Video Transcript: The Pastor's Money and Health

Welcome to lecture 13 of the practical ministries course the pastor's money and  health. This is taken from Chapter Eight of the pastoring the nuts and bolts book. The way that I'm presenting chapter eight is in three lectures, and they are not  necessarily in the same order as it's presented in the book. So just be aware of  that our key verse For this section is beloved. I pray that in all respects you may  prosper and be in good health just as your soul prospers. That's III John 2, and  that is from the New American Standard, a very literal translation. So I'm going  to talk a little bit about this prosperity thing. Some of this is not in the book, but I  know that it is, as has become a big deal and kind of a controversial issue in  different parts of the church. And so I want to try and bring some some peace  and some balance to the situation. The Greek word prosper. Or the word  translated prosper in that passage is from the Greek word euodoo that's the root of it, and it literally means to have a good journey. So the literal original meaning was to say, I hope you have a good journey. I hope your walk through life goes  well. There is a lot in the Bible to support the idea that God wants us to go well,  to have a good journey to have what we need. Paul writes in Philippians 4, this  same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious  riches which have been given to us in Christ, Jesus, the same God who takes  care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches which have been  given to us in Christ. Jesus, well, that sounds like a pretty good promise, doesn't it, everything we need. Now, I didn't have the space or take the space and time  here to list all the context of that that's not just a blanket promise to everybody  and anybody. You read the context, you will see why Paul can make that  promise to these people. It goes along with what Jesus said in the Sermon on  the Mount. Seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he  will give you everything you need. Matthew 6:33, I think we looked at this in one  of the very first lectures, when we talked about teaching your people to  recognize the conditions of promises. The condition here, there is, there's an  implied if, if you seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously,  then he will give you everything you need. So again, not a blanket promise, but  a promise for hopefully, everyone watching this and taking this course.  Presumably, your intention in taking this course is that you are seeking the  Kingdom of God, and you do intend to live righteously, and therefore he'll give  you everything you need. And we can count on that. We can claim that. But  sometimes God's idea of what we need doesn't mean our idea of what we need. You remember the passage just before this we put up there. Paul wrote, the  same guy who takes care of me will supply all your needs. He wrote that in  Philippians, 4:19-20, Eight verses before that, same chapter, same author, same chapter. So Paul wrote, I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I  know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I've learned the secret of  living in every situation, whether it's with a full stomach or empty with plenty or  little for I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. We love to 

quote that last line, I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.  But again, the context is the everything we can do is not everything I want to do. It's living with a full belly or an empty belly. I can do both of those things,  abounding or in want. I can do both of those things because of the strength of  Christ. So again, the same Paul who said that this same God who takes care of  me will supply all your needs well, how has God taken care of him? He has  allowed him to learn. And the way you learn these things is through experience,  to learn how to live with an empty belly, to learn how to live on almost nothing.  That's what that's not what a lot of people have in mind when they hear  prosperity. But Paul, who said, God's going to take care of you the same way  he's taking care of me, the way he took care of Paul was he got him through.  But sometimes he had everything, and sometimes he had almost nothing.  Sometimes he had a full stomach, sometimes he had an empty stomach. And  either way, he can get through. He can do everything. He can do what he needs  to do in all of those situations, because Christ gives him strength. You really  need the strength when you have the empty belly, right? So why has this idea of  that? Let me put let me stop and say this way. Start over again. There are those  within the church who believe that money, lots of money, even extravagant  displays of riches, are a witness to God's provision and God's goodness. Yes,  we want to witness to the world that God takes care of those who love Him. But  if you just look around the world, you see all the people who don't have those  kinds of riches, and the implicit message to them is, either God doesn't love you, or you don't have enough faith, or you're not as holy and righteous as I am. God  likes me better than he likes you. And none of that, none of that, is the message  of the Bible. So why did it get twisted? Because the love of money is the root of  all kinds of evil, and some people craving money have wandered from the true  faith and pierce themselves with many sorrows. I Timothy 6:10, now understand  this. I am not saying that every body who preaches a prosperity gospel, or who  tells you that God wants to bless you, or this is your year of breakthrough, some  of those are good, honest, wonderful, loving people who know God and they're  hearing from God, don't take anything I'm saying as a blanket condemnation  one way or another. One of the greatest influences of my early Christian life and  growth was Kenneth Hagin, who is often seen as the grandfather of the  prosperity movement, although he, even toward the end of his life, said some of  these people are taking it in ways I never intended. It's the love money is not the root of evil. We talked last time about Lazarus, a rich guy supported Jesus  ministry. It's we praise the Lord for the people who have money, who can  support this ministry that allow you to be seeing these lectures free. It's the love  of money that is the root of all kinds of evil. It used to be. You see these things  sway back and forth like a pendulum swings and and it used to be, back in 100  years ago, 80 years ago, there was a widespread idea, at least in America,  many parts of American Christianity, that the poorer you were, the more 

