Window of Acceleration for Kingdom Finances Part II
In our last teaching, we discussed the resurrection power coming to the church’s finances at this time, as there is a prophetic window of acceleration for funding related to the harvest. We highlighted the symbolic significance of three, one dollar bills that have been showing up miraculously in people’s pockets in our meetings. Last week, this happened again in Columbia, S.C. A woman reported after a meeting there that three, crisp brand new one dollar bills appeared in her purse. They were numbered in sequential order, with the first and last letters being “JC.” One of our associates also reported that, as he was saturating in the heavy presence of God last week, someone put a $100,000 check into his hand!
This week, we will provide some follow-up teaching regarding Kingdom provision, the favor of God and overcoming the spirit of poverty. It is essential that the people of God experience true freedom in the area of finances, in order to be free of all natural restrictions in fulfilling their calling and vision in the Lord. Too many people in the Body today have received a truckload of prophetic vision, but they are simply not walking any of it out. For many, their excuse is a lack of funding to meet the vision. But the Lord is always “able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8). As a supernatural generation, we have no excuse to be bound by natural limitations.
Getting free of debt and flowing in the abundance of Heaven is especially important in this time of acceleration for harvest. It takes money to win souls, and this is the hour to purchase harvest fields. Those who are wise will invest in souls in this season. There’s the old adage, “Invest in real estate. They’re not making any more of it.” There is some truth in this, but the real estate we should be investing in is in the Heavenly realms. Wherever our investment is, there our heart is also. And the more we invest in the things of Heaven, the more seed money God will entrust to us, even in this temporal realm.
You Don’t Need Provision: Get Anointed!
It is important for us to clear up a very big misconception: We really do not need to spend that much time praying for provision. It is not financial blessing that we need, but rather, we need the anointing. We need God Himself, and when we get close to Him, we begin to experience His favor. Five minutes of God’s favor is worth a lifetime of strife. When we seek first His Kingdom and righteousness, all other things are added to us as well (Matt. 6:33).
As we draw close to the heart and presence of God, his favor begins to rest on us. As in the life of Job, the cream and butter of God’s favor begins to grease our feet, so that we slip easily through life, without strife or friction (Job 29). In fact, Job’s life is not about suffering, but it is a wonderful illustration of God’s favor. Job’s suffering was only one small sliver of his life story. Job lived a very long life of tremendous blessing, and after a brief dark night of the soul, Job was blessed again: even double!
Job did not just have money. God’s favor brings much more than that. God’s presence poured freely for Job, even in the hard places, “The rock poured out rivers of oil for me!” (Job 29:6). The “friendly counsel of God was over my tent,” he says in verse 4. When Job went to the gate of the city or took his seat in the public square, young men would hide and older men stood in awe and respect. Even princes would shut their mouths, and nobles hushed their voices, their tongues sticking to the roofs of their mouths (verse 10). Everyone blessed and approved of Job. People waited for his words like the rain, and those words rested on them like dew. After he spoke, they kept silent (verse 21-23).
How would you always like to get the best parking spot? Glide easily through congested traffic? Be elevated among your peers? Get all the company perks your first day on the job? It is not wrong or arrogant to want these things. The problem comes when we strive to attain them ourselves, rather than allow God to do it for us. When we humble ourselves before Him, and acknowledge that all blessing comes from Him and Him alone, then He is free to lift us up. You were made and destined for honor. But we seek God: not honor, money or anything else apart from Him. Life is simple when we determine to seek after Him alone, and let Him take care of the rest.
Remember the Poor
One of the keys to walking in this type of favor is that Job sought righteousness on behalf of the poor and oppressed. He was not just trying to build his own kingdom, or trying to accomplish his own vision. Job himself says that this favor came “because I delivered the poor who cried out, the fatherless and the one who had no helper. The blessing of a perishing man came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind, and I was feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and I searched out the case that I did not know” (verse 12-16).
