FIVE REASONS MANY CHRISTIANS ARE POOR:

FIVE REASONS MANY CHRISTIANS ARE POOR:

The bible says in 3Jn 1:2 ‘Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth’KJV. God’s master plan my dear friend is that you may prosper and live in good health. Unfortunately many Christian instead are eaten up by poverty.  Below I want to share with you the five reasons why many Christians are poor and in my next chapter I will share with you a very important subject and that is: WHY POVERTY MUST DIE 

Let's now look at these five reasons below:

1. God will not give you what will kill you. It is like a small boy watching his daddy shaving and he says, “Daddy, give me the blade, give me the blade.” No matter how he loves the child, he will not give him the blade. So your spiritual level and your level of brokenness may be too low for God to entrust wealth to you. That is why the Bible says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all other things shall be added unto you.” They are automatic addition. Here comes the first question to you in this message. “Can you confirm in your spirit that the kingdom is in you? Are you a broken Christian? That is the first poverty destroying weapon

God may be looking at you and He is saying, “If I give this my child fifty million shillings, will he not backslide?” If God sees that anger, greed, dishonesty, lying, unkind, ruthless, quarrelsome and quick to judge others, Hypocrisy are still in your life, He will not give you His prosperity. Get the kingdom first; submit the whole of your life to God and then you will never be forsaken. This statement simply means take no glory for you. Avoid ‘I’, ‘My’ ‘Me’ in most of your statements. The Bible says that God never forsakes the righteous but you have to be righteous to have that privilege. There are many people now who are very serious with the Lord because they are poor. But when money comes, they would become irregular and totally they change contrary to the Word of God. I have seen pastors who at one point they were so badly off but when God blessed them they have now become another log before God who called them. Many are praying, “O Lord, promote my husband,” and God is saying, “When I have not promoted the man, he is running after strange women, when he is promoted, he will now build castles for them and abandon you completely. Why don’t you let us get him saved first?”

There are people who were working and praying hard when they did not have a fan in their house and at night mosquitoes came and by the time they slapped themselves thrice, they would stand up to pray. But now they got the fan, apply mosquito repellants and split air conditioner, and eventually they over sleep. God does not want that. Many forget the household of God immediately they obtain contracts. They would not be seen again in the church until the money is gone. Before then when you call a prayer point like: “Let every contract be released now, in the name of Jesus, they would pray and shake their heads and respond with a strong AMEN. But when they get it, the next place you would see them is the VIP lounge at the airport with very starched clothes, sitting down and eating meat pie and ingesting tea as early as 6.30 am. But when they were looking for it, it was dry fast everyday.

Many who used to come early to church when they had no cars now come late to church in spite of the fact that God has blessed them with cars and drivers. And when you ask them why they come late to church, they would say, “That foolish driver did not wake up on time to bring me to church.” But when there was no car and driver, they got to church before everybody, swept the floor, joined the prayer warriors, and then settled down before service. God sees all these.

Some people were praying very well when they had no job. But now that they have a job, they forget their spiritual duties because of over- time. Some prayed and fasted to get a job and by 5:00 am., they have arrived at the office. But when it is service days, you see them strolling in one hour late. God normally allows that which keeps a man from Him to be withdrawn so that He can get his attention. God has had to withdraw cars, houses and comfort from people in order to save their souls. Some of the few attacks you go through at time is to wake you up so you can seek God and make Him the Lord over your life. So, check your life today. Are you broken to the level where God can obligate the riches of the Gentiles into your hands? Do you have clean hands, a kind of hand that God will rest this sort of riches on? This is the first headache of the Almighty when it comes to prosperity.

