God already handed you the ticket. So why are you still begging on the lower deck? A word on prosperity, the kingdom, and the mind that has to change first.
Where purpose is not known, abuse is inevitable. Nowhere is that truer than on the subject of prosperity. What prosperity actually is, why God has secured it for you, and how He has secured it — these are so misunderstood, or not known at all, that Christendom is littered with abuse on this one issue.
When Jesus came, He came with good news. The kingdom of heaven is now here. The rule of God has arrived. The end of sickness and death and poverty has come. And because it has come, it is time to change how you think and how you live, so that you can actually experience the kingdom that is already here.
Hear this plainly. There is only one reason a person will not experience the kingdom of God or the abundance inside it: he has not changed the way he thinks, the way he feels, and the way he behaves. This is exactly what Jesus told Nicodemus — unless a person changes the way he thinks and lives, this kingdom will elude him.
A ticket he never used
There is a story told of a man who boarded a three-week luxury liner from London to the United States. For the whole voyage he lived down in the lower deck, begging for food, collecting scraps and hoarding them, fighting other passengers over a place to sleep.
The night before the ship landed in New York, word went out that everyone was invited to the great banquet on the upper deck. Come, but come with your ticket. No ticket, and you would simply be handed a little food and sent on your way. When this man finally produced his ticket, the porter looked at it and gasped. That ticket entitled him to a first-class room. Wine in the room. Abundance. A change of clothes. All of it had been his the entire time, and he had spent three weeks begging on a floor.
Many of us are that man. God has already handed us the ticket, and still we live below deck. That is why I want to say something that may not make sense at first: obedience to God must come before understanding. I am going to share a few things today that you may not immediately grasp. But I promise you this — if you do them, if you obey them, if you change how you think and how you behave, the end of lack and poverty in your life is guaranteed.
So say it to yourself: change the way you think, and the way you behave, so you can enter the kingdom.
Change what you worry about
The first thing is to genuinely become kingdom-minded and kingdom-focused. When people pray, “God, make me rich and I will use it for Your kingdom,” I have to smile, because sometimes we treat God as if He were a fool, as if He cannot read the heart. Here is the better way: worry about the kingdom of God, and the things you worry about will no longer be a worry.
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. … Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ … But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
Matthew 6:24, 31–33 (NKJV)
Look at how Jesus argues it. The birds of the air neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them — and are you not worth far more than they? Consider the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin, and yet not even Solomon in all his glory was dressed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass that is here today and thrown into the oven tomorrow, how much more will He clothe you? Your Father already knows everything you need before you ask.
Notice what your master really is. Whatever you worry about is your master. And Jesus is not telling you to stop worrying altogether — He is telling you to change what you worry about. Whatever you give up the kingdom of God to pursue will elude you. But whatever you give up in pursuit of the kingdom of God, you will have in abundance.
This is why abundance is dangerous to the wrong heart. If you are not sold out for the kingdom right now, blessing will not draw you closer to God; it will distract you. The people God trusts with abundance are the very people to whom abundance is only a distraction, because their primary pursuit is not the money. Their primary pursuit is the manifestation of the kingdom on the earth.
What the kingdom actually is
So what is this kingdom, and how do I make it my primary pursuit? Go all the way back to the beginning and you see it. God made human beings in His own image and handed them dominion over the works of His hands, to rule the earth the way He rules, in His life and His ways. That was ours from Genesis, lost along the way, and it is exactly what Jesus came to restore.
So the kingdom of heaven is the rule of the ways of God, the rule of the life of God, upon the earth. When Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness,” He is not inviting you to be preoccupied with going to heaven when you die. He is inviting you to be preoccupied with bringing heaven to earth while you live.
It is partnering with God to kick wickedness out of His beautiful creation, the creation the devil has come to soil. It is joining God and Jesus to show the world that love is greater than hate, that to give is greater than to take, that to sacrifice yourself for others is greater than to sacrifice others for yourself.
So do you want to come into abundance? Do you want to experience kingdom prosperity? Then stop worrying about what you will eat, what you will wear, and where you will live. Start worrying instead that there are people with nothing to eat, nothing to wear, and nowhere to live, people resorting to wickedness just to meet those needs. Worry about the kingdom of God, and the things you worry about will no longer be a worry.
Why Abraham let Lot choose first
Look at Abraham. When strife broke out between his herdsmen and Lot’s, Abraham did the unthinkable. He handed the younger man first choice of the whole land and took whatever was left. Why could he act like that?
I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.
Genesis 12:2 (NKJV)
His mind had already been changed by the word of God. God had told him, “you shall be a blessing,” and a man who knows he is blessed does not need to grab. So quit believing the lie that if you do not chase your dreams they will never happen. Jesus says: chase My dream, and I will give you more than you have ever dreamed of.
What changes when your mind changes
When your mind is changed this way, two things follow. First, the reason, the manner, and even the size of your giving change. You no longer give so that you can be blessed. You give because you already are blessed. Prosperity stops being the reason for your generosity; instead your generosity becomes the reason for your prosperity. God did not prosper you because you were generous. He made you generous so that you could be prosperous.
Second, you begin to see yourself as a steward, someone carrying something from God to hand to this earth. And once you see that, you realize you have to live in a certain way to actually deliver what God sent you here to do.
Come up to the banquet
I had far more I wanted to say, but the truth is we do not need more words. We need more action. So here is the invitation. Stop living below deck with a first-class ticket in your pocket. Become preoccupied with seeing heaven manifest on the earth, beginning with your own life.
Make it a real commitment before God, today, to change your mind — to think differently — so that His abundance can finally find you and flow through you to a world that needs it. You were not enriched to hoard. You were enriched to be a blessing.