Righteousness is not just a state of “being,” but a state of “doing.” It includes reaching out to the broken and oppressed and delivering justice on their behalf. This is what Job did, and it brought immense favor onto his life. So the favor of God comes first through pouring ourselves out to Him alone, and secondly, from pouring ourselves out to the poor, the fatherless, the broken.
Favor comes first from extravagant intimacy with Christ, and by being filled with His presence. First, as we lose ourselves in Him, we must learn to waste everything we have on Him like Mary, pouring out costly oil over His head. This is different from giving to the poor. This is “wasting” all that we have by sowing directly into Him – directly into the glory: spending our time in worship, giving our financial substance to ministry and not just social relief, etc. We seek Him first, because He is the Alpha and the Omega, and besides, “the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me” (Matt. 26:11). At the table, when Mary pours out her fragrant offering, she is criticized by Judas for not selling it and giving the money to the poor. But Jesus essentially tells us: if you have to choose between worshipping me or feeding the poor, worship me!
But the worship of God is not divorced from feeding the poor and fathering the orphan. And so, this is the second key to favor: making the widow’s heart sing, defending the case of the afflicted, fathering the fatherless. Mercy ministry to the downtrodden is an important key to unlocking favor, because what you do to the least of the poor, you have done it to Jesus Himself.
“There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy. …” (Deut. 15:11).
Get Free from Poverty
God wants you free from poverty, so that you will be more effective in the Kingdom, and so that you will not always be focused on pinching pennies. So that you will be a blessing to others. The irony is, those with a poverty spirit are often more focused on money than those who are free from poverty. But there is a ditch on either side of the road. God does not want us to be materialistic idolators either! You cannot serve both God and money. This is why we have such a hard time sowing and giving money away.
Getting free of poverty is really simple. It starts with a lifestyle of intimacy and favor. But in terms of what to “do” practically, it boils down to sowing into the Kingdom and working hard. God does not just want to click His fingers and let you win the lottery. That kind of wealth would be frittered away anyway, and it could likely lead you to corruption. He wants to build stewardship and faithfulness into you, so that you can rightly manage Kingdom wealth and properly invest your talents. It starts with being faithful with what you’ve been given. And you can’t even steward what you have been given without help from above! There is an anointing for stewardship that must come upon your life.
Anointed for Stewardship
If we want God to expand our tent pegs and give us more land, then we must recognize that there is going to be more grass to mow. If He gives you more spiritual or natural territory, then there is going to be more responsibility to maintain it.
Stewardship is a largely misunderstood subject, because we think of it as a striving work. We often think that God gives us a thing, and then it is up to us to maintain it, steward it and rightly manage it. But this is not true. God knows you can do nothing but squander everything if left alone. The Father alone is the Master Gardener. He is the Great Steward.
You cannot steward anything by yourself. If you are incapable of handling even the wealth of this world, “unrighteous mammon,” how do you expect to steward the anointing and spiritual gifts that He puts on your life? But here is a Kingdom secret: He hasn’t entrusted you with the anointing – He has entrusted it to Himself. He knows that, apart from Himself, you can only blow it. And so He is the one who is faithful to steward it and see that His good purposes are completed in your life. All you do is submit and abide. Stewardship is really easy. The problem is, we think that we can do even the ordinary, mundane things of life apart from the anointing!
Our everyday lives must become a constant practice of His presence, so that His Spirit invades the little, everyday, ordinary things that we do. This is how His quickening begins to seep into our day, and before you know it, life is lived in a blissful state of Holy Ghost autopilot. Whether washing dishes or raising the dead, we are saturated with Him at all times, and taking care of what He gives us becomes second nature.
Only Father can enable you to steward, maintain and cultivate the gifts He has already given you. When He gives you something new or big, you must not fear your own ability to mess it up. Rather, you must trust in His ability to foster and take care of it through you. He is the one who is faithful and true to complete the good work He began in you.
We see many people who are naturally gifted, but they seem to throw it all away because they lack faithfulness and stewardship skills. I was one of these types of people. As a student, I was always naturally gifted, but likewise, I always lacked faithfulness to develop my gifts. For instance, I was regularly placed in gifted classes, with a high IQ. But I was completely lazy and apathetic. I had no study disciplines. My good grades came naturally as a grace gift. However, when I reached college and the courses became more challenging, I lacked the perseverance to study and memorize new things that did not come naturally for me.
