God never planned that we should live in poverty, either physical, mental, or spiritual.
He made Israel the head of the nations financially.
When we go into partnership with Him, and we learn His way of doing business, we cannot be failures. Failures are not God-made. God never made a weakling or an inefficient man. He is purely a human product.
CO-LABORERS WITH GOD
2 Corinthians 6:1: “And working together with him we entreat also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.”
Few have ever taken advantage of this invitation and statement of fact. We are laborers with Him. We are partners with Him in carrying out His dream for the world.
1 Corinthians 3:9: “For we are God’s fellow-workers: ye are God’s husbandry, God’s building.” The marginal rendering says, “Ye are God’s tilled land.”
Notice that this is a threefold statement:
First, you are God’s fellow workers. He has called you to labor with Him; so whatever your work is, as long as you are in His will, He is a partner with you. You can’t be a failure, for His wisdom is your wisdom; His ability in every department of life is your ability. All you need to do is to study the Word and get the knowledge that is imparted to you there. Then He will give you the ability to use that knowledge to make your life a success.
You see, He created all the vegetable world, so He knows everything that is in those vegetables. There isn’t a single plant that He does not know about; and, we have reached a place in our chemistry where we need to know what is in those things. We know that woods that we have burned up have materials that can be made into planes and many other materials necessary to our advantage.
Well, God is our fellow worker so there isn’t any limit to where we can go in chemistry. There isn’t any limit in biology, because we have the wisdom and ability of God; and God created the chemicals and minerals, the oils, and the gases. He knows what is in them and He knows how to change them and to bring what we need out of them.
We may not know it, but His ability is our ability; and we know this: that no country where the Bible has not gone has ever had a patent law. They do not need one, for they have never created anything. But we new creation folks have the mind of Christ, and the ability of Christ.
2 Corinthians 2:16 To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things?
We are getting to know these things. Can’t you see now how we can become God’s fellow workers?
We have been told that God would stand off at a distance and kind of order us around, but that isn’t true. He has made himself one with us.
Take Jesus’s illustration that we are all familiar with: “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:5).
There is a oneness that cannot be challenged. The branch is just as much a part of the vine as the vine is a part of the branch, and the life flows into the branch and causes the branch to bear fruit. The branch will be like the vine now.
As God imparted to you His nature and His ability, that nature and ability will produce in you and through you the same kind of works that Jesus would do in our place.
Jesus would know how to get the elements that we need out of the air, the vegetable world, or out of the water.
We are laborers together with Him. We are fellow workers. He is interested in our progress and development. Then, if we will cultivate a close fellowship with Him, an intimacy, there is no limit to where we can go.
1 Corinthians 2:10–12: But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God.
Now those things are not spiritual things altogether. They are also things connected with chemistry, with biology, with metallurgy. For the Spirit created matter; the Spirit created chemicals and minerals.
Now the Spirit has come into you and has brought to you the life and nature of the Father God.
He wants to take over your senses, those five channels to your brain—seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling—and through these contacts with the earth, with physical things, He wants to unveil to you the treasures that He hid away in these natural things. You may seek His blessings, but as long as you refuse to cooperate with Him, He can’t bless you.
Notice that He said, “You are God’s tilled land.”
The seed is not going to be sown, then, upon the rocky soil, nor the weed- and thorn-choked soil; but it is going to be sown in the heart that is responsive to the Spirit’s uplifting pull.
You are going to let Him draw you out; you are going to let Him unveil Himself to you; then you are going to bear fruitage that will glorify Him. You are to be the hundredfold soil.
Think what it would mean to us if we would let God freely use us, and I believe that we are going to let Him do it.
RESURRECTION ABILITY
You see, the natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him.
1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
It requires a recreated spirit to grasp the things of God, whether those things be in the mental, physical, or spiritual realm.
I think we ought to turn for a moment to Romans 5:17 and notice the Weymouth’s Translation: For if, through the transgression of the one individual, Death [spiritual death] made use of the one individual to seize the sovereignty [here on earth], all the more shall those who receive God’s overflowing grace and gift of righteousness [in the new birth] reign as kings in Life through the one individual, Jesus Christ.
You understand now, that the gift of grace means the gift of eternal life that was given to us when we were made new creations, that is, when God’s nature was imparted to us. You cannot separate God’s nature from His ability, so when He imparted His nature to us, He expected that we would let that nature loose in us. It would then govern our entire intellectual processes, and our minds would be renewed in Him. Have you ever thought of that?
