Bible News: How To Ensure Your Prosperity In Recession

“Now there was a famine in the land… Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the Lord blessed him.” – Genesis 26:1&12

Bad financial news is everywhere! With bank and corporate failures, stock market losses and a depressed housing market, rising unemployment and inflation, money problems burden more and more of us.

Yet note this biblical truth: The God of the Bible wants everyone to truly prosper in the area of personal finances!

Jesus Christ said one of the main purposes for His being sent to Earth was that we “might have life” and that we “might have it MORE ABUNDANTLY” (John 10:10). The Apostle John concurred: “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest PROSPER and be in health …” (3 John 2).

Prosperity is not a sin. It is a blessing. God is the greatest giver of abundance and prosperity. It is His will that we prosper and enjoy the “good things” in life.

Anciently, God made Job the richest man in the East. Once Job repented of his sin, God gave him double his original wealth (Job 42:10). God prospered Joseph abundantly (Genesis 39:2-3). God promised the Israelites great material wealth if they obeyed Him (Leviticus 26:3-5). “[I]t is [God] that giveth thee power to get wealth,” Moses reminded them (Deuteronomy 8:18). “Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth,” noted Solomon, another exceedingly wealthy ruler, “and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God” (Ecclesiastes 5:19).

If God wants everyone to prosper and live abundantly, then why are so many wracked by debt and weighed down with financial worries?

There are reasons!

What Most Don’t Know

If we are coveting goods we cannot afford, then we will be far likelier to overspend and go into debt. If we are putting material goods before God, then God, in order to correct this, may curse us by withholding the prosperity He would much rather give us!

Do you realize that God, the Creator of all things including the air you breathe, claims ownership of all that exists? Understanding this important biblical principle is in fact the first key to financial success!

In Exodus 19:5, God Almighty says: “[A]ll the earth is mine.” Through Moses’s inspired pen, we read, “Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also, with ALL THAT THEREIN IS” (Deuteronomy 10:14). “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. … [T]he world is mine, and the fulness thereof,” claims our Maker (Psalm 50:10, 12).

According to the Bible, “your” money—“your” income—rightfully belongs to God. “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:8).

This principle is important to remember when considering how we ought to manage our finances. What we may earn in wages or receive as a return on investments is not really ours—that is, not until two prior claims on our income are satisfied.

One claim is taxes. Jesus said that Christians should “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s …” (Matthew 22:21). But the first claim is GOD’S claim. Christ concluded that verse, “AND [PAY] UNTO GOD THE THINGS THAT ARE GOD’S.”

With this statement, Christ pointed to a fundamental financial LAW that we must keep if God is to be able to bless us with the prosperity He promises—that is, the law of TITHING.

God’s Law Regulates Your Income

God’s law, confirmed throughout the Bible, is that the first tenth, or “tithe,” of every individual’s income be paid to Him via His chosen servants.

God is a God of love (1 John 4:8, 16). He knows your needs and wants. He has your well-being in mind. He is concerned for you; that is why He has made this law regulating your income.

God’s law concerning what you earn is, in fact, a DEAL He has made with you. Consider it: God allows you to work on His Earth, to use its resources, its forces and energies—to use what others have extracted from this planet, in manufacturing, distributing, selling, buying, investing. Whatever your occupation or profession, you are actually working inpartnership with God!

When we stop and analyze this, we must admit that God surely supplies about 90 percent of everything we produce—and our own thinking, planning and working supplies, at best, perhaps 10 percent. Yet God doesn’t claim 90 percent of the proceeds, or the income. He doesn’t claim 50 percent, or even 30 percent or 20 percent.

God is exceptionally generous. He has reserved for His use only 10 percent of your income. And after you have been honest in paying God’s claim—HIS 10 percent—to His chosen representative (by the way, it is very important to prove where God’s work is, and tithe to the correct church), only then does God declare that the other 90 percent becomes legally yours. Our nine-tenths actually does not belong to us until we have paid God His tenth. That is God’s law!

Adapted from Eric Anderson’s article “How You Can Prosper in a Recession!”