The B and C grade students who were always “beneath” me intellectually suddenly overtook me in their scores. While I had been earning A’s for free, they had been tediously building their study muscles and learning to maintain and work for what they got. While those people were on their way to law school and doctorate programs, I had collapsed into a lifestyle of drug abuse and moral apathy.
God will give you a gift. But you must also continually depend on Him for the grace to maximize it and maintain it. Many people “choose” to remain impoverished, both spiritually and naturally, because they are intimidated by the responsibilities that come with receiving higher gifts from the Lord. Don’t fear responsibility. Even at the “top of the ladder” you will always feel weak, vulnerable and incapable. But you learn that His strength is made perfect in your weakness there.
The King’s Table
A large part of stewardship depends on not clinching onto what you have. A good steward lends freely, because he has a heavenly – not a temporal – perspective. All bread that is cast upon the waters will one day return, and even the seemingly small, insignificant gifts doled out in secret can have the most impacting reward. The object is to move our natural assets into spiritual commodities.
Hold onto everything with open hands and give liberally. Stewardship of Kingdom finances does not look like tucking them away in Fort Knox or burying them in the ground, because the Lord is a “hard task master.” I have been to the treasure room in Heaven, and I tell you, the doors are always open. There is always enough abundance, and Father spills it out on everyone, the righteous and the unrighteous. How much more His children? Abraham never jostled with Lot over who would get the best land. In fact, he let Lot have the pick of the land, and so God gave Abraham an eternal inheritance in the Promise Land. David never jostled for Saul’s throne. He blessed Saul, even when Saul was out to kill David. And because of this, God gave David an eternal throne. Christ Himself sits on David’s throne.
As we shake off the orphan spirit that causes us to strive and clinch the crumbs, we move up to sit as sons and daughters at Daddy’s table. You really need to understand how rich your Daddy is. Have you ever considered how your Dad, the King, sets his table each and every day? There’s plenty on that table for you. Just consider how extravagant King Solomon set his own table every single day:
“Solomon’s daily provisions were thirty cors of fine flour …”
That’s 185 bushels! Every day! How much bread does that make? Think of all the preparation it took just to cook up 185 bushels of flour each and every day!
“and sixty cors of meal …”
That’s 375 bushels! Every day! On top of all the flour! How much cornbread does that bake up? Are you beginning to get a glimpse of the extravagance of the king?
“ten head of stall-fed cattle …”
Just imagine how many burgers you can cook with one whole cow. Not to mention 10 of them, each and every day! Remember, these are stall-fed: fed by human hands every single day of their life, in preparation for less than one course of one day’s meal at the king’s table!
“twenty of pasture-fed cattle …”
This means thirty cows in all, slaughtered every day of Solomon’s life for his table. Solomon must have been one barbecueing machine: absolutely hell on wheels when it comes to cows. Those cows would have preferred Rambo on speed than to encounter Solomon when he was hungry.
“and a HUNDRED sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice fowl” (1 Kings 4:22-23, my emphasis)
I think you get the point. The Father’s table is a table of plenty. And when we clinch crumbs, we only prevent ourselves from moving into His rich bounty of provision. In the place of abiding, we understand Father’s love for us, and we cease to horde for ourselves. We cease to seek a blessing from God, and instead, we learn to become a blessing. Did you know that you are a source of God’s blessing to those around you?
I want to share one more principle with you regarding kingdom provision that has been very effective in our own lives. It corresponds with last week’s discussion on sowing into the glory.
Blessing the Prophets
Earlier, we discussed laying our fields at the feet of the apostles like Barnabas. When you lay your field at the feet of the apostles, you have purchased that field for revival. Your treasure has been laid up in heaven, and your “field” has been positioned to be reaped for the kingdom.
