We were preaching in Mariupel, Ukraine, at the top of the Black Sea. There we stayed with a Pastor who had a church of four hundred people. I noticed that the Pastor had no phone and no car. In conversation I asked him, “How can you minister to your flock if you can’t talk to them or visit them?” He told me communication was very difficult and He spent much time on the trolley busses.

That night I challenged the church to pay to connect a phone in his home. All agreed, but with half of his church unemployed and the others only making fifty dollars a month it looked like the biggest miracle in the world to his congregation. Some waited for a phone for thirty years because they couldn’t afford to pay the required thousand dollars.

I encouraged the congregation to trust God to use them as a source to purchase the phone. I asked how many would allow God to use them as a channel of supernatural blessing, and most agreed.

The next night as we were about to begin preaching, a salty old sailor came up to us with big tears in his eyes and shouting, “I’m the one! I’m the one!” I watched him approach thinking, you’re the one? What does that mean? 

 He continued, “I’m the one to give the phone! I stood up last night and committed, and when I got home I received two phone calls from foreign shipping companies. They have asked me to work at European salaries for the next two years. I’ve been unemployed for two years!”

Only when more people will stand up in their faith and pledge to a Godly cause will we see more miracles of supernatural supply in the body of Christ!

Heaven’s bank is secure from thieves. This bank pays higher dividends and greater interest. A guarantor superior to the U.S. Government backs up this bank! The only requirement for withdrawal is your faith. You must present your faith and the name of Jesus to make your withdrawal, and you must have deposited something into your account.

It doesn’t matter how old, how ugly or how poor you look. You don’t go to the teller with your own check, you go with a check signed in the name of Jesus. His signature always gains the bank’s attention. He paid in full for everything you need or desire in this life, and it is in your account.

We determine the size of our withdrawal by the size of our deposit. God gives seed to all people, but we decide whether to eat the seed, waste the seed in poor soil, or put the seed in a place where we can gain harvest from it. “But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully” (2 Corinthians 9:6).

Once I was playing tennis at a certain sports club. There were weeds growing up on the court and there were holes in the backboard. The owners seemed not to care, but they were hurting themselves by not improving what they could. Maybe they thought small details didn’t matter, but they were terribly wrong. Small details are the best reflections of our whole attitude toward what we do. People will always notice in one way or another. And believe me, with that club’s kind of a sloppy attitude, you won’t succeed!

The attitude, “We only need to do enough to get by,” is just not good enough! If you only do the minimum expected of you, don’t expect much out of life. The Bible says, “…God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). God gave you all the keys for success, so use them!

Andrew Carnegie, a well-known billionaire, had 50 millionaires working for him. He said, “No man ever became a millionaire by putting a million dollars as his goal. He did it by putting excellent service as his goal.”

Money is not a strong enough or worthy enough goal for life. You need a goal worthy enough to die for, so you can put your energies into it and live for it!

It’s important to pick a goal that will glorify God. Write down what money could do if you had it, then make those things your goals. Millions of Communists died for their goal, but because it was the wrong goal, those who remained later ate the bitter fruit of wasted lives.

Our goal should never be to make as much money as possible. Money is not the end-all, but rather the by-product of our life. Our goal is not our job–we all have jobs. Our work is different from our job. Our work deals with our attitudes and our thoughts before God and our actions before people. A worthy goal for a spiritual person is to be a positive influence on the job to transform attitudes and hearts!

Nations and individuals prosper for the same reasons: they serve others with excellence, meeting their needs and desires. We must cultivate that thinking in our society again. We must find new ways to improve service or the blessing of God will pass us by.

When I was in Mexico I looked out my hotel room window and saw a vendor selling donuts on the busy street corner below. Hundreds of people were walking by him but nobody was buying any donuts, so I thought I would help. I went down to him and told him that if he gave me one donut free, I would sell all of his donuts. He refused, but I was committed.

I bought two of his donuts, cut them up into small samples and started to give them away free to the people passing by. Many stopped for a sample, and once they tasted them they wanted to buy a whole donut. I showed this vendor at my own expense how he could make money quickly, but instead of thanking me he became angry, saying that he didn’t want to work that hard! He got paid by the hour, so it didn’t matter to him whether he sold donuts or not! Friend, if that is your attitude toward your job then you should quit today because you are in the wrong job! 

The Bible tells us, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men” Colossians 3:23). Whatever we do we should do with all our heart. It’s not God’s will, nor is it His fault if you are poor. Poor thinking produces poor living!

