The Joy of Financial Rest

I read this article twice already in the last 48 hours, it is powerful and so precise to the discerning eye. I look forward to your testimonies straight to this blog!

“If your confidence has been rocked by recent talk of recession, I have a headline that will encourage you. If you’ve been concerned about how the current economic climate will affect your financial future, I have a report based on the Bible that can help put your mind at rest and free you from every financial care. There is no recession in the kingdom of God!

Notice I didn’t say there’s no recession in heaven. Although that’s true, the riches we’ll enjoy in heaven don’t help us at the gas pump today. They don’t put food on the table and a roof over our heads while we’re living on planet Earth. Heaven is in our future. The kingdom of God, however, is a presentday reality. It doesn’t only exist in heaven, it exists on earth wherever Jesus is King. So, as believers, we can enjoy the benefits of God’s kingdom and draw on its resources not just in the sweet by-and-by but in the challenging here and now. We don’t have to depend on this fallen world’s system for our support, or ride the rollercoaster economy of boom and bust, recession and depression. We can live in abundance in any economy, because in the kingdom of God “THE BLESSING of the Lord, it [always!] maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it” (Proverbs 10:22).

“But Brother Copeland,” someone might say, “if that’s true, why do so many of us have to wear ourselves out working two jobs just to meet our needs?”

Because, like everything in God’s kingdom, the financial part of THE BLESSING functions by faith—and when we’re striving to meet our own needs, we’re not in faith. We’re trusting our own efforts. Instead of operating in the kingdom of God, we’re operating in the world’s system of finance.

In that system, people function as their own god. They act as their own source of supply so they are always trying to take care of themselves. They spend their lives following money. Jesus called that system “mammon,” and He bluntly said: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise [care little and lightly esteem] the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).

A Sorry Way to Live

No true believer would purposely serve the world’s god of mammon. Yet when we worry about finances and struggle to meet our own needs, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are binding ourselves to the world’s sorry system with all its shortcomings. In that system, we work harder and still fall behind. If we do find a way to get ahead, we pay a high price for it by sacrificing time in God’s Word, our family relationships or our health. While it looks like we’re getting richer, in reality we’re getting poorer.

That’s the way the world’s economic system works. One way or another, there’s always sorrow with it.

How do we escape that system? It’s simple. We trust God and do what Jesus told us to do in Matthew 6:26-33:

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

That’s a familiar passage of Scripture to most of us. But it often seems impractical to our natural minds. How can we stop worrying about our financial future when the world’s experts are forecasting doom and gloom? we ask ourselves. How can we believe God will provide for us when Momma and Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa always told us we have to provide for ourselves?

There’s only one way. If it’s our desire to enjoy THE BLESSING of the kingdom, we must ignore every voice that contradicts God’s Word. We must admit that Momma and Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa were wrong. They meant well, but their counsel was not based on the principles of God’s kingdom—it was based on the fallen system of the world.

Free From the Curse

In that sin-cursed system people do have to look out for themselves. They do have to worry about the ups and downs of the world’s economy. They must earn their living in toil and sorrow because they are bound to the effects of the Fall of Adam recorded in Genesis 3:17-19 where God said: “‘Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread’” (New King James Version).

Before the Fall, when God released THE BLESSING on Adam and told him to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion” (Genesis 1:28), Adam had been given an exciting, worldwide assignment. He’d been divinely commissioned to bless the whole earth and expand the Garden of Eden until it filled the planet. Along with that commission, God had given him “every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat” (verse 29).

Adam didn’t have to worry about going hungry. Food was all around him. He didn’t have to earn it. He just received it and enjoyed it.

When he lost THE BLESSING through sin, however, everything changed. Adam had to forget his worldwide mission for God and focus on his own provision. He never got out of his own backyard because he spent his life trying to keep food on the table and clothes on his back. He had to toil and sweat for a living because he was under the curse.

But here’s the good news: As believers, we aren’t under that curse anymore! Jesus has redeemed us from it “being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Galatians 3:13).

Thank God, through Jesus we’ve been set free. We are living in THE BLESSING again.

Working on Assignment for God

“Brother Copeland, surely you aren’t saying that because I’m a Christian I don’t have to work for a living anymore?” I’m not saying you don’t have to work. I’m saying you don’t have to work for a living.

You don’t have any more business sweating and toiling to make a living than Adam did before the Fall. Making money is not your job. That’s the job of THE BLESSING. “It maketh rich” with no sorrowful side effects.

Your job is to seek the kingdom of God—to report to your heavenly Father every day and say, “Father, I’m here to receive Your assignment. What would You like me to do for You today? I am at Your service.”

I can tell you from the Word and from experience, if you’ll do that, God will keep you busy. He’s kept Gloria and me running as fast as we can for more than 40 years now. I can also tell you, He will pay you far more than you could ever earn. He’ll not only meet your needs; He’ll satisfy your wants (Psalm 23:1), and “make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

I don’t care how hard you work, there is no way you can come close to earning that kind of wealth. The only way to receive it is to trust and obey your heavenly Father, enter the rest of faith and let THE BLESSING do its job.

Why don’t more believers do that?

Primarily because the belief that we must earn our own prosperity is so ingrained in most of us it’s hard to overcome. I wrestled with that idea myself until the Lord helped free me from it by directing me to Romans 4:3-4. It says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.”
 
