New Wine Tape of the Month, number TM7, for April 1978. As a service of New Wine Magazine, the New Wine Tape of the Month is designed to bring you timely and vital topics that concern Christians today. It is our hope that they will encourage and inform you just as New Wine Magazine has for years.

This month's message is by Don Basham and entitled Kingdom Prosperity. You'll forgive me if I'm feeling a little rebellious this morning about something. I think we need to be reminded that there are many phases to kingdom life. And for weeks and months and really for the last few years, we've been giving primary attention to... the structure of the kingdom of God, which we call relationship, getting people properly related to one another.

When I've taught on this, I've often used the illustration that the basic symbol of the Christian life is the cross, which contains a vertical and a horizontal member. The vertical member represents our vertical relationship to the Lord, and the horizontal member represents our relationship to one another. And there's no doubt, but what God has been... emphasizing the necessity for us to be properly related to one another.

And we have been and are and will be under the dealings of God. But I think we also need to be reminded still that there's the vertical and that the kingdom of God not only consists of relationships, but the kingdom of God also consists of God's provision for us. And I want to talk today not about relationship, but about kingdom prosperity.

I want to talk today about the goodness of God and the abundant life, and I want to talk about the wealth and the prosperity that God has promised us and to remind us of how we can put ourselves in a position to get our share of it. How many of you here really believe that God's kingdom includes abundance? Raise your hand.

All right. Hallelujah.

Yet we tend to think at times when we get under it that, and we do have tests to meet and we do have things that we have to work out, but when we get under the heavy dealings of God, we forget that God is a God who wants to prosper his people.

And we get so preoccupied with trying to work things out between us that we somehow forget how to be open to the things that God wants to do with us and to do for us. So I want to talk this morning about kingdom prosperity.

and to remind us of some things scripturally, to share a little personal experience, and then to share what I believe is important for us to understand about how the kingdom principles of prosperity link in or link up with the kingdom principles of relationship, because I think it's important for us to see that.

We need to be reminded that Jesus... knew what he was talking about in John 10.10 when he called the devil a thief. And he said about the devil, The thief cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. But I am come that you may have life and have that life more abundantly.

That's what we want to talk about today. Turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 8. We're going to read a portion of Scripture in which there is a description. from God to the children of Israel about what the promised land that they're going to enter into is like.

And I don't think we're spiritualizing when we say that we are the spiritual Israel and that we are to come into a kingdom, that God's final goal for us is the kingdom of God, the equivalent of the Israelites' Canaan, the promised land which he promised them. And I think it's proper for us to consider our equivalent in our time in the kingdom of God, that our kingdom is as good as that one and better, and that we can read as we read about what God promised.

Children of Israel, when they came into their inheritance of Canaan, applies to what God intends for us to have. So this is an admonition that Moses is giving to the children of Israel as they prepare to go into the Promised Land, beginning with the first of chapter 8.

All the commandments which I command thee this day, which ye shall observe to do, that ye may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swear unto your fathers. Now remember the reason that God was giving them this land was because he promised Abraham. He made a covenant with Abraham that this land would be theirs forever, and it's in the keeping of that covenant that God is promising, the covenant that God made with Abraham that God is promising.

the children of Israel, if they're going to be brought into that, not because they're wise or because they're holy or because they're good, but because of covenant, because this is their inheritance. This is what God promised Abraham. Well, Abraham is our father as well. And so what we're coming into in the way of kingdom, what God wants to bring us into in our own Canaan, in our own kingdom of God, is not merely because we're good or wise or holy or any better than any of the other of God's people, but it has to do with the original covenant.

God made with Abraham to bless his people. Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these 40 years in the wilderness to humble thee and to prove thee and to know what was in thine heart. Incidentally, that's why we have tests. That's why we go through difficult times because God is out to prove something to us.

That's not the end. The wilderness experience for the children of Israel was not their inheritance. It was the discipline and the training that they went through to prepare them for their inheritance.

The forty years in the wilderness was to humble thee and to prove thee to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no. And he humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not. Neither did thy fathers know that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out the mouth of the Lord doth man live.

Thy raiment wax not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell these forty years. Thou shalt also consider in thine heart that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee. Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God to walk in his ways and to fear him.

