September 21, 2006

• PROSPERITY part 2 by Pastor Don Moore

  This is a continuation of last week’s Wednesday Bible Study.

  REMEMBER!!!!!WHEN WE MENTION PROSPERITY WE ARE NOT TALKING JUST ABOUT MONEY, BUT ABOUT MENTAL, PHYSICAL, HEALTH, SPIRITUAL, ALL PROSPERITY. IF YOU JUST FOCUS ON MONEY, YOU LOSE A LOT OF THE MESSAGE.

  Many in the church have a problem with health and healing. The Body of Christ can be prideful and arrogant.

  We act like little kids even when we are grown up. Even a seventy year old person can act like a teenager, they can be arrested adolescents, fixated at a younger age. So often we can see this tendency in others, but not recognize the same tendency within us. We can have arrested development in some area of our lives because of the ways our parents have treated us, how people in school treated us, a chip on the shoulder from a slight that happened when we were in grade school, and even our pastors’ teachings and behavior towards us. These attitudes are produced in us by our circumstances. Pastor Don said that parents should be licensed the way we have a driver’s licence for driving. They should be tested to see if they can provide love, security, confidence, etc. And he also pointed out that some pastors are onesided in their teaching – they have favorite passages that they work from but that doesn’t cover the whole Bible. They might teach on hope and then next week on hope, and the following week on hope, but never teach people about faith that allows the hope to be realized. If people only hope on hope, they will not arrive to the point that faith can bring them.

  Some people have problems that never seem to be healed. Some are constantly facing the same problems from financial to emotional, and it keeps recurring. They take the fact that they keep having the problem and don’t think to try something different. (Heather’s note – Pastor Don wrote a song and one line says, “If you keep doing what you are doing, you’ll keep getting what you are getting). In the Body of Christ or without the Body of Christ, a person may experiment with a particular prayer or way of doing things. If they keep getting no results, if they keep trying for 20 years, they tend to take the stance that healing (or whatever) doesn’t occur in this day and age. They will think God can’t or won’t do it, but they don’t think that maybe, just maybe they need to change their approach. (Heather’s note from a previous Bible study. Some who live lives that are very spiritual, who try to live like Christ, are even more puzzled because they feel that they have been good, given of their time, tithed, and tried to follow God’s commands, confessed sins, etc, and they still have sickness – often feeling that the gifts of healing and other spiritual gifts are not for this day and age. They think that because THEY were not healed and THEY are so spiritual, that the gifts are no longer for today. If they can’t be healed, nobody can. But they may not realize that they have not done EVERYTHING God has said in that area, or they have not done all that they could do.)

  If they are believing things in error, they will do the wrong approach and are unlikely to change the way things are in their life.

  Pastor Don spoke about a woman who started driving when the only option was a stick shift where you used your left foot to handle the break and clutch, and the right foot the gas pedal. When she got an automatic shift, her brakes kept wearing out. The reason was she still used two feet to drive, and the pressure on the breaks, however light, wore out the break shoes. When this was pointed out to her, she said that she couldn’t change because she had done this for 20 years.

  We treat healing and prosperity the same way this woman treated the car. We may not realize that something  needs changing, and continue to wear out the break pads, hurt the vehicle, the transmission, the motor because we do not take our foot off the break and relearn something. If we have habits of thinking, looking or responding to stimuli we can become locked into that response and assert that we can’t change or assume that was the way it is supposed to be. The person could think to themselves that they have two pedals and two feet, and that is the way it should be.

  People can disregard the Whole Bible that way by just focusing on the verses that they like.
  They can say:

  1. “I don’t care about what the Bible says, this is what I believe.”
  2. Pick out what they think supports the way they believe, misapply verses in the wrong setting to back up their error.
  Pastor Don gave the example of 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 Love never fails. But whether there are prophesies they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. or Ephesians 4:11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers…”

  They will take these gifts out of context and think to themselves that there are pastors and teachers (for we see those or they want to be a teacher or pastor), so those parts of the five fold ministry are ok. Then they feel that there are no more apostles since Jesus’ time, or the prophets since Jesus came. Their evangelists preach salvation and conversion, but not with signs and wonders. They believe that the prophetic gift died with the apostles (who can convict you and have you come under correction). An apostle has all the five gifts and demonstrates the power of God, and they can either set a person up with authority or take down their position . If we look at 1 Corinthians 13, people want to say that tongues have ceased with the apostles, but they won’t say knowledge passed away (they like knowledge). So how can they say 1/2 of what is mentioned in the verse is still in existence, but 1/2 is no longer working.

  I asked, because this 1 Corinthians verse has been presented to me to show me that signs and wonders no longer occur, how to answer a person that states that. Pastor Don pointed out verse 10 – “But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.” He asked me – are we perfect (no), do we know everything or do we only know part (only part), so since that hasn’t come, there is still a need for tongues and prophesy and knowledge.

  3 People say, I like my interpretation of scripture best and will stay with it. (even if it doesn’t work).

  4. Take what I understand and apply it to my situation, apply the Spirit of God and the Word. The Spirit and the Word MUST agree.

  When we take what we understand and apply it, if our circumstances do not change, if we still face poverty (physical, mental, spiritual, relationship) or sickness or the healing doesn’t occur, we can’t say, “Healing doesn’t exist” or “These things died with the apostles.” We need to realize that something we are doing doesn’t line up with God’s Word which doesn’t lie.

