
But I took the step. And maybe that’s where you are. You know you aren’t supposed to give in to the vaccine mandate and you are about to lose your job.
If you reason it out, it makes sense to just go ahead and do it so you can keep providing for your family. Yet, there is something tugging at the inside of you saying, “Don’t give in.”
Don’t lean on your own understanding. Instead, trust the Lord with all your heart. Trust Him to take care of your needs while you stand for what’s right.
It worked for me and it’ll work for you. After I quit that job, my business flourished. It replaced my income, Beth’s income, and went far beyond that.
The business now not only provides for my own family but for my two employees as well. Why? Because I trust in the Lord. When He asks me to do something, I do it even when it doesn’t make sense.
How do you know if you trust God?
God’s love language is trust. If you want to love Him, then trust Him. How do you know if you trust God?
If you trust God, you have peace.
It doesn’t matter how bad it looks, you have peace. It doesn’t matter that what you currently see is contrary to what you are believing for, you have peace.
You know, God has promised me some pretty incredible things about the book I wrote a few months ago. They haven’t happened yet. I’m still waiting.
I’ll be honest though. There have been times where I’ve been a bit upset with God. So far, the book hasn’t even broke even. I’ve spent more on printing and marketing the book than I’ve made in book sales.
But you know what? God asked me to write the book. I trust Him to provide for the needs of the book and get it out to everyone who needs it. So, I have peace while I’m waiting for it to come to pass.
Here’s another way to know if you trust God:
If you trust God, your needs are always met.
We just read it earlier: God promised to supply all of your needs. He takes care of the birds. Won’t He take care of you?
So the only explanation for your needs not being met is because you trust something other than God.
Maybe you trust in yourself. But more than likely, it’s because you trust in money. You are looking at the size of your bank account as the source of your needs.
As long as you look to money to meet your needs, you’ll find yourself lacking. But if you look to God to meet your needs, they will always be taken care of. Here’s how Jesus says it:
Matthew 6:24 NLT – No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.
And then a few verses down, He goes on to say:
Matthew 6:31-33 NLT – So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
Did you just find out that you trust something other than God? You’re not alone. Most Christians struggle to trust God. Let me tell you why so you can find healing from these trust issues.
Why You Struggle to Trust God
The answer is found in the life of Jesus as it always is. Did Jesus struggle to trust God? Do we ever read about a time where His needs were not met? No. Jesus was always taken care of.
One time He needed to pay his taxes and He went and got the amount He needed out of a fish.
One time He was at a wedding and they ran out of wine. So Jesus gathered about 120 gallons of water and turned it into wine.
One time He was preaching to thousands of people and they were all hungry. They only had five loves of bread and two fish, so He blessed it, multiplied it supernaturally, and fed everyone.
Y’all. When Jesus was born, three wise men showed up and gave Him gold, frankincense and myrrh. Jesus was wealthy before His first diaper rash!
Jesus lived a life where all of His needs were met. Why? Because His trust was in God. But what enabled Him to trust God? Why did He never waver in this trust?
The answer is found in His relationship with God. How did Jesus refer to God? He always called Him “Father”.
Matthew 6:9 NKJV – In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.
John 4:23 NKJV – But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
John 5:19 NLT – I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.
Jesus had a full revelation of His sonship. He wasn’t God’s slave. He was God’s son. And He knew that His Father would give Him everything He needed.
There is one time when Jesus didn’t refer to God as Father. It’s when He was hanging on the cross, just moments before He died. Take a look:
Matthew 27:46 NKJV – And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
For the first time, Jesus was separated from the Father. And it’s not because He sinned. It’s because all of our sin was put upon Him. He took our place. He paid the penalty for our sin.
Notice He didn’t say, “Father, father, why have you forsaken me?” In this moment, Jesus became an orphan so that you and I could become sons and daughters.
It’s the divine exchange. Jesus took my sin so that I could have His righteousness. Jesus took my sickness so that I could be healed. Jesus took my shame so I could have His glory. Jesus took the curse so I could live in His blessing.
Jesus took my orphan spirit so that I could be a child of God.
Living Like an Orphan
Yet here we are, so many of us are still thinking and living like an orphan. We don’t see God as our loving father; we see Him as master or judge. Or even worse, through the lens of a failed earthy father.
Let me help you identify where you are with a few comparisons.
As an orphan, you see God as your master and think, “I have to serve God.” As a son or daughter, you see God as your loving father and think, “I get to serve my awesome Father.”
As an orphan, you are independent and self-reliant. As a son or daughter, you are in partnership with God. You don’t have to do anything without your heavenly Father.
As an orphan, you live by the love of law. It’s all about rules and regulations. As a son or daughter, you live by the law of love. You love God, you know He loves you regardless, and you love yourself and others the same way God loves you.
As an orphan, you are insecure and lack peace. You think, “I have to hold on to what I have because there might not be enough in the future to take care of me.”
As a son or daughter, you are secure and maintain peace even when you might lose your job because of a vaccine mandate. These things don’t even bother you because your Father is your provider.
He’ll supply all my needs according to His riches. I don’t even have to worry about the failing American economy. My Father owns this place and gave all He has to me.
Inflation doesn’t even scare me. My Father is so wealthy, it doesn’t matter how expensive things get. He will supply all my needs according to His riches.
It’s not like God is a pizza where we all get a slice. No, God is the bakery and there’s always more where that came from. My Father owns the entire universe. He is more than enough.
Orphans think the Father turns away when they sin. Sons and daughters know, “When I sin, I am the one who turned away. And all I have to do is turn back towards my Father. He’s always waiting.”
Performing for God
I heard the story of a seventy-year-old man who realized that although he was saved, he had been living like an orphan his entire life.
He was reminded of a time when he was twelve years old. At dinner one night, he showed his dad his report card. He had a 98%.
His dad looked at him and said, “That’s good, son. But next time you better come home with a 100. I didn’t raise a 98.”
In this moment, the 70-year-old man realized this conversation with his dad set him off on a lifetime of performing for approval.
He was living as an orphan trying to earn the approval of God when God had already approved him through Jesus Christ.
Maybe you had a distant father, so that makes you think that God is distant and doesn’t want much to do with you.
Maybe you had an angry father so you are in constant fear of God’s wrath and hide behind Jesus as your buffer.
Maybe you had a father that couldn’t provide for you and now you live in constant fear that one day, you’ll go broke.
Maybe you had a father who wasn’t even there and now you wonder if God is even there.
Whatever father images you have because of your earthly father, I’m here to tell you that God is not like an earthly father.
God Loves His Children
Nothing can separate you from His love. He’s not surprised by your mistakes. As a believer, when God looks at you, He sees the perfection of Jesus. He’s well pleased with you.
One more comparison between orphans and sons and daughters, and then we are going to ask the Holy Spirit to heal our orphan hearts.
Orphans are obsessed with what they do. They think, “If I do, I have. And if I have, I become.”
Sons and daughters are secure in who they are. They think, “Because I am a son of God, I already have what I need. Because of what I have, I do.”
Orphans think they have to believe and behave in order to belong.
Sons and daughters already know they belong. And because they belong, they believe. And because they believe, they behave.
We can sum all of this up in one verse when Jesus said:
John 14:18 NKJV – I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.
You know how he promised to come to us? Through the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is here right now ready to heal your orphan heart.
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