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Real Help Topic: Learn

Love is the bottom line. Nothing counts without it. In short, you can’t go anywhere spiritually or in your relationships until you get your love walk straight! No wonder the Bible tells us to: “Eagerly pursue and see to acquire [this] love [make it your aim, your great quest]” (1 Corinthians 14:1, AMPC). Living a life ruled by the love of God is what opens you up to walk in the spirit and live in the highest measure of the blessing and power of God!

But if you ever want to walk in love, you’ll have to make a decision to yield to that force of love on the inside of you. You’ll have to resist the selfish tendencies of the flesh and choose to live a life governed by love. Making these changes is not as difficult as it may sound. In fact, the key to developing your love walk is wonderfully simple. You do it by maintaining a close relationship with God–fellowshiping with Him, reading the Bible, praying and staying in union with Him.

You can develop your faith further by acknowledging just how great God’s love for you truly is. You can spend time meditating on the fact that God loves you just as much as He loves Jesus. Think about that! God not only loves you just as powerfully as He loves Jesus, He has also put that same mighty love inside of you so that you can love like He loves! That’s staggering to your human mind but dare to believe it anyway. Receive it as truth in your heart.

To complete this process of developing your faith in God’s love, you must not only allow it to flow to you but through you to others. As 1 John 4:12 says, “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.” Remember the old saying, “Practice makes perfect”? That’s absolutely the truth. The way you perfect God’s love in you is by practicing that love toward other people. As you keep on practicing and developing that love, with every day that passes, you’ll grow up a little more into the image of Jesus. The works Jesus did you will boldly do also, and your relationships will blossom as others see Him in you.

When it comes to relationships, there’s no better place to start than with the most important relationship of all: your relationship with the Lord. If that’s not in order, then all your other relationships will be out of order, too (Matthew 6:33). God Himself has said in His Word that He wants to have a close relationship with us. First Corinthians 1:9 says He’s called us into fellowship with Him!

We may have thought we were fellowshiping with Him, but most of the time all we are really doing is having a string of emergency meetings–waiting until a crisis develops and then running to God for an answer. Emergency praying may give you relief. But fellowship–the intimacy of everyday closeness–is what gives you joy. Fellowship is not just relationship. You can have a relationship without fellowship, but it’s like having a marriage without love. The basic structure is there, but the heart of it is missing.

You’ll never truly know God’s will and way for you (and know Him for who He really is) until you learn to fellowship with Him. Develop a good friendship Him. Make the decision to become a “Word person.” Make God’s Word first place and the final authority in your life. No matter what the world says, no matter what practicality says, no matter what your feelings say–walk with God and make your friendship with Him the most important thing in your life.

The moment you turn to Him, He’ll be there for you. But don’t wait until hard times come to turn to Him. Fellowship with the Lord daily when things are going well so that when trouble comes, you’ll be spiritually strong enough to overcome. God says, “I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him” (Psalm 91:15). That’s important. In time of trouble, who is with you makes a big difference. When you’re connected with God, you can be sure you’ll come through just fine.

God desires to pour out His glory in greater measure than ever before, not just in our hearts, lives and church services, but in our finances as well.

The law of sowing and reaping, for example, is a powerful force. Its principle of giving governs everything in the kingdom of God and is fundamental to godly prosperity. Faith in the Word of God coupled with giving will always produce a harvest of prosperity. Always. Your prosperity depends on how much thought, study and attention you give God’s Word in that area.

Are you willing to give the Bible first place in your heart? When you realize what the Word of God can and will do, you will want to immerse yourself in it. Romans 10:17 says, “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” So how do you put yourself in a position to receive? In order to receive you must be single-minded. And that means first and foremost, you seek God. You do what Matthew 6:33 says, “Seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.”

First is the key word here! There is nothing before first. First makes everything else fall into place. You can’t receive what you don’t believe! That’s why it’s impossible to please God without faith. His pleasure is to prosper His servants (Psalm 35:27). And He can’t get that prosperity to you if you don’t have faith. Faith and receiving are intimately connected. So when you go after God and make Him your primary pursuit, you’ll begin to receive.

For us to receive His best, we have to put Him first. Once you’re walking in God’s will and living His plan for your life, you’ll find He also has a life of good things for you (1 Timothy 6:17).

This is a cornerstone of real, biblical prosperity. God’s financial blessings are reserved for the tither alone. The person who fails to tithe disqualifies himself from receiving the abundance God has for him. God Himself said in Malachi 3:8, “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.”

