Many years ago, I worked on a remodeling crew in SW Oklahoma. We stripped an old house down to the studs to start over with a new interior and exterior. The house was built differently than the ones today. This house had 1 X 12 ship lathe boards set at an angle on the outside of the house. It was like whole walls of wind braces. Then, the inside of the house, nailed to the exterior studs, was a 1 x 12 ship lathe nailed horizontal. Over that was a layer of oil cloth to keep the wind out and then it had been upgraded to two layers of sheetrock. The house was built like a tank.

Interestingly, the studs were made of first-growth, virgin rough-cut pine. Those studs were hard as a rock. Very dense.

The Weyerhaeuser Company owns much timber in SE Oklahoma. They used to clear-cut the trees in large areas, and then I believe they went back and planted new pine saplings in the clear-cut areas.

In the book, Same as Ever, the author explains that these virgin trees sprouted up underneath the canopy that dropped the seeds. These new trees grew very slowly as they had little access to sunlight. So, they grew slowly and very dense since the growth was slow. Whereas trees that have full access to sunlight grow quickly, but they also have very soft wood.  Slow and dense makes much better wood for building than fast and soft.

So, it is in many areas of life. God cautions us against being hasty or in a hurry to be rich. His Word says that the diligent will have plenty.

There are a great many get-rich-quick programs out there. Flipping real estate, setting appointments, buying apartments, tax liens, playing the lottery, and day trading to name a few. Have you ever met anyone that got rich quickly with any of these programs? Mostly it is the one selling the programs that are getting rich. They are appealing to our greed or fear. Most want the money but don’t want to work hard for it, and they want it quickly.

Proverbs 20:21  An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning; but the end thereof shall not be blessed.

An inheritance gotten quickly is not much different than winning a lottery or scoring it big on a get-rich-quick scheme. In the end, you will not be blessed. Some have said they wish they had never won the lottery because it destroyed their family. They had not had the slow growth of learning how to handle money properly.

Most people who are truly wealthy have learned the fundamentals of wealth. They don’t allow it to go to their head and cause them great grief like the next verse says.

Proverbs 28:22  He that hasteth to be rich hath an evil eye, and considereth not that poverty shall come upon him.

In the area of money, it takes time to lay a good set of fundamentals for your finances.

1. First — learn to be a giver.
2. Second — learn to save.
3. Third — learn to invest.

Once you have these fundamentals going on a regular basis, then you need to rise up to the next level. Learn how to manage the small amount of savings that you have. Each level may take some time to get firmly established in your life. Find something to invest your savings in and study that area until you know it well. Find a good mentor in that field that has good Christian principles and learn from them. Or get some good books on the subject.

We have found that as we get accustomed to each new level of growth in our understanding of finances, we eventually see there is another level we need to put under our belts. It is like peeling back an onion. Each layer peeled reveals another one underneath. Remember to be diligent and study and not hasty to learn.

For example, once we started to save money, we learned that we needed to assign some of that money to certain jobs. Some is saved for retirement, and some is saved in funding accounts for future purchases like vehicle replacement, gifts, appliance replacement, emergency funding, or vacations.  We call these accounts funding accounts and not savings because we are only saving to spend down the road. We are funding future purchases rather than putting them on credit cards or borrowing.

As we saved more, we divided the saved money up further. Recently we started keeping a journal on cash we have saved — where it came from and where it is spent. This gives us a current total without recounting it, and it reminds us of what we spent it on and where it came from.

Also, we had a small investment that was growing, and we saved cash in that same account. Eventually, we could not tell if the investment was growing or was the account growing because of the cash we saved. We divided it into two accounts. Now, we can see exactly what we have saved and how our investment is growing.

If you want to build lifelong success, you need to start thinking in terms of months and years. The growth of wealth is solid if you are diligent. Improve your skills every day. Grow in skills with your investments and your business.

As you do this you will compound your dollars. Slow and steady — learning as your wealth grows and compounds, you will be like the hard dense virgin cut pine, not the soft wood that grew quickly. Your growth will be solid as a rock and not easily washed away.

Proverbs 21:5  The thoughts of the diligent tend only to plenteousness; but of every one that is hasty only to want.

Slow and Steady is The Prosperous Life.

