With money, attitudes make a large difference. In many areas of life, it is a known factor that success depends 80% on attitude and 20% on your technique.  What is our attitude towards God’s willingness and ability to prosper us as we carry out His word?  Consider the following:  You are out of town and become stuck there and need a hotel room.  Your mind may say, “I can’t spend the money on a hotel room. I can’t. I need that money for something else.” It causes a lot of angst in your life. However, if you took the Attitude, “I am glad I have the money, so I will get the room, and things will work out. God will supply.”, you relieve yourself of so much mental pressure, and then things just work better. Attitude.

Many people teach that economics is a zero-sum game.  A zero-sum game is one where, in order for me to receive more, you have to have less. If the economy was a large pie, then for me to get a bigger piece of that pie, yours would have to be smaller.  If that was true, who was the loser when God filled the woman’s pots with oil?  God did not take from anyone to give that to her.  That is why we call it a miracle. No, economics is not a zero-sum game. As we labor, we add value to the economy, and we are paid for our labor. Sometimes our labor produces products out of raw materials.  Those products, with our labor added in, are worth far more than the raw materials. If in order for some to have more, others have to do with less, and there is only a finite amount available, what was available when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock?  Not much.  But with their labor and the labor of the following generations, we became the richest nation on earth.  We used the raw materials and added great wealth into the world and our nation. Attitude.

When looking at the topic of attitude, if you’re married, you need to work on the principles of prosperity together. It works the best if the husband and wife are on the same page. If one is pulling one way and the other is pulling in the opposite direction, you may make very little progress. Work together until you are both pulling in the direction of the Word. Read this book and other books together and discuss what you are learning. You can help and encourage each other with your understanding and with what God’s Word says on the topics. Attitude.

Remember, some people, rather than doing the work of learning about prosperity and rising up in their believing and understanding, find it easier to drag you down to their level of unbelief. Then they don’t look so bad. They will say, “See, he could not do it either;” “Giving was under the law;” “It did not work for him.”  You come to realize that no matter what you teach them, they just do not want to do this stuff.  Don’t argue with them; just let them be.

This is why sometimes it is best to keep your believing to yourself. Many times, you might take a lesson from the book, The Millionaire Next Door.  If you have believing, have it to yourself before God.  

Monitor your accounts every week to see growth or holes in your bag. (Read The Richest Man in Babylon.)

Sit down once a year and examine all that you are paying for.

Can you get rid of it?
Can you reduce the price?
Can you get it cheaper somewhere else?
(We have called our insurance agent several years in a row because of increases and in some cases saved some money.)

Although there may be many more topics I could include here on attitude, the last one I wanted to address is fear. One reason people are tight with their money is fear or pinched thinking. You overcome fear by putting the Word in your mind. Some of the ways this fear manifests itself are the following:

1. A fear of going broke which is a failure to believe that God will prosper them.
2. A fear of being wasteful or greedy.
3. A fear that they won’t have enough to pay their next large bill, so they do without, or they don’t tip, or they buy cheap, or they don’t pay current small bills out of fear that they won’t be able to pay the next large one, or they don’t give much.

Ask yourself, where these fears and thoughts come from, and then correct them. Attitude.

If our Father is a God of abundance, and His Word clearly states that He is, then why should we ever suffer any lack? It’s only because of our own pinched, limited thinking and our own believing. We simply don’t trust that He will do what He has said. Attitude.

Once you recognize this, if you have that problem, then go to work. Put God’s Word in your mind: “My Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills.” Psalm 50:12. “Beloved, I wish above all things…” 3 John 1:2. You say to your mind, “This is our new standard.” “It may be uncomfortable at first, but this is how I am going to conduct my life.” When the thought or the feeling comes, “You won’t have enough,” just say, “The Lord will provide.” Attitude.

Then as you begin to give and save the money God blesses you with, the change in your attitude will enable you to see further down the road, and The Prosperous Life God intended for His children to have will become more real.

I have heard it said that the government is simply a reflection of the people who put it into office.  Our government spends all it confiscates in taxes and then borrows/prints more.  Most of us as people do the same.  As a society, we spend all we make and then borrow more by loans and credit cards.  We would print more ourselves, but for us, that is illegal.