Now that's all a part of the admonition of preparation. Now let's read the description of that land. Bearing in mind that we're reading it with the idea that we're to appropriate that description for kingdom prosperity which God intends for us today in our time under the new covenant.

For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains, and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it.

A land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. And when thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.

And here comes another admonition. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God in not keeping his commandments and his judgments and his statutes when it shall command thee this day, lest when thou hast eaten and art full and hast built goodly houses and dwelt therein, and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied.

You see what God's intention is for his people? That not only we be satisfied with a minimum, but... But we're to build good houses, our herds and our flocks to multiply, our silver and our gold is to be multiplied. Everything about our material well-being in the kingdom of God is to be multiplied.

That's God's inheritance for his people.

But the warning is, lest when those things happen, Moses says, then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage, who led thee through the great and terrible wilderness, wherein we were fiery serpents and scorpions and drought, and there was no water, who brought thee forth.

the water out of the rock of flesh, who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee and prove thee to do thee good at thy latter end. And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hands hath gotten me this well.

Verse 18, But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth.

that he may establish his covenant, which he swear unto thy fathers as it is this day. So we need to remember that in the mind of God, our inheritance includes the ability by God's grace to accumulate wealth and prosperity and abundance.

And that will of God is based in the covenant that he made with Abraham, our father, that if Abraham would be faithful, that through him all of the nations of the earth would be blessed and that he would come into his inheritance.

and all of his seed forever would be blessed. And that blessing doesn't merely include peace of mind and proper relationship with one another and the knowledge that God loves us. Blessing in the Scripture time and time and time again is proved to have to do with material abundance.

It's not just spiritual blessing. We'll probably say something about that a little later.

Okay, so the first thing we want to remember is that God's will for us is good and that our inheritance, our goal, that God has for us is Canaan.

The kingdom of God is Canaan, and that's a land that's flowing with milk and honey. That's a land of abundance. That's a land of wealth. That's a land of prosperity, a land where God wants us not to want for anything at all, where every need will be supplied, where every desire will be fulfilled.

God is not a stingy God. God is not a picayune God. God's not standing around waiting to slap our hands when we reach for something that's good or that we like.

The kingdom of God, the prosperity of God is a part of our inheritance as the children of God.

So God's will for us is good. Our inheritance, our goal is Canaan, and Canaan is a land flowing with milk and honey.

And don't let the devil or anybody else tell you anything else.

All right, second point to help us understand what we're... What's available to us is that we need to be reinforced in our understanding and our experience of God's ability and desire to provide for us.

We all need firsthand experience in terms of answered prayer and God's provision for us coming to us in a way that we know it's coming from the hand of God.

I know people who are willing to pray for world peace. but who don't have enough faith or daring to pray that the money will come in to pay the light bill.

Now, what's the sense in praying for world peace if you can't generate enough power to heal a head cold or to get the money to pay your light bill?

So what I'm talking about is that we need not only the theory that God's promises are true, but we need the experience of it.

And I want to, you'll forgive me for sharing a little personal experience here, but I think that helps add some weight to the thing that I'm saying.

It's been a little over 10 years now since our family left Pennsylvania, and I left the pastorate to move down here to Florida and to begin the teaching ministry that I've been in these years, or to begin to live what we call the life of faith.

Somebody has rightly described the life of faith this way. They said, living by faith is like living in the midst of a miracle on the edge of disaster. That is, if God doesn't come through, you go under.

And we went through our own wilderness experience, our own times of testing and trial.

And we have experienced through the years, especially more in those early years, God's miraculous provision time and again.

And I want to give just a couple of illustrations of it because I think it's important to help buttress our faith.

I've got other things to say beyond this, but it's important that we see this kind of... of truth that in those crisis situations that God is able to provide supernaturally or in a supernatural and a totally unexpected way.

First Easter that we were, we moved down in January and the first Easter that we were in Pompano in Florida, all of the invitations to speak that I had envisioned sort of dwindled away and the little bit of money we had when we came to Florida soon disappeared and pretty soon we were right down to rock bottom.

I mean, when you've only got change in your pocket and you've got a wife and five children to support, I'll tell you one thing, it'll make you begin to pray in earnest. I mean, it'll put some backbone into your praying.