2. Wrong giving is the second reason.

 Proverbs 11: 24 says, “There is one who that scatters, yet increases more;  and there is one who  withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty” The liberal soul shall be made fat. And he that watereth shall be watered also himself.” And Luke 6: 38 says, “Give, and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, and shaken together and running over, shall men give into your bosom.” This is an area where the devil has blinded the eyes of many believers. Many pray that they want prosperity, but how is the prosperity going to come when they have sown no seed. It is like a student praying to pass his examination when he has read nothing. It is like a woman praying to get pregnant without a husband or without a man. You must sow a seed. It is that seed that the Lord will multiply for you. Someone who wants prosperity should do more than tithing. Some people have been writing me letters asking: “What should we tithe? Is it the gross pay or the net pay?” It is better for you to over pay than to under pay. If God is asking you for a tithe and you say, “O God, take 20 per cent or 15 per cent, it is better for you to owe me than for me to owe you.” You must not treat God as a beggar. You treat God as a beggar when you give Him the extra that you don’t need. If you cannot be generous with the Almighty when things are hard for you, you would not be able to give when there is abundance. Sowing in the time of famine attracts abundant blessings and prosperity. Remember the story of the woman in Mark 12:41-44, who just threw in some coins and God said, “This one has contributed more money than every other person.” So, if you find it hard to give a tenth unto God, of the money that belongs to you, you are inviting poverty. If you completely forget to pay your tithe and your offerings, you are inviting poverty. If you feel or believe that the tithe and offerings you give are too much, you are inviting poverty. If God gives you 20,000 shillings and you find it difficult to pay 2,000 as tithe, you are writing to poverty. Wise believers double the tithe. Also, they sow a big seed and challenge the Lord. Giving to God is sacrifice. You have not started giving to God until you feel the pinch. Many are so tight-fisted when it comes to financing God’s work. Tithe borrowers are looking for trouble too. It is foolish to borrow your tithe because the outcome can be grievous and it is also an insult to God. God can allow an ordinary boil to swallow 40,000.00. He can allow a single problem to take away the money you refuse to give to Him. The principle of giving will enable you to experience many financial miracles. Fear and unbelief will keep a lot of people in poverty. Many give sparingly but the Bible wants you to give and it tells you how to give. We must know that the money that the Lord needs to finish His work has been in the world before you were born. God will not force you to part with your money. But when you do it willingly, He will open the door of your life to blessings and many other good things will begin to happen. You must give sacrificially, that is, you give as much as you can until it pinches because your offering is measured by what you have left and not what you give. You should give according to your income. Not that you get a big income and you give a small offering. You should give cheerfully. You should give systematically. You should give at any opportunity you have to give without grumbling or complaining. You don’t give under compulsion. The Bible says, “Do not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” You should not be the kind of Christian who wants a gift from God but you don’t want to give to Him. You should give regularly. And the Bible says that you should give without display or open show. So, if you have not been giving that way or you have been giving only when the man of God says, “I want twenty people to give one million shillings each,” then you march forward and people clap for you. That has no blessing. So wrong giving is the second reason. That is why we say, ‘change your offering and change your destiny.’

3. Psalm 78:41 says, “Yea they turned back and tempted God and limited the Holy one of Israel.” The third reason is that many of us limit God. Many limit God by the way they talk and act. Many do not believe that God can do something outside their normal salary or income. So, anytime they pray, they focus their attention on what appears to be obvious. They are not on the look out for the miraculous or supernatural. They limit God completely. That is why sometimes when you ask some people, “How are you?” They would answer “rough, Fair, or fifty fifty.” Negative and inferior thinking invites poverty. You should not limit God. The Bible says that with God, nothing shall be impossible. It is only in our dictionary we find the word impossible or difficult.

4. Staying in the wrong business and wrong profession. In Luke chapter 5, we see the example of Peter. Peter was trying to catch fish when he was destined to fish for men. God will not bless the wrong thing you are doing. Check prayerfully whether you are in the right business. That is the reason I said that if you are a bit confused about what to do, you must pray to God to make His way plain before your face. If you have no business or job, pray and get direction from the Lord on what to do. Forget how prosperous you were before, face realities now and ask the Lord to show you the way.