Romans 8:29: “For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son.”
Write out Colossians 3:9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,
Then Colossians 1:9–10 tells us, “That ye may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to walk worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.”
Now we can understand that we have not only become partakers of the divine nature, but that divine nature can so absorb our intellectual processes that we have knowledge beyond anything that the natural senses can teach. We will have a knowledge greater than can be gained in any school or university. Natural processes cannot touch us, because God has become the source of a new type of knowledge.
Let me illustrate: A friend of mine had been very anxious to find a certain alloy that would react upon metals and produce a certain result. The metallurgical world has been searching for that alloy for two generations. Some of the big companies had spent millions of dollars in research. This friend is a very devout man. One day he was up in the Rockies prospecting, as he always does when he has a few days off; and he cried: “Lord, won’t You show me where that alloy is?” And a voice said, “It is in that rock.”
He took it for granted that it was the Lord and he said, “No, it isn’t in that rock.” The voice said again, “It is in that rock.”
He took it and put it in the smelter, but nothing came of it. However, as he kept trying, he discovered a secret. He put another metal with it, and lo and behold, he discovered a new alloy. He discovered that that rock was 80 percent a new alloy.
How did he do it? His mind had become attuned to God’s mind. God could talk to him. After years of experimentation, he produced the metal that the world had been looking for. No one could believe it until they saw the demonstration. He had arrived because he walked with God. That is the secret.
Romans 6:5 “For since we have become one with Him by sharing in His death, we shall also be one with Him by sharing in His resurrection.”
As you share in His resurrection, you share in the supernatural victory over death, over Satanic power, over everything that has held man in bondage throughout the ages. That resurrection meant a new kind of life—a resurrection life with a new kind of ability—resurrection ability. You are sharing this with Him as you let Him come into your life and share with you.
John 14:23: “If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
That is God sharing with you. That is God coming into your life, into your home, and becoming one with you. Do you think that He likes to live in a home of poverty and want, in a house that is not properly heated, where children are not properly fed or clothed? Never.
The law of prosperity is discovered in His making Himself one with us, and in our identification with Him in our earth walk. In that you will find the law that governs prosperity of the highest order. It is not the prosperity of the senses, which thinks that gold and political favor is prosperity. No, it is the ability to use the ability of God to help humanity.
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son in order to help humanity back into prosperity and success.
Now John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Has a new meaning for you. You can say, “I share in His resurrection. I share in His ability. I share in His grace. I share in His love.”
WHAT IS PROSPERITY
Some say, “It is love. I am prosperous because I have a home of love. My children are love children. We live in a miniature heaven.”
Yes, that is true; but hear what Jesus said in John 14:21: “He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.”
That is prosperity; that is success, to have the Father love you, and Jesus love you, and Jesus unveil Himself to you. He does not unveil Himself as a man only, nor does He unveil Himself as God only, but in blessing and saving and giving to the world a new vision of life. He manifests Himself as a successful self, a victorious self, unto you.
Let us go back for a moment to the old covenant.
Malachi 3:10 tells us, “Bring ye the whole tithe into the store-house, that there may be food in my house, and prove me now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”
That is dollars and cents. That is grain. That is production in factories. That is a happy home. That is a victorious life.
What have you done? You have brought one tenth of your income, whether it is grain, coal, wood, materials, or manufactured goods. You brought one tenth to the storehouse, and upon the nine tenths God began to pour out His blessings.
He told you how to buy and how to sell. He told you how to save and how to accumulate. He made you efficient in your home, in mending and cooking. He made you wise in your business ability. His strength became your strength, His all-seeing eye was finding new prospects, new opportunities, new ways of doing things, shortcuts here and shortcuts there in production.
You are a partner, now, with the Creator’s ability, and that ability is yours.
1 Corinthians 1:30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption
All these things are yours. Now you rest in quiet confidence for you have within you the ability of the God who created the universe.
Now you can say with Paul, “I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13).
There is no power of Satan that can defeat you, for the Father has made you more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ.
HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?
- On what grounds can we claim God’s ability as ours in our daily work?
- Explain Jesus’s illustration of the vine and the branches in terms of His partnership with us.
- What is the Holy Spirit’s work in a successful Christian life?
- Why is it necessary to have eternal life in order to be truly successful?
- What does it mean to “share in His resurrection”?
- What is the secret of the law of prosperity?
- What is the Word’s definition of prosperity? How does it differ from sense knowledge prosperity?
- How can Malachi 3:10 apply to prosperity?