This time I was going to tell you about, about Easter time, and we didn't have, God had always, he always did provide.

We never missed a meal. Alex put on a few funny looking menus on the table in those times, but we never missed a meal.

I also discovered that God didn't get too upset at the second notice about a utility bill, but we never had any utilities cut off.

I did notice that they came in different colored envelopes the second time around. Why are you laughing? It could be that you had the same experience.

All right. So this was Easter time, and we were sitting around the lunch table, and the girls, who were much smaller then than they are now, of course, it's been about nearly 10 years ago, and I believe it was Sherry, Beth, Sherry Gunlock now, who said to Alice, Sherry, I think it was in junior high school, and she said, Mother, the other girls are getting new dresses for Easter. We need some new clothes for Easter.

And Alice said very wisely and truthfully, well, Sherry, we don't have the money right now. Have you prayed about it?

And Sherry, as a typical adolescent, said something to the fact, oh, mother, don't be spiritual, or something like that. She reacted a little negatively, as kids would.

And then Alice insisted. She said, no, I mean it. If the need is real, God will meet it.

Now, you know, we're living by faith, and we're trusting God, and God brings in what we need as we need it.

And so we talked a little about it there at the lunch table, and I wish I could be real spiritual and say we all stopped and prayed. But we didn't. We just sat there and talked about it.

And before we left the lunch table, there came a knock at the door. Cindy, our oldest, went to the door, and it was a delivery man with a package, a little gift all neatly wrapped.

And she brought in, gave it to Alice, and it's all wrapped in white paper and tied with gold ribbon after she took it out of the bag or the outer wrapping.

And she took the tissue off and the ribbon and opened it up in this little white box and a lot of tissue paper inside, and she began fumbling around it.

It didn't seem to be anything in it. And Lisa, noticed that, began to tear up. She says, Mommy, somebody's playing a joke on us. There's nothing in the box.

And Alice kept fumbling around. And finally, in the bottom of the box, there was a little card. And she looked at it, and tears came in her eyes, and she handed it over to me.

And it was a gift certificate made out from a local women's clothing store in the amount of $100.

And all the girls begin to jump up and down. He said, you mean we can have $100 worth of clothes for free?

And of course, 10 years ago, $100 is worth more than it is now. It'd be worth nearly $200 now.

You mean we can have $100 worth of clothes for free? And I said, that's what the card says. I told him what it was.

And Glenn, our son, was sitting there who had remained sagely silent through all that discussion of women's clothes.

I said very practically, Daddy, who's it from? Because you know, a gift certificate usually has something signed on it.

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It said, from someone who loves you.

Laura Ann piped up and said, that's God, all right.

But we had experience after experience like that in which God just very lovingly demonstrated his ability to provide.

Like one time when I was praying over two bills we didn't have the money for, and they totaled about $93.40, something like that.

And I went into my bedroom, the devil got on my back and was telling me, you fool, your family's going to starve, God won't meet your needs.

Here is the cleaned and formatted sermon transcription:

I spent some time in prayer and believing God, agonizing before the Lord, and got peace about it. And the very next day, in the mail arrived two checks from a brother up in Pennsylvania with a covering letter. The checks had been made out to him, and he had endorsed them over to us. He's a medical doctor who had a good practice and was making good money, but he was also a Christian, and he'd occasionally speak at meetings, and they'd give him honorariums. And he simply wrote me this letter. He said, "Donnie said," I know... We'd known him in Pennsylvania, and he said, "I want you to know that, he said, 'I don't need this money because I make more money as a doctor than I need, and I realize that you're in the Lord's work full-time.' He said, so I just want you to accept these checks as if they were honorariums for your own ministry, and he endorsed them over to me, and I'd been praying about bills that total $93 and something, and the two checks total $95.

Now, God's a little sparing with the miracles. That is, the outright kind of miracles. And I think you can understand why. In other words, God does not expect us simply to sit down before a table each morning and pray and for the food to miraculously appear. There are cases in men's ministries like George Muller and others who when they did that over in the Bristol orphanage a century or so ago and they didn't have the food they sat down in the morning and prayed and while they prayed, the trucks were driving up outside with bread to feed the children. But by and large, what we have in God is a combination of living naturally by faith with the occasional supernatural blessing of God to see to it that our needs are looked after.