Once when I was fellowshiping with the Lord over those verses, He pointed out to me that they refer to receiving THE BLESSING. And they declare that any part of it we earn is not by grace. Then He said, Kenneth, is it possible to earn the new birth?

“Of course not,” I answered. “We could never work hard enough to earn salvation. Working for it just gets in the way. The new birth can only be received by faith through grace.”

Is it possible to earn healing?

“No, divine healing is a gift of grace that was purchased for us by the stripes of Jesus. We can’t earn it. Like the new birth, it must be received by
simple faith.”

What about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit?

“The same thing is true there. People struggled and tried to be good enough to earn the Baptism in the Holy Spirit for years and they found it didn’t work. They discovered like every other part of THE BLESSING, it is received by faith through grace.”

Kenneth, if you didn’t earn your salvation, and you didn’t earn your healing, and you didn’t earn the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, why do you think you could earn your prosperity?

Don’t Live on It, Give on It

For me, that settled the issue forever. I knew without a doubt that I would never have to toil for a living again…and neither do you! If we’ll leave the world’s mammon-mentality behind and stop trying to meet our own needs, we can get busy with our Garden-of-Eden assignment and start enjoying THE BLESSING that goes with it. We can spend our lives doing the will of our Father and being a blessing everywhere He sends us. If He sends us over to the school to work as a janitor, we can do it—not to earn a living but because God has assigned us to take His kingdom into that place.

“But I couldn’t make ends meet on a janitor’s salary!” someone might say.

Who said anything about living on a janitor’s salary? Don’t expect to live on it. Expect to give on it! Use that janitorial income to minister financial blessing to someone. Invest it in the kingdom of God. The Bible says when you do that, the Lord Jesus, your heavenly High Priest, will multiply that seed and increase the fruits of it until you are “enriched in every thing to all bountifulness” (2 Corinthians 9:11).

A janitor who is enriched in everything to all bountifulness isn’t a poor man. He’s a rich man! He can have a jet if he wants one.

“Why would a janitor want a jet?” you might ask. It depends on what he does on his weekends. I know a farmer named Charles Capps who decided years ago he wanted an airplane so he could preach the gospel all over the place when he wasn’t working his farm. That airplane enabled him to bless so many folks his preaching finally took over his farming.
Now he flies around preaching full time.

Let Down Your Nets

Even if you’re not called to preach the gospel full time, God wants to do the same thing for you. He wants to bless you in every way, including financially. He can get the job done, too, in any economy. He can multiply your resources when every economic indicator says it can’t be done. He can bring you supernatural increase in the most unlikely situations.

Jesus proved that on the Sea of Galilee. After He preached from Peter’s boat He said to him, “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught” (Luke 5:4). Talk about unlikely conditions for increase! Every fisherman on the Galilee knew you couldn’t catch fish with a net in the daytime. What’s more, Peter and his partners had been fishing all night and they hadn’t caught anything. So when the sun came up, they’d given up, washed their nets and prepared to go home.

Even so, because Peter was a Jew—a seed of Abraham—he should have known what Jesus was about to do for him. He should have had a revelation of THE BLESSING that belonged to him, but he didn’t. He had a “toiling” mentality so he answered Jesus by saying, “Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net” (verse 5).

It didn’t even occur to Peter that he was about to be blessed. Because of his mentality, all he could think about was how much work it would be to wash those nets again. If he hadn’t respected Jesus as a minister and a teacher, he might have refused His request. But Peter honored Jesus’ spiritual status even though it was obvious He knew nothing about the fishing business. So he did his religious duty. He cast out one old, rotten net thinking that after he hauled it back in—empty, no doubt—he wouldn’t bother washing it again.

Bad choice.

That’s the problem with a toiling mindset. It blinds you to God’s blessings. If you’re still living under the work-fora- living curse mentality, your blessing can be staring you in the face and you’ll miss it. Even when you’re trying to be respectful of God’s Word, you will make bad decisions right in Jesus’ presence.

That’s what Peter did. He went out fishing with Jesus assuming he wasn’t going to catch anything, put out one rotten net and when the fish started piling into it, it broke. Then he was stuck. He’d left all his good nets on the shore. So he called to his partners in the other ship to come help. “And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink” (verse 7).

We usually think about that as a miracle. But actually it was THE BLESSING in operation. Fish run from toil but they come thrashing toward THE BLESSING, and since THE BLESSING was on Jesus they jumped into Peter’s net even when the sun was shining.

The same BLESSING is upon us, as believers, today and it will work for us—anytime, anywhere—just like it did in Peter’s day. THE BLESSING doesn’t care what the economic conditions are, if the stock market is up, down or sideways, or if the prognosticators are proclaiming recession.It just keeps on working—making us rich and adding no sorrow with it.
If we’ll put faith in that BLESSING, report to our heavenly Father for our assignment every day and become cheerful givers, we can stop worrying about the world’s shortages and start rejoicing that there is no recession in the kingdom of God. We can get up every morning and say, “Praise God, my financial fish are coming in faster than I can string them. I’m on my way to a boat-sinking load of abundance. I am BLESSED!”

For more about Kenneth Copeland Ministeries and faith building materials based on God’s word, visit the link below

http://www.kcm.org/

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