The promises of God come to us as we believe what God has said (promised). For instance, the promise of eternal life comes to us as we believe what God has said.

Romans 10:9,10 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

We see that believing is integral from the very beginning of a Christian’s life with God. Knowing this can help to open our understanding of prosperity and health. These two subjects are joined together in:

3 John 1:2 Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

As people get older, both topics, health and money, come more and more to the top of the mind.

First, let’s look at prosperity:

Proverbs 3:9,10 Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase: So, shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

Many of us have believed the first part of this verse that we are to honor the Lord with the first fruits of all our increase. We may call that tithing, giving or sharing of our abundance. We have learned the Word, have believed what God has said and have given.

But the passage here has another part where believing is required. So shall thy barns be filled with plenty…. I realized one day that although I had believed the first part and had given, I did not believe the second part and provide a place to put the surplus.

A barn, or storehouse as it is translated in another place, is a place to store the surplus of your harvest if you are a farmer. A dairy farmer’s barn or storehouse might be a haymow for hay, a granary for oats, corn cribs for corn, or a silo for silage. These crops are harvested in the summer and fall to be used as feed for cattle later in the year and through the winter. The farmer harvests the crops and stores them. He does not sell them and spend the money. Cows don’t do well if you try to feed them cash. They like hay and ground feed.

Since most of us are not farmers, how do we understand the rest of the passage? We could use a bank for our surplus instead of a barn. As we work each week, we should give some (honor the lord…) and then save some of the income. This is what some of your earnings are for – to save. God promises to fill our barns or storehouses with plenty.

If we believe this part of the passage like we believed the first part by giving, then we would have a place set up to put part of what we receive for our work – in our case, a bank account. By doing this, setting up a bank account, and putting part of our earnings in it each week, we are believing the second part of the passage as well as the first. Remember, prosperity is more of a process than it is an event.

For the better part of my life I believed the first part and gave but had no clue that I was responsible to save some of the surplus and put it in the bank. It was quite the day when we saw that. We have been doing that ever since, and it has changed our lives.

Now some may say they give but they have no surplus to put in the bank. That is because your finances are so structured that you spend everything you receive. God’s giving back to you is there; you need to eliminate some of the debt. Get a better job and/or get a second job so you can pay down some of that debt and put that same money in the bank. There are many books written about paying off debt.

You can also get a more in-depth understanding of this topic in the book Poverty vs Wealth available on Amazon.

Secondly, believing is also a principle of healing.

When Jesus healed the two blind men this is the record:

Matthew 9:29 Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith (believing) be it unto you.

Mary believed what the angel told her and thus became the mother of Jesus:

Luke 1:45 And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.

There was a woman who had an issue of blood. She touched the hem of the garment of Jesus and was healed. He said to her:

Matthew 9:22 But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith (believing) hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.

The promises of healing and health come to us also as we believe the promises of God:

1 Peter 2:24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

The promise of your healing is in the past tense. By whose stripes (Jesus) you were healed. Jesus has already paid the price for your healing and mine. No matter what the problem is, the healing is ours for the taking as we believe what God has said.

Just as we believed that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead and we received eternal life, it is with that same believing we receive the promise of healing for ourselves.

Learning that this principle of believing is how we obtain the promises of God is all part of learning about The Prosperous Life.