So we don't want to be overly spiritual and say, well, I'm not going to take anything from anybody. I'm just going to pray, and God will just have the food appear miraculously on the table. God uses people to bless people. So if we had too many miracles, if we could just pray and have the food appear, then we'd get independent, we'd get prideful, and we wouldn't need one another. So God's a little sparing with that kind of dramatic answer. But if we didn't have any, we'd all be goners. None of us would make it because a part of God's provision for us is his supernatural abundance.

So these miracles and these answered prayers offer sufficient evidence to us of God's watch care over us to see that our needs are met. Alright, we're talking about God's ability to provide. Let's talk now about some of the barriers that stand in the way of God's abundance. One of them is this: too many people have an unscriptural view of what blessing means.

We've already touched on it. We'll just mention it again. There's always a tendency of people who read the scriptures to spiritualize everything. They can spiritualize themselves off of the hook. They can spiritualize themselves away from believing that God's going to do anything definite. So you can pray those great big prayers like praying for world peace and praying for understanding and all those things where your prayers are kind of anonymous and nobody ever knows whether your prayers are answered or not because they're in the multitude of millions of other prayers.

And there's that tendency to talk about the blessings of God as always in a super spiritual way that God will give peace and God will give understanding and God will give patience. And I know lots and lots of Christians will pray all those kind of prayers. They won't pray that God will give money or that God will give help in a situation. So there is that unscriptural view of blessing. And we said it earlier that especially in the Old Testament, it's revealed as well as in the New, that blessing means material benefit.

The blessings of God aren't just ethereal, fuzzy, foggy things out in the mental or the spiritual realm. The blessings of God have to do with God's material abundance. A second point to remember, we're talking about barriers to God's abundance. The second one is a very subtle thing. It's a kind of pride which we all tend to fall into, and that is if you're going to be holy, you've got to be poor.

I heard Laurel Roberts say one time, his dad was a Pentecostal minister, a little poor section in Oklahoma, and he said the church board, the favorite prayers of the elders of his dad's church board was, "Lord, we keep him poor, you keep him humble." And there are churches like that who feel like they're going to keep their preacher humble, they're going to have to keep him poor. And there are those who feel, and it's all across our Christian faith in life even today, the idea is that somehow to do without means you're going to be, you've got to be poor and you've got to get along with just a little bit.

I agree with Brother Derek Prince who said he believes that poverty is a curse and that Jesus died on the cross as much for our lack and our poverty as he did for our sickness or for our pains or for our sins. And certainly from all the promises of Scripture about the nature of the kingdom and about God's willing to bless us, the promises about material abundance are all through the Scripture.

And if poverty or lack or need or just barely getting by was a part of the blessing of God, then all of those other Scriptures would be talking about taking away God's blessing. But there are people who believe that somehow you've got to, if you're poor, you're a little holier than anybody else. I think that's a cop-out. I think that's false kind of teaching. I think it's a false kind of pride.

And we run into it in our relationships with some other charismatic groups. We have a lot of relationship, a lot of good brothers and sisters in the Lord of other traditions and other backgrounds who are also doing their part in kingdom building. That is, they're building communities and getting people together in covenant relationship and so forth.

And quite a few of them don't have the understanding that I'm trying to help you with right now. Some of them very subtly feel that it is somehow better to be poor and as if God can't afford to bless. That if God were to give them something, it means somebody else would be deprived.

How many of you really believe that if God were to shower an abundance on you, it means you'd have to take it away from somebody else? Is the kingdom so bereft of bounty and of abundance that as we spread kingdom blessings around that we have to spread them real thin because God's poor? And he just barely has enough just to get by with a minimum.

So if you get a little more than you've been getting, that means some other brother's going to do without altogether. Nonsense. God's a God of abundance. The kingdom of heaven is without limitation. Everything that we could ever possibly need, that everybody would ever possibly need, is there.

But we tend to become poverty-oriented and think that somehow to be poor is spiritual. I remember a brother one time in one of those communities told me, And he I think he's changed some sense. It's been several years ago But he he sort of bragged to me in private conversation and they in a community with several hundred people He said we've discovered that by careful planning we can feed each member of our community on four dollars and 37 cents a week.