According to the Bible, the first 10 percent of our income does not belong to us. It belongs to God. He owns it. If we use it on ourselves, we’ve stolen it from Him. Tithing isn’t just a matter of the pocketbook. It is a matter of the heart. That’s the way it is with everything as far as God is concerned. He always looks on the heart. When we find ourselves suffering financial lack and failing to enjoy the supernatural abundance God has promised, we should check our attitude–fast! We should make sure we’re giving God our best (not our leftovers) and honoring Him with our hearts.

Tithing activates THE BLESSING of God in our finances. Read Malachi 3:10-12. God promises that when you tithe, He’ll rebuke the devil and command him to keep his hands off your finances. And when God rebukes the devil, he stays rebuked! Don’t wait until your back is against the wall before you use your faith and begin tithing. Learn to act on what the Bible says now, and when Satan tries to pin you against the wall, you can smile and know that you have it made.

Right now your mind is probably going off in every direction. Is it a sin to borrow money? Oh, my goodness, I’ll never get by without borrowing money! My church even borrows money–surely, my church can’t be wrong!, etc., etc.

First of all, we are not saying it’s a sin for you to borrow money. But we didn’t say it was not a sin either. That’s for you and God to determine. As you seek His will on the matter, however, be sure to seriously consider what He’s already said about the subject in His Word. For example: “Keep out of debt and owe no man anything, except to love one another” (Romans 13:8). “When the Lord your God blesses you as He promised you, then you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow; and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you” (Deuteronomy 15:6).

“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. And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them” (Deuteronomy 28:12-13). “The borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). Those scriptures speak for themselves.

It is your decision whether you want to be the head and not the tail. Furthermore, when you borrow and go into debt to someone else, you look to him as your source of supply. Wouldn’t you rather have God as your source? 

You’re probably wondering, Do you think God would enable me to pay off my debts that fast? Well, how serious are you about the Word? How much time and attention are you willing to give it? How obedient are you willing to be? God is no respecter of persons, but He is a respecter of faith. He’s a respecter of obedience.

So, it’s really up to you, isn’t it? However you choose to measure it, is how He’ll measure it back to you. As you look at your situation right now, you may be thinking, Well, what can I do? I’m already up to my neck in debt. You may not be able to see how on earth you could ever get out of debt, much less stay that way. Don’t worry.

The bottom line is, you have to trust God! If you want to be free, just make a commitment before God to get out from under those debts. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen if you’ll obey God and stay on the Word.

People have the idea that spiritual things are separate from material things. That isn’t true. Spiritual laws govern material things. A Spirit (God) created all matter.

So the laws of prosperity will work for anyone who will meet the biblical requirements to walk in them. God’s will concerning financial prosperity and abundance is clearly revealed in the Bible.

God has always promised, “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land” (Isaiah 1:19). Understand though, that being willing means more than just saying, “Well, Lord, if You want me to prosper, I’ll prosper.” Being willing means you apply the force of your will and determine to receive by faith what God has promised, no matter how impossible the circumstances may seem to be. And why does God want us to prosper? The Bible says, “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Ephesians 4:28).

The whole purpose for gainful employment and prosperity is to take God’s laws and prosper by them, and then do something about the poverty in the rest of the world. Some rich people don’t want to do anything but stay rich. But if you reach out and preach the gospel to a born-again man in Africa, he has some hope for the first time in his life. He learns that God wants to prosper him and his people. To the starving man that doesn’t mean a Cadillac! It means that God will show him how to get some rain on his scorched ground.

The gospel not only gives people hope in the kingdom to come, but through Jesus and the message that God wants to prosper His people, it gives people hope in the here and now! God’s will is prosperity.

Scripture References: Galatians 3:13-14; Deuteronomy 28; 2 Corinthians 8:9; Luke 6:38

Traditionally, the Church has been led to believe that prosperity is bad or ungodly. However, 3 John 2 says, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” You should never think of prosperity the way the world does, from a materialistic viewpoint. 

You must train yourself to think in line with God’s Word. There is nothing wrong with prosperity, in itself. Contrary to what you may have heard, money is not the root of all evil. The love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). And there are people committing that sin who don’t have a dime! Money is not the only measurement of prosperity.

The world’s definition of prosperity is very limited in it’s scope–it’s all about financial ability and power. You can have all the money in the world and still be spiritually, mentally and physically poverty-stricken.

To prosper is to excel and go to the highest place in anything desired. Prosperity is not an accident. It’s not a function of circumstances or the economy.

According to God’s Word, prosperity is a choice. It is a personal decision and a spiritual process. Believe what God says about true prosperity. God has always promised, “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land” (Isaiah 1:19).

Become aware of the impact your words have on your life. Speak God’s Word and His plan over yourself, or else learn the vocabulary of silence. Your life will change for the better.

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