Biblical Prosperity
Chapter Two
Prosperity of the spirit
There are many people who have physical and financial prosperity, but do not have spiritual prosperity. Basketball, football players and other athletes may have strong healthy bodies and may have amassed a lot of wealth, but may not know about spiritual prosperity. Popular actors, singers, leaders of governments and etc. may have amassed a lot of wealth, but may not know about spiritual prosperity. Even some so called religious apostles, prophets, evangelist, pastors/teachers, and missionaries do not have spiritual prosperity. Many professed Christians and church members do not have spiritual prosperity. Spiritual prosperity is a personal relationship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Romans 10:8-10 is the beginning of your path to spiritual prosperity.
Romans 10:8-10 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach):9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
The word believe in the Greek means the following:
4100 pisteuo { pist-yoo’-o} AV - believe 239, commit unto 4, commit to (one’s) trust
1) be committed unto 1) be put in trust with 1) be commit to one’s trust
1) believer 1) 2481) to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, place confidence in
1a) of the thing believed
1a1) to credit, have confidence
1b) in a moral or religious reference
1b1) used in the NT of the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of soul
1b2) to trust in Jesus or God as able to aid either in obtaining or in doing something: saving faith
1bc) mere acknowledgment of some fact or event: intellectual faith
2) to entrust a thing to one, i.e. his fidelity 2a) to be entrusted with a thing
Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1995.
Your intellect was trained to see first, and then believe. This is why you have a problem when you try to believe there is a real God and He has a real Son. This is why Jesus said in Mark 10:15.
Mark 10:15“Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.”
When you came into this world, your spirit and soul were pure and clean, but as you grew in the world, you began to take in all the pollution of the world around you. Your five senses began to take in pollution and darkened your spirit as shown in Illustration #1 in the abstract of this paper. This is why you could not understand the things of God because your spirit could not see God. When you made a decision in your soul to confess Jesus as the Son of God, you released the Holy Spirit to come in and remove darkness from your spirit as illustrated in Illustration #2. Since the light has come into your spirit, you have connected with the supernatural, which is God. Now that you have believed as a little child, you have become a child of God. This is the beginning of being saved.
Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
Work out is a command verb in the Greek which involves continuous and repeated action. To work out completely means to bring to finish through God in you. It is Christ in you the hope of glory. Your health, rescue, deliverance, safety, soundness and prosperity all come from within, God working in you, inside out, and coming upon you. (Davis Dictionary p.21)
Many Christians stop at this point and believe that they are going to heaven, but will have to live in trouble and trials for the rest of their lives, and they will get every thing when they die and go to heaven. In common sense this is not normal that a child stay a child. If a one- year old child stopped growing mentally and the body grew to full maturity, he would be a moron.
The same thing happens spiritually. Notice in Romans 10:10 that when you confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior, that righteousness and salvation is involved. What is righteousness? In the Greek righteousness is:
AV - righteousness 92; 92
GK - 1466 { dikaiosuvnh }
1) in a broad sense: state of him who is as he ought to be, righteousness, the condition acceptable to God
1a) the doctrine concerning the way in which man may attain a state approved of God
1b) integrity, virtue, purity of life, rightness, correctness of thinking feeling, and acting in a narrower sense, justice or the virtue which gives each his due.
2) prosperity (of people)
Righteousness is believing in your heart and not in your head that this experience is happening in you. Believing in your head or in your five senses says you have to have a feeling or can change what you believe when circumstances change in your life. Believing in your heart says no matter what you feel or no matter what the circumstances are that are going on around you, the word of God says I am righteous according to Romans 10:10. Also read 2 Corinthians 5:21.
2 Corinthians 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Now that you believe in your heart that you are righteous, Roman 10:10 continues to say that with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Mark 11:23 states this as well.
Mark 11:23“For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.
An unbeliever will say “You can’t say that.” A believer in his heart doesn’t look at the circumstances, but at what he knows and he knows what Jesus said. Since you are now going to make a confession unto salvation, you need to know what salvation is.
Salvation-4991 soteria { so-tay-ree’-ah}
AV - salvation 40, the (one) be saved 1, deliver + 1325 1, health 1, saving 1, that (one) be saved + 1519 1; 45
GK - 5401 { swthriva }
1) deliverance, preservation, safety, salvation
1a) deliverance from the molestation of enemies
1b) in an ethical sense, that which concludes to the souls safety or salvation
1b1) of Messianic salvation
2) salvation as the present possession of all true Christians
3) future salvation, the sum of benefits and blessings which the Christians, redeemed from all earthly ills, will enjoy after the visible return of Christ from heaven in the consummated and eternal kingdom of God.