I've been there at that community Charles and I have another level, we slept in the basement of a house on a mattress on the floor. We ate skim milk and cornflakes for breakfast well It's an evidence of community, but I can't quite call that kingdom.

And this brother has since, I think, changed his attitude somewhat to it. But the idea is that you don't have to just scrimp and just have to do without in order to see that everybody's treated all the same. It's not just community God wants. It's kingdom that He wants.

By the time I could tell you, well, I'll take time to tell you the story. We were in some meetings up in that part of the country with some of those brothers and living in that kind of situation. And then came out of that after two or three days, and we loved those brothers. Wonderful people, but they don't have the understanding of kingdom abundance that I think God wants us to have.

So when we were there, we lived at their level of subsistence, which was very, very meager. Now, they're sweet people and devoted, but out of their tradition, their tradition is that somehow the poorer you are, the holier you are.

We were up there with Derek and I and Charles and Bob and some of the other men and we were flying back down to Florida after the meetings were over and we're in the airplane the twin-engine plane that Charles is good at. We were late getting away from up north and it was snowy and we flew back down.

We had to stop at Jacksonville to refuel and it was about suppertime and so we decided to go into a hotel to have a meal together and we caught a van from the from the airport into this particular Hotel it wasn't very far away and walked in and first started to go into the coffee shop And then I think it was Derek said, well, no, there's a dining room up on the top floor. Here's a sign by the elevator.

He said, why don't we go up there? But anyway, something happened to us as we started up in that elevator. It's like there was about 12 of us and the presence of God got in the elevator room. And when we were singing hymns, of course, as we were going into the band, we were just sort of light in the spirit anyway, partly coming out from under the strain and the drudgery of the days that we'd just finished.

The meetings had been hard. They were private meetings in which we were discussing things, and we'd suffered, you know, this minimum of material care while we were there. And anyway, we went up to the top floor in this hotel, and the doors opened, and here was this beautiful dining room.

And which the first thing I noticed there was a lovely lady in an evening gown blonde hair beautiful playing the harp. How often do you ever go into dining where somebody's playing a harp and the music that she was playing on that harp was almost ethereal and there was something it was like there was almost a smoke the room like we were viewing the thing almost through some sort of haze.

And right directly across from the elevator across the dining room here was a large table set with a beautiful tablecloth and crystal china and candlelit and it had 12 chairs And there were 12 of us. And there were waiters with red jackets and towels over their arms waiting there.

And we just walked right across to that table like it had been spread there for us. And sat down and picked up the menus and the food. Of course, the prices were rather steep. But Brother Derek, bless his heart, said, I feel that God would have me have all you brothers be my guests for this evening.

He wouldn't have it any other way. And we were delighted with his offer. But all I can say is that it wasn't just the twelve of us. Somehow the Lord was at that table. And we had the finest kind of service, finest kind of meals. And a hush fell over that table. And even the waiter sensed it.

And they spoke in whispers. And that whole part of the restaurant I grew quiet. And it's like we were at a love feast with the Lord himself. I never have sat through a meal just with a group of men like that where I had tears in my eyes the whole meal and it was difficult to eat.

And all of us felt it. And our conviction about it was that God was... Showing us the difference between simple community and kingdom we come out of those days Which really didn't hurt us where we sort of did without we've had a hard time and so forth But it's like in a very supernatural way God was saying I want to show you what kingdom blessing really is.

And I've never had a meal. I've been at times when we've had the Lord's Supper when the presence of God was surreal that you could cut it with a knife. And I've been in times of prayer and in times of ministry when the presence of God just hovered over a room and you've all felt, been in situations.

I want to testify to you this morning that I have never felt the presence of God more strongly and more beautifully than I did in that hotel dining room that night when the 12 of us sat there and had the absolute best of everything in the way of service, in the way of China, in the way of food, in the way of atmosphere, in the way of music.

And that whole end of the dining room came under a holy hush. And we all drank a toast to the Lord Jesus Christ, who we felt was our host that night. Now, I want to tell you something. That is kingdom. That is a demonstration of where God wants us to go.