Emotions or feelings play a large part in our lives. Negative emotions or feelings can have a devastating effect on our response to God and His Word. Nowhere in God’s Word does God say to follow your feelings or emotions. Yet emotions are powerful and can be stronger than our logic or stronger than what we know to be true from God’s Word.

Let’s look at how Israel responded to the promise of God as given to them by Moses.

Exodus 6:6-9  Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments:  And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD. And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.

This last verse tells us why they did not believe what God said. “For anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage.”

Other translations give us even more understanding of that verse.

…because their spirit had been broken by their cruel slavery. GNB

but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and hard labor. NET

Other translations put it this way:

…discouraged by the brutality of their slavery.

…broken spirt and harsh slavery.

…they were too discouraged and mistreated to believe him.

There are many feelings or emotions that can get in our way of believing the promises of God’s Word. Sometimes it is because of wrong teaching or understanding of what was written.

Negative emotions can be described as any feeling which causes you to be miserable and sad. These emotions can make you dislike yourself and reduce your confidence and self-esteem.

Here is just a short list:  discouragement, anguish, gloom, despair, agony, sadness, depression and or hopelessness.

1 John 3:21-22  Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.

I have heard it said and been told the reason we don’t see the prosperity one would expect is because we are seeking the blessing and not the Blessor – condemnation and discouragement.

• I have heard it said that if you save money, you are not trusting that God will meet your needs in the future. If you are older and staring at retirement in the face, this teaching could cause confusion and despair.
• I have heard it said that if you do not see prosperity, one might expect it is because of your believing – frustration.
• Some have taught that we are to be content with our station in life now and God will reward us in heaven – hopeless.

Maybe you were raised in a not-so-prosperous family and were never taught the fundamentals of money management.

All these statements carry a certain amount of condemnation with them. They can make you feel you are not good enough to prosper or no matter what you read in the Bible, it is not God’s will for you to be well off here on the earth. These comments can make it appear like your lack of prosperity is all your fault, even though the statements are made by people that lack understanding of the principles of prosperity.

Thus, you have some confusion in your understanding as to what to do and believe. But there is always hope, no matter how long you have not prospered. Do you still believe God will help and prosper you?

John 5:1-6  After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? 

In other words, do you still believe God will heal you? After all these years? Do you still believe it is God’s will for you to prosper? Many just learn to live with their circumstances. The slavery of Egypt was uncomfortable but familiar. Rather than rising up and believing, Israel wanted to go back into slavery. This man could have just wanted to stay at the pool.

So many times, we may know the right verses, but our emotions destroy our believing. The verses of prosperity can seem to be idle words. A great quote is “Poverty is a disease that is handed down from one generation to the next.”  If we choose to rise up and believe, we can break that curse of the generations in our families.

Part of the problem is that we cannot see down the road where obeying God will take us.

I saw a video the other day of a therapist working with a small boy of about 2 ½ who could not walk. He held the boy’s body while he forced the boy to move and exercise. The boy cried the whole time. But you could see his slow progress. The therapist ignored the crying. If the therapist did not do his job the boy would face life in a wheelchair. With the therapist forcing the boy’s body to get stronger and learn how to walk through all those tears, the boy was going to have a life where he could walk and have the freedom to move and do what he wanted. But the boy could not see that, so he just cried because it was so hard. The therapist knew where the exercise would take him, just like God knows where our obeying His Word will take us.

We all have choices to make. We cannot see down the road where following God’s instruction on prosperity will take us, but we can step out of our comfort zone like the man at the pool and rise up and believe even though we may have given or tithed for years, and not seen what we expected. We can push the emotions aside and put into practice the principles of giving, saving, debt reduction and investing, and over time we will step into a life of more freedom than we could have ever imagined.

Here is what God said happened to Israel in the wilderness, and He wrote this down for us to learn from.

Hebrews 4:1-3  Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

God wants us to have rest in this world. He wishes, above all things, that we prosper and have great health. We have rest in the new birth, and we can have rest in the life we live now. Find the promises of prosperity and believe. Our challenge is to not be guided by our feelings and wrong teachings but to rise up and believe what God has said and see what He has in store for us now as we wait for His son and enjoy The Prosperous Life.

Pro 8:21  That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.

We had no idea the peace and stability that would come into our lives when we began the journey of saving money in our newly formed storehouses. We had been givers, tithers, for years but saving money changed our lives.  Isaiah says that wisdom and knowledge (of God and His Word) will be the stability of our times.