As we left the chiropractor’s office this morning early, we noticed in a popular strip mall that several once-popular businesses were no longer there.  Sad.  But apparently, this is true all across the country.  According to Fortune, more than 110.000 eating and drinking establishments closed in 2020. According to CBS NEWS, 9 million US small businesses fear they won’t survive the pandemic.  Sad again.  What could these people have done to prevent this?

I have heard over the past few years in the farming industry, farms that have been in families for generations are in danger or have already been foreclosed on by the banks.  Why is this?

The causes of these tragedies may be numerous.  But here is a thought.

Our tendency as humans is to think that tomorrow will be just like today.  So, in years of plenty, we take out loans and expand our businesses or build new barns.  Nothing inherently wrong with this except when it is done on borrowed money.  If you use the money for expansion from a savings fund your business had set up, then when hard times come, as they always do, the lender won’t be coming to take your farm or business.

Proverbs 22:7 The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

We are to serve God, not take the abundance He gives us and give it away to the banker so he can make a living. And work to serve the lender.

Deuteronomy 28:12 The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, 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.

How do you set up yourself to not be a servant to the lender? How do you set up your life to be a lender and not a borrower?

1.    Stop using credit cards and borrowing money for cars, business expansion, etc.
2.    Pay off the debt you now have as fast as possible.
3.    At the same time, set up an emergency fund for unexpected expenses.
4.    Set up separate funding/saving accounts for large expenses.

a.    School for your offspring
b.    Business expansion
c.    Machine replacement
d.    Retirement
e.    Vacations

Think about this. God asks us to give at least 10% or a tithe to him.  That is troubling to some people, and they don’t give.  Yet we have no problem paying 7-20% on a credit card.  We sometimes pay the lender twice what God asks for as an everyday occurrence!!

Think:

1.    What if businesses and farms put aside money this same way and never borrowed?
2.    What if your town put aside money this same way and never borrowed?
3.    What if your state put aside money this same way and never borrowed?

This all starts at the grassroots level. Since we are part of the grassroots level, we as God’s children, should set our own fiscal house in order, then go to the next level and run for city council. Help our cities set their fiscal house in order and work our way up to the federal government.

It starts with us. Save your money!!  Live on less than you earn!!  And remember, the following idea is found five places in the gospels. Apparently, God wants us to pay attention.

Matthew 25:29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

There are many buried treasures in God’s Word that, as we think, teach us about The Prosperous Life.

I have tried several times to become a prosperous person apparently on my own.  Nothing seemed to work. I used to work from 5 AM to midnight, 7 days a week, for months on end, but I could not seem to get ahead. I tried rental property but lost it all. Eventually, I had to take bankruptcy. 

All this time I gave or tithed to my church/fellowship. Eventually, I began to learn the other principles God laid out in His Word, the Bible, that make prosperity work. These are covered in other blogs.

The attraction of being a millionaire is partly an illusion. We have been fed the lie that millionaires drive luxury cars, live in expensive homes, wear fur, drink expensive wines, and frequent nightclubs.  But a great many of them are extremely hard workers and are self-employed, wise investors, and very watchful of their spending. Most operate the principles of prosperity God designed into the world.

Just to keep some perspective about the term “millionaire”. If you had a million dollars today and took it back to 1900, it would be worth about $30,000. That does not seem like a lot of money.  Inflation is a consumer of wealth.  The term may evoke feelings of wealth, but it is all relative.  Some farmers, for instance, maybe worth a million, but the worth is all tied up in their farm and land.  They would have to sell their land or farm or business to have cash in hand.

1 Timothy 6:9 However, those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a trap and many senseless and harmful cravings, which cause people to sink into ruin and destruction.  WTJ

If your great desire is for wealth or riches, you are likely to put the wrong things first in your life and sink into ruin and destruction. For instance, a list of important functions in a good order might be:

1.    God
2.    Health
3.    Family
4.    Integrity
5.    Career

Many people put their careers first because of the income and their desire for earthly things.  Thus, they sacrifice their relationship with God, their health, their family, and many times their integrity.  This list is only a suggestion, but it is worth thinking about.  