righteous and holy you were. It was a you might call it a poverty gospel. And  then in the 1950s 1960s primarily, I think through Kenneth Hagin, God started  making a correction of that, because people were way off here, and they were  just living way below what God wanted them, and doing much less than God  wanted them to do because they didn't have the resources. And so God brought  to some of these kinds of verses that we've looked at, God will supply all your  needs. Jesus said, I came that you may have life and have it abundantly, those  kinds of things to offset the false teaching of the poverty gospel and bring it back to the truth, which you could consider the center line. But as I said, these things  happen like a pendulum. And it got it didn't stop in the middle. It kept swinging  over to where. Now, in some places, there's the other extreme that you see  where it started was you're not really holy and loved by God unless you're poor.  And now it's swept over to where now some people are saying you're not really  holy and loved by God, unless you're rich. Neither of those is true. God loves  poor people. God loves rich people. God wants people to love him instead of  money so he can take care of them. So I just wanted to say that a bit now,  talking about money, it is God's money. And I love this, a story that happened in  a church I was serving some time ago where there was a widow, an older  woman, her husband had died. She was living on retirement income, didn't have a lot of money, lived in the old house they'd always lived in, and there was a big  plumbing problem. Something happened to her plumbing, and she called the  plumber, and the plumber came out, looked at it, and said, Oh, my goodness,  this is bad. You need to replace these pipes. You need to do this. You need to do this, you need to do this. Added it all up, and it's going to be lots of money. And  so the lady thanked him, and she took this written estimate, and she laid it on  the table before God, and she said, God, this is your house, and it's your money. And, you know, I don't have the money to deal with this kind of a plumbing bill,  so I'm just putting it in front of you. What are you going to do about it? And God  led her to, I don't know if the same plumber came back and discovered he'd  made a mistake, or if he led her to call another plumber. But anyway, after she  said that prayer, turned out, well, what do you know? It's not all of these big  problems. It's just this little problem here, this one I don't know, valve or  something, replace that. It fixes all the rest of it. God took care of her. God didn't  shower her with riches. God didn't throw her out in the street. She said, Here,  God, it's yours. She sought God first, and God took care of her. So how do you  receive what you need from God? We all need things. God is our source, but he  doesn't just drop them automatically in our laps. How do we receive what we  need from God? First, find verses in the Bible that cover your need. If you can't  find anything in the Bible that says God wants you to have what it is that you're  looking for, at least in principle, then maybe God doesn't want you to have it. So  find verses that cover your need, then look on the verses and make sure if there are any conditions, am I fulfilling the conditions? If you're not seeking God first, 