That doesn't mean that there won't be the test and all the rest, but alright. We were talking about the barriers to God's abundance, and one of them is, I think, the mistaken idea, prideful idea that somehow to be poor is to be holy.

You know what I equate that with? It's people who say, well, to be poor is holy. I equate that with the same kind of people who say to be sick is to be spiritual. You ever heard that? People say, well, you know, God puts on sickness to make us holy and spiritual.

Thank God most of us have left that behind years ago because we know God's will for us is healing. And nobody's going to talk us out of that and say, well, you can't tell me God put that sickness on just to make me spiritual. That the devil's the one who comes to kill and steal and to destroy.

Well, this is the way I put it business about to be poor is to be holy. And I think it's a lie of the devil, and it's never intended for God's people to fall into that trap.

Another reason, another barrier to abundance can be actually demonic resistance and interference. I don't have time to tell all the stories I'd like to tell, but back in Pompano one time some years ago, we were in the deliverance ministry in a prayer meeting.

One night and a lot of the people had gotten a lot of help and those were in the early years when we were still Having a difficult time financially or walking through the dealings of God and the tests of faith and so forth and at times I'd really get panicky Out of fear the fear isn't from God the test from God would be real but the panicky feeling that I would go under And then somehow sooner or later We just wouldn't be able to make it anymore and I'd minister deliverance with considerable success that night the meeting was over and people were having refreshments in the kitchen and so forth.

And I went over and sat down in a chair, and all at once, a real kind of heaviness settled over me, just like something, like some sort of enveloping cloud. And I knew it was some sort of demonic something after me, so I went into the bathroom by myself to pray and to take authority over it and commanded to turn loose.

And as I commanded that thing to go in the name of Jesus, it revealed its identity to me, just like flaming letters right across my mind. I didn't even bother to ask what it was. I said, you spirit that... That's harassing me. I command you in Jesus' name to go.

And in flaming letters right across my mind, big flaming letters, it said poverty. And I got delivered from that, and my wife will testify to you here today that my attitude about God's ability to provide changed after that.

And not only that, that was the time when we began to move into God's abundance. You know, I went through a lot of that sort of thing, the sort of things that many of us go through, and that is when you're trying to walk things out in faith and barely getting by, You don't have the proper perspective of God's abundance that you need.

When we left the pastorate ten years ago, I was fully prepared because of what I thought the life of faith was to be about. I was fully prepared to pray our food in on the table, more or less. I did just to live hand to mouth, day by day.

And I think that's a part of what God has us go through from time to time. That's a part of the testing experience. That's a part of the wilderness experience.

But then, after we'd done that for two or three years and worked faithfully in the Lord, But then after we'd done that for two or three years and worked faithfully in the Lord, I understand now it's kingdom principle for it to work that way, but God began to honor that faithfulness and he began to bless it.

And we begin to make more money. And we begin to have a greater abundance of things. And I begin to wonder, well, what's going wrong? Here I was prepared, you know, just to do without and to barely get by. And God began to pour the blessing on.

What do you do when you take everything that you have and you give it to God, willing just to trust God for the rest of your life? And then God begins to give it back. Not just to give it back, but to give it back many times over.

Well, it's a wonderful predicament to be in, let me tell you.

Here is the cleaned-up sermon transcription with proper punctuation, capitalization, and natural paragraphs:

Are possible to him that believes. And with God all things are possible. We know that God can do all those things, but then the burden is put on us that we're to believe that with God all things are possible. All things are possible to us if we believe.

Over in the 6th chapter of Hebrews, 11th chapter, 6th verse, you don't have to turn to it, but it just says that without faith it is impossible to please God. For he who would come unto God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

And this is what the devil would talk us out of. Oh, you're going to serve God the rest of your life, brother. You're going to have to do without. You're going to have it hard. It's going to be difficult. Not according to what the scriptures say.

That if we have the faith to believe the promises of God, then there are the promise of God's abundance. Okay, let's look now at some steps to prosperity and abundance. I want to move through these pretty rapidly.

I think one thing that helps is for us to realize that if we just remember that we're stewards and not owners. It helps me in this sense. If I can realize that I'm a steward in the sense that everything that comes to me is not really mine, it's God, it makes it somehow a little easier for me.