Our bodies were designed for activity. I can’t sleep in bed more than eight hours. After that period of time my back begins to ache and my mind cries out for activity.

Nature is in constant activity. Bees are an excellent example. A professional beekeeper came back from work one day full of bee stings, with eyes swollen and puffed. The beehive he was in charge of had not been emptied in a long time. The bees could put no more honey into it and became very idle and restless. With nothing to do they were agitated and attacked him. Why would a calm colony of bees become vicious? As long as they were busy they never bothered him, but too much free time turned them on their master.

Loafers in the church can become vicious toward either leadership or other members. Loafers on a job site will look for faults in others, as well as bring down the productivity of a whole organization. Idleness is a subtle but deadly poison, and its affects are seen in every area of society.  Diligence in work keeps your dream in focus and brings joy to the process of fulfilling the desires of your soul.

In order to lead in the prosperous way we need to pick up God’s signals. Our lives are not our own. True prosperity is discovering God’s specific direction and acting on it. His ways avert us from catastrophe. Refusing to listen or act on his leading can prove to be costly.

A Spirit-filled friend of mine, who keeps large sums of money in the stock market, kept receiving an unction in his heart to pull his money out, but he delayed for two weeks. He woke up on “Black Monday” to discover one of the greatest stock falls in history and lost $80,000 that day. After the event he said that he had recognized God’s warnings, but he had not trusted himself to act on them. 

Years ago in Tulsa, Oklahoma I was driving my friend’s car in the parking lot of a big mall when I heard my inner man tell me to hit the brakes. I acted spontaneously, and within a second a car flashed by right in front of me. Ten minutes later I heard the same unction and I braked in the midst of major traffic. Seconds later a major pile-up of vehicles occurred directly in front of me. Happily, I missed it by a few inches because I had already slowed down. My response to His nudging saved me and all those behind me. 

I’m convinced that Christians could avoid most accidents by being more sensitive to the One whose job it is to show us things to come.

Have you ever watched wicked people enjoying success? As a believer it can be challenging to your faith, but you don’t need to compromise your faith to prosper. The devil will always tell you that faith in God is for losers, and that you might as well just give up being “good” and play things the world’s way instead.

But we don’t want temporary prosperity. We don’t want prosperity today that we’re required to pay dearly for tomorrow. Wrong actions and attitudes have no future. Sin brings pleasure, but only for a short time. God is not mocked, we all reap what we have sown. No one sins and gets away with it.

We should never envy ill-gotten riches, because we don’t want the price tag that comes with the lifestyle. God has called us to a long-lasting prosperity and reveals that following Him is the key to our inheritance. We belong to the Lord and the whole world belongs to us.

Take comfort in the words of David if you see others taking shortcuts and moving ahead through deception or manipulation:

“Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give

you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass” (Psalm 37:1-5).

Industrious work is essential to self-esteem and dignity. Several years ago we were ministering in Brazzaville, Congo, preparing for a national leadership conference and crusade. At that time the unemployment rate was 95 percent. The Congo had just experienced ten years of civil war and no building was untouched by mortar fire. No family was untouched by bullet or tragedy. They were in total need.

We laid out our strategy for the upcoming meetings and told them that they would partner in this event. They would pay for it. At first they resisted such an idea. No evangelist had ever said that before! No one in the country had ever paid for a foreigner’s event, especially a preacher from rich America. With gentle persuasion we challenged them to take this responsibility, encouraging them that they were able.

At the end of the crusade, after experiencing crowds reaching over fifty thousand, the leaders came to us saying, “Thank you so much for pushing us to sponsor this event! You have given us back our dignity. Now we know we can do it! We don’t have to wait for foreigners to finance our work!”

“Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin” (James 4:17).

Diligence in life means that we are working with all our heart, with total commitment. How do you put your whole heart into your work, school or your home? Recognize that what you are doing is unto the Lord and not unto man.

A halfhearted effort receives halfhearted results. That’s not prosperity! To prosper we need to work with a diligent attitude! There are some deceptive attitudes in Christian circles that are often disguised by religious terminology:

• “Whatever happens is God’s will so my input doesn’t matter.”
• “I don’t like my job.”
• “My ungodly boss doesn’t deserve my best.”
• “My job is only temporary so I’m not going to give it my all.”
• “I’m not one of the lucky ones who are gifted so I’ll just slide by.”
• “I tried the Bible way and it didn’t work for me.” 

The Blessing comes as you work. You will never escape poverty’s hold without good, old fashioned hard work. The river-life of continuous blessing comes through your hands, your mind, and your effort.

Blessing is God’s business. Finding what He can bless is your business!