Treasures in Heaven

To break the poverty curse, we must become givers like God and not takers like men and women have been since the days of Adam and Eve. If God is the great Giver, it should be no surprise that very early on the Bible gives one of God’s names as Jehovah Jireh, the Lord our Provider (Genesis 22:8). God did not start being our Provider at the cross. He has always been our Provider. He was our Provider in the garden — only we did not acknowledge it. But now in Christ we have the opportunity to reverse the poverty curse by accepting Jesus as our Provider. To do this we have to acknowledge only one thing: that Jesus is always enough. If we do not believe Jesus is enough, we will fall back into the poverty spirit as surely as Adam and Eve did when they refused to believe that God was enough for them. If we have Jesus, we don’t have to focus on anything else. There is nothing else that we need in this life except Jesus Christ. And this includes the material realm.

How is this true? Jesus Himself gave His disciples the answer. First, He warned them not to lay up treasures on earth (Matthew 6:19). The poverty spirit is what drives us to lay up material treasure for ourselves, because we are not convinced that God is able to provide for us, or because we want more in the material realm than God has given us. Then He tells us not to be anxious about material provision (verse 25). Those who do not know God, driven by fear that their needs will not be met or by greed for more than they need, live their lives in the pursuit of material wealth and wear themselves out in the process. But we are not to be like them (verse 32). Instead, we are to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things [that is, our material and financial needs] will be added to you.”

This does not mean that we are to live in poverty or think that God does not care about our needs. In fact, something very different is the case. If we are consumed with desire for the advancement of God's kingdom and His righteousness, our motives will be so refined and purified that it gives us a place to come to God and ask unashamedly and radically for His material provision. The kingdom of God does not move ahead without financial provision. Jesus Himself knew that and lived by it. The fact that man does not live by bread alone (Matt. 4:4) does not mean we can live without bread! As we seek the kingdom, God gives the "bread." And the poverty curse and spirit are destroyed forever!

Breaking the power of the poverty spirit

How do we make the transition from poverty to provision and break the power of the poverty spirit over us? Let’s take a quick look at 2 Corinthians 8, where Paul addresses the subject of money. He sets the stage for his discussion by making the following statement about Christ, who “though He was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (verse 9). If everything we lost in Adam is restored in Christ, a proper attitude toward money and material things should should be part of this.

This statement of Paul’s establishes a truth critical to the breaking of the poverty spirit. And that truth is this: Fallen men may be takers, but God is a giver. God is a giver because He has no needs. He lives in an infinite abundance and loves nothing more than to give generously. We became rich because of what Christ gave to us.

Put another way, whatever we have is a gift from God. As Christians, we often shy away from talking about money, yet Paul had no such sensitivity. In fact, he uses a statement about what Christ gave up spiritually as an introduction to teaching the Corinthians how to give material things up. If we do not teach believers how to handle money and material wealth, they will learn from the world instead of the Word.

All of us understand something about the riches of Christ. We understand that Christ came into the brokenness of our lives to heal us and save us and give us a whole new life. This new life does not belong to us; it is a gift of God and is to be lived for His glory and returned to Him when we meet Him face to face. But Paul is actually addressing financial issues in this chapter! And so we see that these truths, although they in the first place apply to eternal, spiritual realities, also apply to the earthly, material realm. What is the lesson? If God is a giver, then we are to follow in His footsteps. To become givers rather than takers — to learn to give away rather than to accumulate — which in the eyes of the world is foolishness — is actually the only way for us to break the power of poverty and enter into the provision of God.

The poverty spirit - where did it come from?

The problem of poverty began in the garden.  There, we had everything we needed.  Adam’s job was to guard the garden against the presence of evil, but he failed. He stood back when the enemy appeared, and instead sent his wife to face the serpent. Not a good model for Biblical manhood! Every form of trouble that has afflicted the human race stems from that fateful encounter.

God told Adam and Eve they could eat of every tree except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and if they did they would surely die. When Eve spoke with the serpent, she added to God’s words, saying God had commanded them not to eat the fruit, nor to touch it.  There was a good reason for the command God did give — to eat of the tree would give Adam and Eve the right to determine good and evil independently of God. There was no reason, however, why they should not touch it.  What was she doing?  She was making God appear to be extreme and unreasonable by giving out arbitrary commands for no reason.  Thus she portrayed God as a legalist.  Not only that, she twisted God’s words another way.  God had said they could surely eat of every tree, but Eve simply said they could eat of the trees.  So Eve minimized the privileges she had been given, while at the same time making God appear to be making unreasonable demands on her and Adam.