  If we have a problem with our car, we read the manual. If we are having a problem with our life, we also need to read the manual (Bible). Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God did heal but won’t heal anymore.

  We talk about the Gifts of the Spirit not existing, then what do we do with Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit, which is love. If faith works by love, and if there is no gift of the spirit or fruit of the Spirit, then there is no love, so faith can’t work.

  Just because not all people get healed, or we don’t get healed the way we think we should, or on our timetable doesn’t negate healing.

  Pastor Don pointed out that most of us could get into any car in the parking lot and drive any of the cars, but if we were given a desert racing car we might be challenged, or a bulldozer or a fork lift. We might be short on knowledge of how to drive the unusual vehicle. It is the same way with healing and prosperity – we may be short on the knowledge of what it takes to make it occur. But God will reward those who diligently seek him. And when we add faith to the manual (Bible) then things begin to change. The Word of God is perfect. The Bible contains the words of God and men, for it was the Holy Spirit working through men to write the words of the Bible. Some passages we get glimpses of the truth, but it takes the Holy Spirit to reveal the meaning of a passage.  For example, what does it really mean in Genesis 1:27 what is really meant by created in God’s image – we have an idea, but not the whole picture of what man looked like back then. But God’s Word is true and accurate, sharper than any two edged sword. (Heather’s note: I heard a teaching on the radio today that it would be very hard to go into a jungle where people lived in huts and explain the Eiffel Tower to them, that you could tell them it was grander than their greatest hut of their highest chief, but that would not give the the full image of the Eiffel Tower).

  Pastor Don pointed out that he has been married to his wife for 37 years, and he knows her, but she still surprises him by things she says and does. When he thinks she is not acting in faith, she comes through strong in faith, blowing his mind. But God knows her completely. We only see through a mirror dimly.

  We are imperfect in our perceptions. Pastor Don used the idea of trust to explain this. He said that we can fall out of trust for a person in a split second because of something they did, and we won’t trust them for a long time until they earn back our trust. We might say to themselves, “I thought I knew him.” But what really is happening is that we CAN’T TRUST OUR TRUST. It was our misplaced trust that put us in that position in the first place.

  Many of us trust God until a trial comes our way. We don’t get our healing, the job, the relationship, etc. We think God let us down and stop trusting Him. God is trustworthy, we just don’t want to admit that there are areas we don’t understand. (Pastor Don apologized about this being a hard teaching. He knew that it was a teaching that many struggle with).

  Sometimes when we are past a situation, we look at it and we can see things in retrospect that we didn’t see while we were in the midst of the situation. God didn’t change, just our attitude toward the situation changed. Sometimes God doesn’t respond the way we want Him to for our own protection, or because we are not in the right place to receive and use the thing wisely, or we aren’t ready for it. Often God will hold back prosperity until we are at a point where He can get the glory. This prosperity is not just about money, but it can also be other areas of prosperity. Sometimes money is not provided by God because he knows that at that point in our life it could turn into love of money.

  God wants us to prosper and there are scriptures to back that up. (I will share them tomorrow) God wants us to be healed, and it is a sad truth that many of us oppose the promises of God.  Pastor Don stated that when we are constantly facing a particular problem there may be a variety of reasons why the problem continues. There are some of us that suffer from a victim complex – being used to being a victim and not knowing how to not be one, some of us actually enjoy being miserable and complaining so they sabotage things when they are going smoothly, there might be things in our mental processes that prevent us from doing what God wants, so that we can change. Some don’t want to put in the time and effort that it takes to go from point “A” to point “B” or they don’t want to do the prerequisites, to get the information and training. Some like to figure things out for themselves (but sometimes that takes a long time), and they miss God’s timing for a situation.

  We have to ask ourselves; DO WE BELIEVE GOD WANTS US TO PROSPER?

  It is late, so I am going to continue this tomorrow – there will be a great illustration of how we deal with things and tons of Bible verses to back up what has been said above.

  This is a challenging teaching for me, but I have seen the truth of it in my walk. When I was a teenager I spent years planning my death. I plotted my suicide and after a foiled attempt was made to promise that I wouldn’t kill myself until my 18th birthday. I spent over a year counting the hours, minutes and seconds until my demise. A few months before my 18th birthday, due to some unconditional love coming my way, my thinking changed and I decided to live and not die. I was afraid that when I told my new friends my decision that they would be disappointed. It took a real step of faith to change from counting hours, minutes, and seconds until I died to deciding to live. I was so caught up in the death mentality, collecting poems, reading depressing novels, reading biographies of famous suicides, etc. It took a lot of time to change – in fact, it took Christ because I really didn’t ditch my suicide stash until after I got saved, and after a long time of talking with Pastor Don.

  I am also beginning to see how my words affect situations. I can be negative at times, and am trying now to speak more God’s word instead of my impression of circumstances. It is challenging, but over time your thinking does change about circumstances. We are works in process. Sometimes it is good that there is knowledge like this to convict us. If we can just take one point, one Bible verse, one thought and run with it, we can begin to see the effects of that action, and then we grow from glory to glory.

  I can’t wait to share more with you, but if I shared it all tonight it would be a VERY long article to read. I am praying that you have a blessed Friday.

  I am so honored to know you, and so grateful to learn from your sites as well. What a great family we have here in Xangaland. I will try to get to your sites over the weekend.

  Heather

  • 12:42 am
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