It's not so easy for me to be that God will bless me for me. You see, just to give it to me to use for my little things and so forth. But if God, if I can see it that God is entrusting me with a portion of his abundance and a portion of his wealth and a portion of his riches and expects me then to use it wisely not only for my needs and my family's needs but for others' needs as well.

I see myself in a position of a steward and I don't have to feel selfish or I don't have to feel guilty that I'm being blessed that abundant blessing is coming my way because I realize that it's a responsibility under God and the scriptures make it plain that stewards are required to be faithful.

So one of the steps to prosperity is get over the idea that you own anything, but to realize that everything belongs to God and that you are a steward of that portion that he gives to you.

A second point we've mentioned before, but we need to say it again. Turn with me to Philippians chapter 4. We need to understand that there will be tests, and there will be times of difficulty, and there will be times of strain, but this doesn't change God's basic will for us.

Paul was a man who knew what it was to have it both ways, and I just want to read these two verses out of Philippians chapter 4, verses 12 and 13. Paul says, "I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound. And everywhere and in all things I'm instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need."

I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

The reason I'm pointing this scripture out is I think most of us, at least in our community and Good News Fellowship and many of the people that have been going through what we've been going through in terms of tests and trials and the dealings of God, many of us feel like we've been going through a time when basically we've seen more abasement than we have blessing, than we've seen bounty.

And we need to understand that's a part of God's discipline in our lives, that we are to go through trials. We are to go through difficult times. But life itself is not to be that way the rest of life. God's promise is that those things are temporary.

And Paul is saying, "I know how to be abased. I know how to put up with it when it's hard." The Lord can see me through those times, but I also know how to abound. Well, praise God this morning, I'm telling you, I'm in favor of abounding for a while.

I don't mind the test and there'll be more, but I want to tell you, God is a bounteous God. God is the one who wants to bless and to provide for what we need. And we have a God in whom there's no lack and in whom there's no short supply.

Okay, another point, a step toward prosperity, to be able to switch from an I to a we mentality. We live in a time, as we said, when God is bringing us into proper relationship with one another and making us aware of our horizontal responsibilities.

And it is true that it's not sufficient anymore for us to pray that prayer, "God bless me and my wife, my son, John, his wife, us four." No more Acts 2-4. The promises of God in the Scripture are nearly always given to the plural. They're not given to I, they're given to we.

They're not given to you or to me, they're given to us. And as we begin to develop an understanding of our responsibility for one another, and then our prayers, we begin to pray. Well, look, when Jesus, the disciples came to Jesus and said, "Lord, teach us how to pray."

He said, "Okay, I'll tell you how to do it." This is the way you start. My Father. No, our Father.

And there's a world of insight into those two little words. God wants to bless his people, but he wants to bless his people corporately, not only individually.

And it's my conviction that there are many things that will never come to us, either individually or as families, until we take the larger view. That God holds us responsible for the family of God, the part of God's family that we're a part of.

And the blessings aren't just bless me, Lord, it's look after us. It's provide for us. So we need to switch from the I to the we mentality. That it's not only in terms of God does want to bless us, but to bless us not just individually, but to bless us corporately.

So we need to make that switch between the I, from the I to the we. Turn with me to Matthew chapter 7.

Another step to getting into God's abundance. We need to expose ourselves. To the bounty of God by exposing I mean to develop a sense of expectancy that's partly just a mental discipline.

We've been when we've been under it for long periods of time and going through hardship and difficulty, We kind of get our sights low and we kind of hunker our shoulders down Because of the blows that have been coming our way in the tests and so forth and we lose part of our vision.

Well, I want to encourage you today is to lift your head up and lift your eyes up and look toward heaven and begin to remember that your child of God and that you're entitled to the blessings that God has.

Let's read those now. It's out of the Sermon on the Mount. Ask, and it'll be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth. And to him that knocketh it shall be opened. For what man is there of you whom his son asks bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks a fish, will he give him a serpent?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

So what I'm wanting to encourage us to do is just remember that we still have a God who hears and answers prayer.

And that one of the dangers that we fall into under the discipline and the tests and the trials that we go through is that we begin to fail to pray. And simply to ask.