What was going on in Eve’s mind?  It must have been something like this: she and Adam looked at all God had given them, but chose to focus on the one thing He had not. Even though all the needs they could ever have were more than provided for, it was not enough. They had to possess the one thing God had said they did not need and which belonged to Him alone.  That twisted desire caused her to misrepresent and slander God to the enemy.

And this led to the birth of both poverty and the poverty spirit. Poverty because it led to their ejection from the garden into the barren world outside, and the poverty spirit because they had chosen to define themselves as people who never have enough.  Ever since then the saying of Proverbs 27:20 has been true: “Never satisfied are the eyes of man.” Even though we live in one of the richest nations in the world, we are always able to find someone who has more than we do to provoke us to envy.

What is the lesson of this for us? The serpent gains entry whenever and wherever people begin to question God’s Word or twist it in an effort to make God appear unreasonable.  Do we have hidden resentment against God?  If we do, we will surely begin to misrepresent him and find fault with him.  It is common today for people to portray God as saying things He does not say in an effort to discredit God and Scripture by making both appear unreasonable.

The enemy played on this fatal weakness in Eve.  As a result, she was prodded into taking action to secure for herself what she could not believe God for.  From that moment, fallen men and women became takers, not givers, as God, the greatest Giver, had intended them to be.

There is a trend in some professedly Christian circles today to undermine the authority of God’s Word.  Take a lesson from Eve — we do so at our peril.

Edited for clarity 12.08.2015.

Attacking while attacked

Even though things may from time to time be difficult, and there will be moments when we feel despair, the truth is that, no matter what is happening externally, God is powerfully at work accomplishing His purposes. I think each of us can look back to times when things looked very bleak, times which were very hard for us, times when we were tempted to lose hope, yet God brought us through those times. And looking back, we can often see how He was working out His purposes through it all. Ask the Lord to open your eyes to how He has worked things in your life through times of battle which would never otherwise have happened. And ask the Lord to show you that attack verifies one thing: you — yes, you — are a threat to the kingdom of darkness. The enemy does not bother with those who do not threaten him.

And of course, just because battle is a reality does not mean it is constant. God provides times of rest between the storms. But we do live in a fallen world. Revelation 12:12 teaches that the devil has come down to the world “in great wrath” to do battle with the church from the time of Christ’s resurrection until the time of His return. He will not give up an inch of his territory without a fight. The battle is a given. But we are victorious in it. Attacking while attacked, inch by inch, we move forward, not backward. I pray God will encourage you daily by opening your eyes more and more to the ground that has already been gained.

Ready for battle

There is no doubt that Paul faced severe attack — far more than any of us are likely to encounter. Yet for Paul, the reality of these ferocious attacks did not change his fundamental perspective on spiritual warfare, which is that we are besieging the enemy, not that the enemy is besieging us. How do I know this? The “weapons of our warfare” he refers to in 2 Corinthians 10:4 are in fact siege engines — powerful devices used to launch an offensive attack on a besieged city, in this case the fortress of Satan. Perhaps we can describe the process as “attacking while being attacked.” But this does raise a number of questions about spiritual warfare. Who is in control of the circumstances? How much do we have to suffer? To what extent will God protect us? Will we emerge victorious? These are legitimate questions. And we can give some brief answers, all from Romans 8. Who is in control? God is in control — otherwise He is no longer the sovereign God the Bible says He is, nor could it be truthfully said that He works all things together for good for those who love Him (Rom. 8:28). Even where the enemy is at work, inflicting damage on us as best he can, God is working over, through and in it all to bring about a bigger and better purpose, which sooner or later will become clear. There are times when we just have to hold on and trust Him.

As to how much we may have to suffer or to what extent He will protect us, the same chapter in Romans says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Rom. 8:35). The fact is none of us can define the extent of what may come against us. One thing is for sure: it is hardly likely that this entire list of challenges — all of which (except possibly the sword) Paul personally experienced — will befall us. Yet none of them deterred Paul from following Christ, or made him feel that following Christ was not worth the price he had to pay for it. We cannot sit around worrying about whether we could withstand a trial that might or might not take place: “What would I do if this or that happened?” God does not give grace and strength for a trial until we are in the trial. The truth is God has promised that, no matter what happens, nothing will separate us from His love.

And finally, as to whether we will emerge victorious, the answer is clear: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37). So let’s get on with the battle, and trust God with the results!