Our fields are not just our finances, but our homes, our children, our relationships and more. Our inner life. Our ability to communicate and interact with God. When we lay these things upon the altar, we make room for resurrection power to be infused into them.
There is a principle to making room for the glory in your own life. What happened to the woman who made a place in her home for Elisha? She who was without a child got a son. Later the son dies, and Elisha has an obligation to raise him from the dead. Sowing into the glory will even bring life from the dead in your circumstances. Of course, we are not just talking about sowing into a project or a church program, but investing into the anointing itself.
We can learn much from this story in 2 Kings 4. Jesus said that when we bless a prophet in the name of a prophet, we will receive a prophet’s reward. Throughout history, God has always used his holy men in this way: He has made them dependent on the resources of the people, so that they will be a blessing to others. God could just support them supernaturally, like He did with Elijah, feeding him by the ravens. But even Elijah was sent out to get a meal from the widow at Zarephath. And through her generosity to Elijah, she received unlimited oil and flour, which represent complete provision, but also an unlimited source of anointing and revelation (1 Kings 17).
When someone blesses a holy man, that man usually recognizes that God will bring a reward, and so he moves on and leaves it up to God. But sometimes, when a person goes out of his or her way to sow extravagantly into the glory, the prophet feels a special obligation to that person. This woman blesses Elisha by making an entire room in her house for him. Elisha does not just leave it up to God to bring her a reward. In fact, he feels such a special obligation to this woman, that he “takes requests.” He pronounces a special blessing out of his delegated authority. Elisha does not necessarily have this type of authority in every circumstance, you must understand. But because the lady went out of her way to bless the prophet, she receives the prophet’s reward.
“You have gone to all this trouble for us. Now what can be done for you?” he asks (2 Kings 4:13).
This story is not just about sowing financially into prophets and apostles. It also tells us to make room for the prophetic in your life. Make room for the apostolic. Make room for the presence and glory of God, and you will reap the benefits.
On a final note, remember that God often calls us to do this when it is not easy. And extravagant giving is costly. Consider the widow’s mites. Although the value of the mites was small, the value itself is insignificant. The important thing to note was that “she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:4). And Jesus felt obliged to make special mention of it, honoring her in the midst of the Pharisees. When Mary poured the costly oil over his head, Jesus also took special notice in the midst of his leaders, saying that this would be remembered forever.
This week, we will provide some follow-up teaching regarding Kingdom provision, the favor of God and overcoming the spirit of poverty. It is essential that the people of God experience true freedom in the area of finances, in order to be free of all natural restrictions in fulfilling their calling and vision in the Lord. Too many people in the Body today have received a truckload of prophetic vision, but they are simply not walking any of it out. For many, their excuse is a lack of funding to meet the vision. But the Lord is always “able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work” (2 Cor. 9:8). As a supernatural generation, we have no excuse to be bound by natural limitations.
Getting free of debt and flowing in the abundance of Heaven is especially important in this time of acceleration for harvest. It takes money to win souls, and this is the hour to purchase harvest fields. Those who are wise will invest in souls in this season. There’s the old adage, “Invest in real estate. They’re not making any more of it.” There is some truth in this, but the real estate we should be investing in is in the Heavenly realms. Wherever our investment is, there our heart is also. And the more we invest in the things of Heaven, the more seed money God will entrust to us, even in this temporal realm.
You Don’t Need Provision: Get Anointed!
It is important for us to clear up a very big misconception: We really do not need to spend that much time praying for provision. It is not financial blessing that we need, but rather, we need the anointing. We need God Himself, and when we get close to Him, we begin to experience His favor. Five minutes of God’s favor is worth a lifetime of strife. When we seek first His Kingdom and righteousness, all other things are added to us as well (Matt. 6:33).
As we draw close to the heart and presence of God, his favor begins to rest on us. As in the life of Job, the cream and butter of God’s favor begins to grease our feet, so that we slip easily through life, without strife or friction (Job 29). In fact, Job’s life is not about suffering, but it is a wonderful illustration of God’s favor. Job’s suffering was only one small sliver of his life story. Job lived a very long life of tremendous blessing, and after a brief dark night of the soul, Job was blessed again: even double!