then he is not obligated to give you everything you need. If you're not fulfilling  the conditions, he's not obligated to follow through on the promise. If you find the verses, and as best you are able, you are fulfilling the conditions, then you ask  in faith, not in doubt, not in fear. You ask in faith, and then you keep asking. It is  not a lack of faith to keep asking God until you get the answer. As a matter of  fact, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said, Keep on asking, keep on  knocking, Ask and it will be given to you. And the Greek tense is not the in the  Greek there's one tense that means one and done. You do it once and you stop.  And there's another tense that means you keep on doing it. And it's that  continuing, keep on doing it. Tense that where Jesus says, Ask. So it's keep on  asking, keep on knocking, and the door will be given open to ask and it will be  given to you. So 100 years ago or more, in an American some phrases  American Christianity, they had a phrase called praying through that means you  keep on praying until you get a breakthrough. And that that breakthrough may  be the physical answer to your prayer, or it may be and very often, in my case,  this is the case I pray through until I all of a sudden have a feel a shift in my  spirit from asking to thanking. And I just kind of have a sense in my Spirit that  the prayer's answered, and so I praise the Lord. Pray until you get that sense  and then act like you have received it. Act like God has said, Yeah, I put it in the  mail. It's guaranteed delivery. You'll get it three days from now. You know, if  you're ordering something from the store, they'll say something and you i, if I've  ordered something from online, reputable dealer, and they've said that they've  shipped it through a reputable shipping agent, and I just assume that it's going  to be there on time, and I make plans accordingly. I don't say, oh my goodness,  I'd better run out and to the store and buy a cheap substitute or something like  that. It's the same with God, act like the answer is on the way, act like you've  received it. All of that is seen in this passage here, Jesus said to the disciples,  have faith in God. And the context is they're walking into Jerusalem, and they  see the fig tree that Jesus had withered. And they said, How in the world did you do that? And so he answered by saying, Jesus said to the disciples, have faith in God. Okay, the faith is in God. The faith is not in your ability. The faith is not in  how big the problem is the faith is not in your faith. Some people have the idea  that, if I can just fluff up enough faith, God has to do it. But the faith don't have  faith in your faith. Have faith in God. And if your faith is in God, then Jesus goes  on. He says, I tell you the truth. You can say to this mountain, may you be lifted  up and thrown into the sea, and it will happen, but you must really believe it will  happen, and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you you can pray for anything,  and if you believe that you have received it that tense, it will be yours, future  tense. I love these the way God, who lives outside of time in eternity, sometimes messes with our minds and our concepts of cause and effect in time and so on.  You must really believe it'll happen, and have no doubt in your heart. You can  only do that if you are, if your faith is in God, and God is putting that there, but, 

and this is often left off, but Jesus, almost in the same breath, in the same  answer, went right along and said, but when you're praying first, forgive anyone  you're holding your grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive  your sins too. So that is an implied condition. We have to forgive in order to  really be able to have the faith that God is going to answer because we know  that, we're holding a grudge, and then, therefore God hasn't forgiven us. And  then how can I have faith that God's going to give me something if he hadn't  even forgiven me? So take care of that part first, and then have faith and act like it came. All right, money, we're talking about the pastor's money and health. So  I'm going to have to hurry up here tithing. God made me and God redeemed me, and everything I have belonged to God twice over. I belong to Him. Twice.  Everything I have belongs to him. First because he made me or gave it to me,  second because he redeemed me or bought it back with the death of Jesus on  the cross. It's all God's to me, I don't get all excited about the fact that he wants  10% what's exciting to me is the fact that He lets us keep 90% now I'm not going to get into the discussion as to whether tithing applies nowadays in the New  Testament, whether that was fulfilled, whether it's part of the Old Testament, law  that doesn't apply to us. I like the idea that if God wanted us to give 10% in the  Old Testament, then in the New Testament, once we are redeemed back by the  blood of the cross, then we need to do at least we in the New Covenant, should  do at least as much as the Old Covenant, but I The point is not to get legalistic.  The Sabbath was made for people. People were not made for Sabbath. I am  sure exactly the same thing applies to tithing. Tithing was made for people, not  people for the Sabbath. Tithing is one of those things that makes no sense to us  in our mind. And so it's one of those things where we have an opportunity to  demonstrate that we're going to obey God and listen to our spirit and put our  mind in its place. Because our mind was not designed to decide where to go,  just how to get there once the spirit, once God, through the Spirit tells us where  to go, the mind figures out how to get there, and then the body gets it there. So  we need to put the spirit in charge, and the mind and the body under and tithing  is a good way of doing that. So not going to get into legalisms, whether it's gross or net or, you know, all of that stuff that you work that out with God. And there's a lot more about this in the book. Read that saving is saving money for the future  wisdom, or is it lack of faith? Well, Proverbs says, Take a lesson from the ants,  you lazy bones. Learn from their ways and become wise. Though they have no  prince or governor or ruler to make them work, they labor hard all summer  gathering food for the winter. The ants are saving in the summer for the winter.  And the writer of Proverbs says, That's good idea. That's wise. So save to meet  the needs of your family or of others who depend on you if you if you can, if you  possibly can, save. And I know many times we're in situations where we can't. I  spent much of my ministry in situations where I could not. Didn't have any to  save. Save to meet your own needs after you're too old to work or generate 