Saved-4982 sozo { sode’-zo}
from a primary sos (contraction for obsolete saoz, “safe”); TDNT - 7:965,1132;
AV - save 93, make whole 9, heal 3, be whole 2, misc 3; 110
GK - 1751 { ejkswv/zw }* & 5392 { swv/zw }
1) to save, keep safe and sound, to rescue from danger or destruction
1a) one (from injury or peril)
1a1) to save a suffering one (from perishing), i.e. one suffering from disease, to make well, heal, restore to health
1b1) to preserve one who is in danger of destruction, to save or rescue
1b) to save in the technical biblical sense
Now that you know in your heart that you are saved, you are righteous, and heading toward salvation with your mouth, the darkness has been removed from around your spirit and you can begin to see with your spirit, which is an inner knowing. Therefore you are saved in your spirit. You probably did not remember much about life as a baby, but as you began to grow you began to wonder where you came from and how did you get here. This is the same way with a new born again Christian. In Genesis 1:26-27 the scripture tell you who you are and from where you came.
Genesis 1:26-28 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
You were created in God’s own image and his own likeness. This was not referring to Adam and Eve. If He said, “Let us create Adam and Eve in our own likeness and in our own image, then He would have only created Adam and Eve. When God says something, then that is what it has to be. When God spoke this everyone who was, is, and will be on this earth was created. You were created like him. God is a Spirit therefore, you are a spirit. The Hebrew word here is Elohim meaning:
430 Õelohiym { el-o-heem’}
plural of 433; TWOT - 93c; n m p
AV - God 2346, god 244, judge 5, GOD 1, goddess 2, great 2, mighty 2, angels 1, exceeding 1, God-ward + 4136 1, godly 1; 2606
GK - 466 { µyhil¿aÔ
1) (plural) God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit
1a) rulers, judges
1b) divine ones
1c) angels
1d) gods
2) (plural intensive - singular meaning)
2a) god, goddess
2b) godlike one
2c) works or special possessions of God
2d) the (true) God
When God said let us, he was saying let us make mankind in the likeness and image of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If God is a Spirit, then we would be little spirits. God created male and female because in God is both male and female gender in spirit. Notice in the definition of God the word goddess is included. Your earthly body is a combination of your father’s and your mother’s genes.
Hebrews 12:9 Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid the respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?
Notice that once you were created a spirit like God, the next thing was the blessing of God. This happened in Genesis 1:28. From the foundation of the world you were already blessed as a spirit. What does blessed mean? There are several words in the Hebrew and Greek. Here are a few:
833 Õashar { aw-shar’} or Õasher { aw-share’}
a primitive root; TWOT - 183; v
AV - blessed 7, lead 2, go 2, guide 1, happy 2, leaders 1, relieve 1; 16
GK - 886 { rv'a;} & 887
1) to go straight, walk, go on, advance, and make progress
1a) (Qal) to go straight on, make progress
1b1) to go straight on, advance
1b2) to lead on (causative)
1b3) to set right, righten
1b4) to pronounce happy, call blessed
1c1) to be advanced, be led on
1c2) to be made happy, be blessed
1293 B^erakah { ber-aw-kaw’}
from 1288;; n f
AV - blessing 61, blessed 3, present 3, liberal 1, pools 1; 69
GK - 1388 { hk;r;B]
1) blessing
2) (source of) blessing
3) blessing, prosperity
4) blessing, praise of God
5) a gift, present
6) treaty of peace
Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1995.
You were created from the foundation s of the earth and you came on the earth. Since God is eternal, then you are eternal. You were, you are, and always will be as a spirit. Note the following Scriptures:
Ephesians 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
Adam was the first spirit wrapped in a body, possessing a soul, to live on the earth which God created for mankind. There is order in God. If God has plans and we are created in his image, then we must have plans as spirits. At the same time you were created, the plan for your life was also created. Look at Psalms 139:16:
Psalm 139:16, Hebrews 10:7
Ps. 139:16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.
Hebrews 10:7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—In the volume of the book it is written of Me—To do Your will, O God.’ ”
Since you were the only creation made like God, then your plans are good because God is good. Look at Psalms 35:27:
Psalm 35:27 Let them shout for joy and be glad, Who favor my righteous cause; And let them say continually, “Let the LORD be magnified, Who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant.”
Notice in Genesis 1:28 God said “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.” The questions is, “Are you being fruitful and multiplying?” If you are living God’s plan for your life, you will prosper in all your ways. See Job 36:11
Job 36:11 If they obey and serve Him, They shall spend their days in prosperity,
and their years in pleasures.
You might ask, "How do I find out the plan and purpose for my life?” Note in 2 Chronicles 26:5:
2 Chronicles 26:5, 31:21:
2 Chron.26:5 He sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God; and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper.
2 Chronicles 31:20-21 Thus Hezekiah did throughout all Judah, and he did what was good and right and true before the Lord his God.21 And in every work that he began in the service of the house of God, in the law and in the commandment, to seek his God, he did it with all his heart. So he prospered.
Continued....
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