Job did not just have money. God’s favor brings much more than that. God’s presence poured freely for Job, even in the hard places, “The rock poured out rivers of oil for me!” (Job 29:6). The “friendly counsel of God was over my tent,” he says in verse 4. When Job went to the gate of the city or took his seat in the public square, young men would hide and older men stood in awe and respect. Even princes would shut their mouths, and nobles hushed their voices, their tongues sticking to the roofs of their mouths (verse 10). Everyone blessed and approved of Job. People waited for his words like the rain, and those words rested on them like dew. After he spoke, they kept silent (verse 21-23).
How would you always like to get the best parking spot? Glide easily through congested traffic? Be elevated among your peers? Get all the company perks your first day on the job? It is not wrong or arrogant to want these things. The problem comes when we strive to attain them ourselves, rather than allow God to do it for us. When we humble ourselves before Him, and acknowledge that all blessing comes from Him and Him alone, then He is free to lift us up. You were made and destined for honor. But we seek God: not honor, money or anything else apart from Him. Life is simple when we determine to seek after Him alone, and let Him take care of the rest.
Remember the Poor
One of the keys to walking in this type of favor is that Job sought righteousness on behalf of the poor and oppressed. He was not just trying to build his own kingdom, or trying to accomplish his own vision. Job himself says that this favor came “because I delivered the poor who cried out, the fatherless and the one who had no helper. The blessing of a perishing man came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind, and I was feet to the lame. I was a father to the poor, and I searched out the case that I did not know” (verse 12-16).
Righteousness is not just a state of “being,” but a state of “doing.” It includes reaching out to the broken and oppressed and delivering justice on their behalf. This is what Job did, and it brought immense favor onto his life. So the favor of God comes first through pouring ourselves out to Him alone, and secondly, from pouring ourselves out to the poor, the fatherless, the broken.
Favor comes first from extravagant intimacy with Christ, and by being filled with His presence. First, as we lose ourselves in Him, we must learn to waste everything we have on Him like Mary, pouring out costly oil over His head. This is different from giving to the poor. This is “wasting” all that we have by sowing directly into Him – directly into the glory: spending our time in worship, giving our financial substance to ministry and not just social relief, etc. We seek Him first, because He is the Alpha and the Omega, and besides, “the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me” (Matt. 26:11). At the table, when Mary pours out her fragrant offering, she is criticized by Judas for not selling it and giving the money to the poor. But Jesus essentially tells us: if you have to choose between worshipping me or feeding the poor, worship me!
But the worship of God is not divorced from feeding the poor and fathering the orphan. And so, this is the second key to favor: making the widow’s heart sing, defending the case of the afflicted, fathering the fatherless. Mercy ministry to the downtrodden is an important key to unlocking favor, because what you do to the least of the poor, you have done it to Jesus Himself.
“There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy. …” (Deut. 15:11).
Get Free from Poverty
God wants you free from poverty, so that you will be more effective in the Kingdom, and so that you will not always be focused on pinching pennies. So that you will be a blessing to others. The irony is, those with a poverty spirit are often more focused on money than those who are free from poverty. But there is a ditch on either side of the road. God does not want us to be materialistic idolators either! You cannot serve both God and money. This is why we have such a hard time sowing and giving money away.
Getting free of poverty is really simple. It starts with a lifestyle of intimacy and favor. But in terms of what to “do” practically, it boils down to sowing into the Kingdom and working hard. God does not just want to click His fingers and let you win the lottery. That kind of wealth would be frittered away anyway, and it could likely lead you to corruption. He wants to build stewardship and faithfulness into you, so that you can rightly manage Kingdom wealth and properly invest your talents. It starts with being faithful with what you’ve been given. And you can’t even steward what you have been given without help from above! There is an anointing for stewardship that must come upon your life.
Anointed for Stewardship
If we want God to expand our tent pegs and give us more land, then we must recognize that there is going to be more grass to mow. If He gives you more spiritual or natural territory, then there is going to be more responsibility to maintain it.
