The Fruit of Fearful Faith: Wealth

15 The Fruit of Fearful Faith: Wealth

I believe that the Bible clearly teaches that God desires to prosper His people. In saying that, I am not espousing the heretical Health and Wealth Gospel, which I have written about elsewhere. I am simply stating the biblical truth that whenever and wherever God can find a trustworthy vessel, He often blesses them so that they can be a blessing to others, just like He did with Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3).

Also, history and contemporary experience prove that wherever the Gospel goes and takes root in individual lives and cultures, there is a gradual rise out of poverty into prosperity. I have seen it all over the world. Given one generation of Gospel transformation and you see people emerging from poverty. That’s because they become better stewards of the small or large resources God entrusts to them.

After almost a half century, I have traveled and ministered in some of the worst slums, townships, and ghettos in the world; real hell holes where people live worse than animals. In all of those situations I have seen five robbers actively at work and prospering: alcohol, drugs, gambling, prostitution, and witchcraft. In the worst situations imaginable, these social thieves are robbing people blind. They are taking advantage of the desperation and depression under which people

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are trying to survive. They market their wares for mind and body as quick fixes and ways to escape hopelessness—at least for a few minutes or hours. They temporarily anesthetize the inescapable pain that people are living in 24/7 with little or no hope of ever breaking free.

But once people are liberated and transformed by the Gospel and power of the Holy Spirit, they begin to have radical changes of priority and lifestyle. Rather than visit the bars and brothels, parents spend their meager resources on their children. Rather than buy booze, they buy shoes. Rather than buying drugs to deaden their own pain, they buy medicine to bring health to their children. They buy and cook better food for themselves and their children to stave off malnutrition. Rather than living in fear of demons and evil spirits that cause them to run to witch doctors, they turn to the power of the Holy Spirit for deliverance and protection. Many begin to sacrifice to send their kids to school so they can get an education that will give them a better chance of getting a job and escaping the slum.

So, the Gospel does indeed bring prosperity to people. But not through naming it and claiming it, blabbing it and grabbing it, or confessing it and possessing it! They prosper through personal transformation that leads to honesty, hygiene, hard work, sacrifice, stewardship, and service to others.

If wealth is simply the ability to produce more than we need to survive, then certainly God often blesses His people with wealth, especially in the Western world where there is so much freedom and opportunity. Consider this verse from the wisdom of Proverbs: “The blessing of the Lord brings

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wealth, without painful toil [“sorrow” kjv] for it” (10:22).

As we can see from this verse, wealth that comes from the Lord does not produce trouble or sorrow. On the other hand, worldly wealth almost always has trouble and sorrow connected to it! Just look at the lifestyles of the rich and famous and you can easily see the pain, suffering, heartache, destruction, and death that so many of them experience. Athletes, musicians, and movie stars earn millions and millions of dollars annually. And yet, the majority of them live and die in moral and financial bankruptcy. They became millionaires financially, but are spiritual paupers.

The news, talk shows, and tabloids show that most often worldly wealth brings nothing but temporary happiness at best, and in the long run destroys relationships through much trouble and sorrow. That is because God wants to first of all bring about righteousness in a person before riches. Carefully consider these words by the Apostle Paul as he writes about finances and giving (2 Corinthians 8 and 9 are perhaps the two most succinct chapters in the New Testament summarizing all that the Bible teaches on money, riches, and giving):

Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God (2 Corinthians 9:10–11).

Clearly, then, God wants to prosper His people with wealth, or give them more money and material goods than they have

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personal need for, all for the purpose of blessing others who have less than what they need. That only takes place in and through a heart that has first of all been made rich in righteousness, which is another of the fruit of fearful faith.

With that understanding, let’s look at just a few of the Bible verses that clearly relate wealth and prosperity with the fear of God.

• “These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you” (Deuteronomy 6:1–3). • “The Lord commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the Lord our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today” (Deuteronomy 6:24).

In these two passages from Moses, it is very instructive to see the relationship between obedience to the “commands, decrees and laws of the Lord,” and the fear of the Lord. God’s Word was to be taught to their children and grandchildren so that they would learn to “fear the Lord your God as long as you live.” That reverential fear was to be the source

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of their righteousness. As they prospered and grew in righteousness, God would then add riches. He promised that He would also give them “long life” and it would “go well” and they would “be kept alive.” As a result, they would “always prosper” and “increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey.” So, in God’s economy, righteousness and riches always go together—and one flows naturally and supernaturally out of the other!

• “Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in his commands. . . . Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever” (Psalm 112:1, 3). • “They will be my people, and I will be their God.

I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me” (Jeremiah 32:39–40). • “Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing. . . . those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Psalm 34:9–10). • “Humility is the fear of the Lord; its wages are riches and honor and life” (Proverbs 22:4). • “Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great wealth with turmoil” (Proverbs 15:16).

Now, let us look at our last fruit of fearful faith.

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