Isaiah 33:6  And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times,

We are to be not only hearers of His Word but doers of the Word, as James says.

James 1:22  But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

I began saving by putting my change in quart jars.

Then we started an emergency fund. Once we started that, it was as if the devil tried to see if we were serious and going to stick to the decision of an emergency fund because we had one emergency after another.  But this time, the situation was different. Instead of charging the event on a credit card, we had cash to pay.  We had depleted our emergency fund afterwards, but we had no debt because of the event. One of the great keys to prosperity is to have no debt. Every article or book I have read on prosperity including the Bible says one of the fundamental principles of prosperity is to have NO DEBT!!

We would drain the fund and then fund it again. Then another emergency. Eventually, the emergencies calmed down and we moved past them, but the funds in the emergency fund began to increase.

At one point we realized we were just piddling at saving money and decided to get serious. We set up an automatic withdrawal every month into a money market account.  Then as we were faithful to that, our ability to save even more increased.

Having a storehouse/savings account adds financial stability to your life. It is being obedient to what God has said.

In Proverbs 3, God tells us to honor Him with the first fruits of all our increase, and He will fill our barns/storehouses.

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

Well, we must have a storehouse for him to fill. Then we need to set aside some of our increase that God provides to put in that storehouse.  Today we might call that a savings account.  What will be the result of that action over the long haul?

We have no idea where the promptings of God, obeying the promises of His Word will lead.  We cannot see that far down the road.  We have never been there before.

In Acts, Peter was on the housetop praying while they prepared lunch.

Acts 10:19,20  While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee. Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them.

When Peter was on the housetop praying and God told him to go with the men sent from Cornelius, did Peter know at that moment what was going to happen at Cornelius’s house? No. But Peter would use the second key that Christ gave him to open the kingdom of heaven to the Gentiles. (To learn more about Peter and the keys to the Kingdom Jesus Christ gave him, click here.) Did God tell him the end results of his obedience? That he would unlock the door for millions of gentiles around the world to gain eternal life? No.  But he trusted God and obeyed His voice and went with the men God sent, not knowing what would happen.

In another record in Acts, Jesus Christ confronted Saul on the road to Damascus.

Acts 9:3-6  And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

When Jesus Christ confronted Paul on the road, did God tell Paul he would write the seven church epistles that would be the foundational revelation for the grace administration?  No.  Paul simply obeyed the vision, and God revealed more and more as Paul continued to walk the path God laid out in front of him.

We have no idea where putting money in our storehouse/savings account each month will lead to down the road. We literally cannot see the end result of that obedience to God’s Word. We may have never been there before – the result of long-term saving money. But the vision/promises open up as we obey our Father God.

If for some reason down the road, you lose all your wealth, and money, as God says sometimes it makes wings and flies away, what you still have left is the wisdom of how to save, how to invest, and what all is involved.  You have been there before. You know that starting with $20.00 in a savings account is only the beginning, and the end result will be well worth the effort.

Deuteronomy 8:18  But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

God gives you the power to get wealth and he has many promises of prosperity to those who believe, trust, and obey his word.

Proverbs 21:20  There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.

Proverbs 8:21  That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.

Once again, here God encourages us to save some of the money he sends our way.

This storehouse money can give great stability and peace to your life.  What is stability?  Stability smooths out the rough ups and downs of our financial lives.  God shows us in His Word that He desires stability for us, even in the financial realm.

For example, Joseph stored up grain for seven years in the years of plenty, and it saved the world during the seven years of famine.  It helped to lessen the depth of the valley produced by the famine.  Saving money can do the same for us.  Why do you think God put this record in His Word?  We, too, go through economic ups and downs, and we have emergencies that come up in our lives, as well as the funds we need for old age.

God tells us to do the same with the analogy of the ant that stores up in the summertime for the months when there is nothing to harvest.  He tells us to go study the ant for a reason.

Proverbs 6:6-8  Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.

Once you have believed this truth of saving money for many different events, your life begins to change.  Much of your anxiety over money can begin to subside – worrying over bills, emergencies, and retirement.  You will manifest more of the stability and peace God desires for you as His child.  Learning God’s will and carrying it out is all part of The Prosperous Life God wants for us as his children.