From many scriptures in the Bible, it is evident that God’s desire for His children is to prosper them.

Deuteronomy 28:8-12 The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, and walk in his ways. And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee. And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure (house – storehouse), the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.

God, speaking to those in our administration, says in 3 John:

3 John 2  Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

Money is such a taboo subject among Christians that I still feel awkward in writing about it. I was raised in the church where the verse, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” and others like it were the best known.  Yet money is what most of us work for every day.  We work 8-10 hours a day to make money to pay our bills using that money.  It is only logical that our Father, being very interested in His children, would write an instruction book that would include many instructions, many principles, and many fundamentals about the proper use, the accumulation, and the spending of that money.

The proper biblical handling of money so that we accumulate wealth should be as natural to us as praying, reading the bible, speaking in tongues, or renewing our minds.  It is definitely not the end-all of subjects in the Bible, but it is a biblical subject.

As the proper handling of finances begins to take root in our lives, we will find we have to think about money less because we have made God’s instructions our habits.

Since we have never really been taught by the church how to biblically handle our money other than to tithe (which benefits the church first and fewer still taught we were to receive back from God), we need to learn the fundamental principles that God set out in His Word concerning money. The Bible is an Eastern book and their culture and economy were drastically different than ours are today. Although the fundamentals of money will never change, how to apply them in our age and in our economy may take a lot of thought.

Some people, few perhaps, were raised with good money handling principles.  Others stumbled across them, perhaps out of necessity. But Godly principles work whether they are learned intentionally or learned by some other method. They work just as well in an Eastern culture in biblical times as they do in our culture in modern times. Since they are principles God set up in the beginning, they work for believers as well as unbelievers.

Tithing is THE fundamental principle of handing money, but to see the greatest benefit of it in our lives, we need to go to God’s Word and see what He says about what to do after we give.

I am not sharing this from a top-down position like “I have made my millions, and I will show you how.”  No.  I have been broke and bankrupt as have some of the others that learned this subject.  

I started by looking at exactly what DID God actually say? And how does that all fit together in His Word?  Then as I read other authors, I found that some who had been in the same financial situation as I learned the same things from the Bible.  Same God, same Word of God!

By reading other Christian authors, we can learn how some of them have applied the biblical principles in their lives. Why not look at what some others have learned about handling money in our modern economy and not spend the rest of our lives reinventing the wheel?

Many of them were frustrated with the same situations as we were.  They tithed and gave but were continually broke and did not know why. One of the first things we saw was that God expected us to save our money. The thing we didn’t realize was when God promised to open the windows of heaven, He expected us to save or put in a storehouse part of what He gave us back. This misunderstanding about the saving of money is one of the great detriments to a believer’s financial prosperity. This lack of understanding of saving money is one of the causes of believers having so much debt. This topic of saving money is covered in more detail in other blogs and in the book, Poverty vs. Wealth.

God also taught us we were not to be in debt.  Some of the books taught us how to do that in our economy. How?

Paying down current debt,   
Getting a second job to pay off what is owed,
Getting a job that pays better,
Cutting up credit cards,
Giving back or selling what is really out of your price range.    

God teaches us to be frugal. In some of the books we learned:

To limit our desire to spend,
To live on less than what is coming in,
To be content with what you have — your spouse, your home, your car, etc.,
To stop being great consumers,
To save 10-30% of your income.

To do these things, you may need to restructure your financial life which may take a paper and pencil, some prayers and possibly some tears. In Deuteronomy, God says He wants us to be lenders and not borrowers. We lend to the bank, and they pay us interest. We lend to a corporation, and they pay us dividends. This way we become the lenders as opposed to being servants to the lenders. Whenever we believe and do what God says, He’s right there with us to bless us and see His Word come to pass.

One of the books I read or listened to was The Storehouse Principle which was written by a pastor.  When he learned the storehouse principle (saving money), it changed his life and changed the finances of his church.  The church no longer had to beg for money from its members!

Another book I recently listened to was The Millionaire Next Door.  If the title offends you, and it might, think about Job and Abraham in the Bible.  Would they be considered millionaires today? How about Solomon, David and Hezekiah?

The Legacy Journey is another great book. The author talks about the war on success happening in America.

Proverbs 13:20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.

We live in a wonderful age.  We can walk with those wiser than we are by reading what they have written (many of these books are in audio format so you can listen to them).  A great man once said there is no difference between those that can’t read and those that won’t. The result is ignorance in both cases.

As a closing thought: the world is always trying to sell us something.  You deserve a new home, the latest and fastest car or a bigger truck, a cooler computer, a better credit card, refinance your home and pay off your credit cards so you can charge them up again.  Everyone has something to sell us. We must learn to become good at saying, “NO!!”

No! I will not follow the patterns set out by the world.
No! I do not need the latest and greatest, most up-to-date……
No! I will not continue to spend all that God gives me.

But!

I will become a good steward of His money.
I will learn to put my money in storehouses.
I will be a great giver to great causes.

Learning these things, restructuring your finances (and perhaps your thinking), and learning to live by the biblical principles of money is all part of The Prosperous Life.