income so you won't be a burden on others. Contributing to a retirement  program, if you can, is not lack of faith. Having insurance, having life insurance,  is not lack of faith, save while you wait for God to show you where to give if you  have something and you don't know quite yet what God wants you to do with it,  then save it until he tells you. God doesn't lead everybody the same way in  these things, so whatever God's telling you, but just make sure your security is  in God and not in your bank account or your land or some government program.  And the reason I have to go through all of this is because it's so easy to fool  ourselves the love of money can lead us into all kinds of evil. And we can tell  ourselves we're making these decisions for this reason. It's actually because of  love of money. So make sure that you are seeing your resources in God. God is  your source, okay, very quickly your health. You cannot effectively serve God or  His people or your family. If you're not healthy. Oh, I didn't realize that was up  there that whole time I was talking. Okay, here we are. Now, may the God of  peace make you holy in every way and make your whole spirit and soul and  body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. My point there  is that the spirit and soul and body. You are created in God's image. God is a  trinity, three in one. God made you a trinity, three in one, spirit, soul and body.  We need to keep all of them healthy. Every part affects every other part. So  have a healthy lifestyle. If you can to keep your body healthy, it will affect how  your mind works. If your body is sick, then you won't feel like praying. It'll be  hard to have faith. It you won't think clearly. So get watch your diet, your  exercise. We used to in my ministry, church dinners were a big deal. It seemed  like there was always some kind of a functioning church where people brought  food and we had to eat, and they brought good stuff. And as the pastor, it was  my responsibility to be there, and it was easy to tell myself there was a  responsibility to eat a little bit of everything. So I could always tell sister, so and  so, or brother, so and so, who brought this food, how good it was. And I would  tell myself, calories eaten in the line of duty don't count. But my stomach line  didn't know that. My waistline didn't know that. So you have to watch out. You  have to be careful. Calories eating a line of work are still calories. And if you are  in a situation, if you are lucky enough and blessed enough to be in living in a  country or a situation where it's possible to eat more than you need. You need to look out for that. Don't feel guilty about resting. Theologian Richard Foster said,  sometimes the most spiritual thing I can do is take a nap. Rest is needed for our  spirits, our minds, our emotions, as well as our bodies. Now the Sabbath is  something different. We'll talk about that next time. But just plain old, taking a  nap at my age. Now, I have gotten I like to tell people I was born two years  before they invented dirt, and so I have found that an after lunch nap really  helps me to be able to get on and do other things healthy lifestyle. Recognize  the things that bring energy to you and the things that drain energy from you.  Sometimes it's activities, sometimes it's people, but don't let there be too many 

drainers, get some of those fillers in there, alternate them, or whatever, when  you feel down, and there will be times depression. And let me say this right off  the bat, depression can be a sign of a physical problem that needs medical  treatment. It can be a chemical thing going on in your brain. If that's the case,  get the treatment. It's no different than getting medical treatment for any other  kind of a physical problem. There is no shame in going to a psychiatrist if you  need to, and getting an antidepressant if you need to, if it's the physical problem, but often feeling down just means that you need an emotional recharge. You  can't rush that. You can't shock charge that I mentioned in the book, the story  about looking at the gauges. My wife had a time when she was feeling down  and she felt like, should I go see a therapist? And she said, instead, came up  with what she called Happy therapy, which is, figure out what makes you happy  and do it. She said it was a whole lot cheaper than going to a psychiatrist, and it  worked. So never feel guilty about taking time to make yourself happy.  Happiness is just a sign that you are emotionally healthy enough to do good  ministry very quickly, I want to say I do not see any conflict between believing  God for healing, praying for healing and medical treatment. God uses both. God  works through both. The medical treatment is a gift of God. Sometimes he does  one, sometimes he does the other, sometimes he uses the one to enhance the  other. They're both good gifts of God, and thank him for them and use them as  he leads you. God bless you and maybe take a rest and I'll see you next time