Stewardship is a largely misunderstood subject, because we think of it as a striving work. We often think that God gives us a thing, and then it is up to us to maintain it, steward it and rightly manage it. But this is not true. God knows you can do nothing but squander everything if left alone. The Father alone is the Master Gardener. He is the Great Steward.
You cannot steward anything by yourself. If you are incapable of handling even the wealth of this world, “unrighteous mammon,” how do you expect to steward the anointing and spiritual gifts that He puts on your life? But here is a Kingdom secret: He hasn’t entrusted you with the anointing – He has entrusted it to Himself. He knows that, apart from Himself, you can only blow it. And so He is the one who is faithful to steward it and see that His good purposes are completed in your life. All you do is submit and abide. Stewardship is really easy. The problem is, we think that we can do even the ordinary, mundane things of life apart from the anointing!
Our everyday lives must become a constant practice of His presence, so that His Spirit invades the little, everyday, ordinary things that we do. This is how His quickening begins to seep into our day, and before you know it, life is lived in a blissful state of Holy Ghost autopilot. Whether washing dishes or raising the dead, we are saturated with Him at all times, and taking care of what He gives us becomes second nature.
Only Father can enable you to steward, maintain and cultivate the gifts He has already given you. When He gives you something new or big, you must not fear your own ability to mess it up. Rather, you must trust in His ability to foster and take care of it through you. He is the one who is faithful and true to complete the good work He began in you.
We see many people who are naturally gifted, but they seem to throw it all away because they lack faithfulness and stewardship skills. I was one of these types of people. As a student, I was always naturally gifted, but likewise, I always lacked faithfulness to develop my gifts. For instance, I was regularly placed in gifted classes, with a high IQ. But I was completely lazy and apathetic. I had no study disciplines. My good grades came naturally as a grace gift. However, when I reached college and the courses became more challenging, I lacked the perseverance to study and memorize new things that did not come naturally for me.
The B and C grade students who were always “beneath” me intellectually suddenly overtook me in their scores. While I had been earning A’s for free, they had been tediously building their study muscles and learning to maintain and work for what they got. While those people were on their way to law school and doctorate programs, I had collapsed into a lifestyle of drug abuse and moral apathy.
God will give you a gift. But you must also continually depend on Him for the grace to maximize it and maintain it. Many people “choose” to remain impoverished, both spiritually and naturally, because they are intimidated by the responsibilities that come with receiving higher gifts from the Lord. Don’t fear responsibility. Even at the “top of the ladder” you will always feel weak, vulnerable and incapable. But you learn that His strength is made perfect in your weakness there.
The King’s Table
A large part of stewardship depends on not clinching onto what you have. A good steward lends freely, because he has a heavenly – not a temporal – perspective. All bread that is cast upon the waters will one day return, and even the seemingly small, insignificant gifts doled out in secret can have the most impacting reward. The object is to move our natural assets into spiritual commodities.
Hold onto everything with open hands and give liberally. Stewardship of Kingdom finances does not look like tucking them away in Fort Knox or burying them in the ground, because the Lord is a “hard task master.” I have been to the treasure room in Heaven, and I tell you, the doors are always open. There is always enough abundance, and Father spills it out on everyone, the righteous and the unrighteous. How much more His children? Abraham never jostled with Lot over who would get the best land. In fact, he let Lot have the pick of the land, and so God gave Abraham an eternal inheritance in the Promise Land. David never jostled for Saul’s throne. He blessed Saul, even when Saul was out to kill David. And because of this, God gave David an eternal throne. Christ Himself sits on David’s throne.
As we shake off the orphan spirit that causes us to strive and clinch the crumbs, we move up to sit as sons and daughters at Daddy’s table. You really need to understand how rich your Daddy is. Have you ever considered how your Dad, the King, sets his table each and every day? There’s plenty on that table for you. Just consider how extravagant King Solomon set his own table every single day:
“Solomon’s daily provisions were thirty cors of fine flour …”
That’s 185 bushels! Every day! How much bread does that make? Think of all the preparation it took just to cook up 185 bushels of flour each and every day!