The fact that God is your Father is enough to make you find out what He wants you to be doing. If you are doing what God wants you to do, you can refer back to Him when there is a problem. You don’t just enter into the university and study anything just for the sake of having a degree. Ask the Lord what to do. For God will not prosper what He does not support. Some are spiritually lazy and will not stay before the Lord for a long time to receive from the Lord. When you ask such for people to go and pray, they come back the following day to say that they did not receive anything. The fact that God is refusing to talk to you about your own life shows that you need some spiritual adjustment quick, and you must make this adjustment. Once you are in the right thing, you must surely prosper even if it is a very small thing.

Sometime ago, I learnt of  a story were one small boy of about seven would come to the Bus stop and wait for cars and would ask drivers which kind of  passengers he should call.” This young boy when asked why he was doing what he was doing, he said, “This is how I feed my daddy and mummy”. A boy of seven running bus conductorship for some hours everyday and whatever he gets, he takes it home for all the members of his family to feed on.

5. Giving place to the enemy. Ephesians 4: 27 says, “Nor give place to the devil.” If a person gives room to the enemy, he would allow poverty to operate. There are spirits of poverty and there is also what we call poverty dreams. Regular dreams of being naked, roaming about the market place, being broke, selling and not getting result, are signs that the spirit of poverty is in operation. You should bind the spirit of poverty. This spirit looks ugly and tattered in the spirit. Sometimes, it appears like an old ragged man with one leg. What I am saying is that, some people have already given place to the spirit of poverty in their lives and it does not matter whether you give them ten million  to run a business, they will soon finish everything and nothing will come in. When the spirit of poverty is in operation, the person will be experiencing unexplainable loss of money. He would not know exactly what he does with his money. The person may be bombarded by starving and unrepentant relatives. Before he wakes up in the mornings, they are already knocking at his door. He may be facing wastage of materials. For example, his food may be getting spoilt without explanation. Cups and plates would break; the children would loose their bags in the school. Their money would be stolen, etc. It is the work of the spirit of poverty.

When a person is always being duped by fraudulent people, constant attack by robbers, attack by fire, uncontrollable birth of children, dismissal from various places of work, loss of materials including clothes are all signs of the operation of the spirit of poverty. Sometime ago, I was shocked when a man told me that his clothes were stolen while he tried to dry them outside his house. He said it was not few minutes he put the clothes on the line, and went inside. By the time he came out, the wet clothes were gone. The spirit of poverty has turned managers to servants. It has turned teachers to pupils.

WAY OUT

When you check your life and you find out that the spirit of poverty is in control, then you need to resist it. Think now about your finances. If you have cheated God, ask for forgiveness. Take a positive stand on what you will do in God’s house. If you have things that you have stored up somewhere and you know that you don’t really need them. Sell them off and put the money into God’s work. The last step to take is an aggressive one. It is to pray poverty destroying prayers. You must pray against the spirit of poverty with holy aggression. Some sicknesses are not ordinary. They are just ladders of poverty and you need to break them to pieces.

PRAYER POINTS

1. You heaven that has become brass, break open and bring rain, in the name of Jesus.
2. Every spirit of poverty, I break your control, in the name of Jesus.
3. Lay your hands on your eyes and pray like this: O Lord, anoint my eyes to see the hidden riches of the world, in the name of Jesus.
4. Lay hand on your head and pray this: O Lord, advertise your prosperity in my life, in Jesus’ name.

5. Lay one hand upon the other hand and pray like this: Let the riches of the ungodly be transferred into my hands, in the name of Jesus.

6. O Lord, let divine blessings shower my life, in the name of Jesus.
7. O Lord, give me dumbfounding breakthroughs, in the name of Jesus.
8. Every curse working against my destiny, be broken, in the name of Jesus

God bless you

Bril Emma Opanyi

E-mail: brilemma2004@hotmail.com,  brilemma@yahoo.com,  yourdailyvictory@gmail.com

JESUS IS THE SAME YESTERDAY, TODAY & FOREVERMORE