Proverbs 8:11 For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.

God says that our great desire should be for wisdom because that is far more valuable than rubies, (money, gold, or silver). So, our great desire would start with a desire for the wisdom of God’s Word and then wisdom and understanding in your field of work.  

The wisdom of God would start with how to walk for Him and serve Him, and, in the subject area we are talking about, move into learning how to handle money He entrusts us with. When you read about Solomon, he sought after the wisdom of God, and he learned that the great wisdom of God brought him great wealth.  But he sought God first. That is the key.

So instead of asking the question, “Who wants to be a Millionaire?”, maybe the question should be “Who is willing to seek after the wisdom of God?” Because God promises that if you will seek Him and His wisdom first, he will add all these other things into your life.

Learning to keep our desires in proper order is all part of learning to live The Prosperous Life.

Money does not change you; it just magnifies who you are. If your habit is to spend all you make, then if you win the lottery, receive a large pro sports contract, or come into an inheritance, you will just continue as in the past. You just have more to spend. This is truly a poverty mentality.

It is the fundamentals that make and keep you prosperous. A lack of knowledge of the fundamentals keeps you broke. For instance, professional athletes make a lot of money, but many never instilled in their lives what to do with it, and thus many of them go broke.

Many of us did not grow up being taught the fundamentals of prosperity, how to properly handle money or how to invest it.

God does not teach us how to balance a checkbook in the Bible or how to invest our saved money.  God does teach us the fundamentals of giving, saving and being diligent or good stewardship.  As we put these principles to work in our lives, it is then up to us to study and learn how to see the prosperity grow that God entrusts us with. In the Old Testament, Joseph is a good example of a diligent and prosperous man.

In Joseph’s case, his father, Jacob, must have taught him well the principles of prosperity.

Genesis 39:2,3 And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand.

The LORD will be with us, too, as we apply the principles that make prosperity work.  Learning to give, to save, to practice good stewardship and diligence in our affairs, and learning how to wisely invest is another part of The Prosperous Life.

(Excerpted in part from Chapter 14 Poverty vs Wealth)

There are four genuinely nice promises about receiving when we give.

Malachi 3:10 ….  if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

Galatians 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

2 Corinthians 9:6   But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.

Luke 6:38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

These are four illustrations of the same truth: as you give, you receive back much more than you gave.

When we read about the windows of heaven being opened and blessings pouring out, I think sometimes we feel that if we give, God will immediately shower gold coins down upon our heads. Not seeing this come to pass right away can cause some to feel that giving does not work. But when God uses the illustration of sowing, we know that it takes a while once the seed is sown for the harvest to take place.

There is a rule in life that says that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.  If A equals D, and B equals D and C equals D, then A is equal to B, which is equal to C. So these four promises are all giving us more information on the same subject.

Very few things in life happen instantly. Prosperity is growth over time, like most of the rest of the things in God’s creation. Children take years to grow up. Crops take months to grow. Our prosperity is not in our paycheck. It is in what we do with part of the check. It may take us time to grow into the ability to learn how to steward and handle larger amounts of money.

According to Dave Ramsey, if you put $35.00 per week away in a savings account and invested it in a good growth stock mutual fund at 15%, you could retire in 40 years with $890,000.00 to $1.5 million.

This could be done on a federal minimum wage. A genuinely nice growth process.

If you worked at federal minimum wage for 40 years and retired a millionaire, could you feel like God opened the windows of heaven?

Godly prosperity is built over time rather than God being a cash machine whereby we give, and God then gives us rent money. This is not to say He will not or could not do that, but we need to take a long-term perspective on prosperity.  It is not how much you make, but what you do with what you make. Do you spend it all or save part?  It is a huge difference down the road.

So, as you give and save remember to be patient. You don’t reap a crop the day after you sow.  But it will come back to you, pressed down, shaken together and running over so that over time it will be like the windows of heaven are open to you.

Growing in our faithfulness and ability to handle money properly is all part of The Prosperous Life.