“and sixty cors of meal …”
That’s 375 bushels! Every day! On top of all the flour! How much cornbread does that bake up? Are you beginning to get a glimpse of the extravagance of the king?
“ten head of stall-fed cattle …”
Just imagine how many burgers you can cook with one whole cow. Not to mention 10 of them, each and every day! Remember, these are stall-fed: fed by human hands every single day of their life, in preparation for less than one course of one day’s meal at the king’s table!
“twenty of pasture-fed cattle …”
This means thirty cows in all, slaughtered every day of Solomon’s life for his table. Solomon must have been one barbecueing machine: absolutely hell on wheels when it comes to cows. Those cows would have preferred Rambo on speed than to encounter Solomon when he was hungry.
“and a HUNDRED sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice fowl” (1 Kings 4:22-23, my emphasis)
I think you get the point. The Father’s table is a table of plenty. And when we clinch crumbs, we only prevent ourselves from moving into His rich bounty of provision. In the place of abiding, we understand Father’s love for us, and we cease to horde for ourselves. We cease to seek a blessing from God, and instead, we learn to become a blessing. Did you know that you are a source of God’s blessing to those around you?
I want to share one more principle with you regarding kingdom provision that has been very effective in our own lives. It corresponds with last week’s discussion on sowing into the glory.
Blessing the Prophets
Earlier, we discussed laying our fields at the feet of the apostles like Barnabas. When you lay your field at the feet of the apostles, you have purchased that field for revival. Your treasure has been laid up in heaven, and your “field” has been positioned to be reaped for the kingdom.
Our fields are not just our finances, but our homes, our children, our relationships and more. Our inner life. Our ability to communicate and interact with God. When we lay these things upon the altar, we make room for resurrection power to be infused into them.
There is a principle to making room for the glory in your own life. What happened to the woman who made a place in her home for Elisha? She who was without a child got a son. Later the son dies, and Elisha has an obligation to raise him from the dead. Sowing into the glory will even bring life from the dead in your circumstances. Of course, we are not just talking about sowing into a project or a church program, but investing into the anointing itself.
We can learn much from this story in 2 Kings 4. Jesus said that when we bless a prophet in the name of a prophet, we will receive a prophet’s reward. Throughout history, God has always used his holy men in this way: He has made them dependent on the resources of the people, so that they will be a blessing to others. God could just support them supernaturally, like He did with Elijah, feeding him by the ravens. But even Elijah was sent out to get a meal from the widow at Zarephath. And through her generosity to Elijah, she received unlimited oil and flour, which represent complete provision, but also an unlimited source of anointing and revelation (1 Kings 17).
When someone blesses a holy man, that man usually recognizes that God will bring a reward, and so he moves on and leaves it up to God. But sometimes, when a person goes out of his or her way to sow extravagantly into the glory, the prophet feels a special obligation to that person. This woman blesses Elisha by making an entire room in her house for him. Elisha does not just leave it up to God to bring her a reward. In fact, he feels such a special obligation to this woman, that he “takes requests.” He pronounces a special blessing out of his delegated authority. Elisha does not necessarily have this type of authority in every circumstance, you must understand. But because the lady went out of her way to bless the prophet, she receives the prophet’s reward.
“You have gone to all this trouble for us. Now what can be done for you?” he asks (2 Kings 4:13).
This story is not just about sowing financially into prophets and apostles. It also tells us to make room for the prophetic in your life. Make room for the apostolic. Make room for the presence and glory of God, and you will reap the benefits.
On a final note, remember that God often calls us to do this when it is not easy. And extravagant giving is costly. Consider the widow’s mites. Although the value of the mites was small, the value itself is insignificant. The important thing to note was that “she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:4). And Jesus felt obliged to make special mention of it, honoring her in the midst of the Pharisees. When Mary poured the costly oil over his head, Jesus also took special notice in the midst of his leaders, saying that this would be remembered forever.
posted by John Crowder at 4:05 PM
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