There are an awful lot of things that we don't get simply because we haven't asked. That God stands ready to give, but the way He set things up, you're going to have to ask for it to get it.

And there are things that He wants to bless us with, needs that He wants to meet, and very simple truth is, at times we just forget to pray.

And there it is for us, because God loves us, and ready to give it to us, and He's just waiting for us to ask, to realize that it's in His hand, and He's willing to extend it if we ask for it.

Another point. We need to understand that not everything that comes to us is for us. That God gives us not only what we need, but He'll also give us that with which He wants us to bless other people.

So what I'm saying is that not everything you get from God is for you, but it's meant for you to be a steward of to help other people.

And I can go back in my own experience and give illustrations of this. One time back a number of years ago, I guess it was about 1969, I'd been in Florida too long and it was in those times when we were in times of financial stress and walking it out by faith and God doing the miracles and so forth.

Brother Derek and I were ministering together out in Ohio at a little conference. Not too many people. We were there for a couple of days and there wasn't a lot of big offerings taken, this sort of thing.

But anyway, after the thing was over, they paid me my plane fare and they gave me a check for $150, which was... It wasn't large, but it was fairly modest, but it wasn't too unusual in those days for that size group and so forth.

So I came home with $150 and hadn't left the family with much, and I was grateful to have the money. And I got home and had the check in my pocket, and I was thinking about going to the bank to deposit it.

And as I took it out and started to make out a deposit slip, the Lord said, "Give it away." I mean, I just got that very... Strong impression and my first reaction was I rebuke you devil, you know that can't be you now sometimes the devil can trip you up like that but I found this one thing is that if the impression stays if it's strong if it's gentle but it's strong and persistent it's God so I and it stayed I just you know give it away.

The Lord kept saying and I didn't want to I'd work for it was mine so forth and so and I was resisting what was really God and so I didn't have enough faith to give it away, but I didn't have enough guts to deposit it either. I didn't have enough nerve to go against what God was saying.

And so I was kind of caught in that dilemma, and I just carried the check around in my pocket for a couple of days. Have you ever carried a hot coal around in your pocket? That's sort of the way it felt.

I can't remember two days that I was ever more mindful of my billfold than I was those two days. And finally, I relented. I realized I wasn't going to be able to, you know, hold out on God, so we were to... Some little ministry meeting up there and some brothers traveling through.

And so I took the check out and endorsed it over and gave it to them and immediately had peace. But what happened was not only did those brothers need the blessing, but that opened the way for God to do things in my own life.

You see, whereas I think if I had held on to that, then... I would have prevented God from doing something that he wanted to do. But you have to be willing to realize that some of what comes to you, God intends to bless somebody else with.

It's not just for you, but it's for others. So what I'm saying is to help release God's abundance in your life, kick the bottom out of the bucket and let it be a channel. Let the money come through. Don't feel like that everything's coming. It's going to be yours.

I know too many people who, when they were having a hard time financially, Choked down on their giving said they couldn't afford to give that's the wrong way to approach it if you're having a hard time in making men's ends meet then give more away now.

The answer isn't as Derek says the answer isn't to start eating your seed wheat. You see, you know, if you're going to sow, it's the law of sowing and reaping. Whatsoever man sows, that shall he also reap.

You sow sparingly, you reap sparingly. You sow bountifully, you reap bountifully. So if your reaping is kind of sparing now, the answer isn't to eat your seed wheat. The answer is to sow more than you've been sowing because God is faithful.

And as you begin to sow, that'll come back to you. That which comes back to you will be the abundance of God. You can't out give God.

Turn with me to Mark chapter 10. I want to read it. Just another scripture passage about, really has to do with what I was saying earlier about when God began to bless us after we'd been prepared to live all our lives just sort of by hand to mouth praying the stuff in.

I want to read you a promise of God that's kind of a good news and bad news, but it's a good promise of God. Chapter 10, verses 29 and 30. Jesus answered and said, "Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, that's possessions for my sake in the gospels, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time.

Not just heaven. He'll receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands. And then those two little nasty words with persecution. And in the world to come eternal life.

Now, about the kingdom of God, the land of Canaan, the land that flows with milk and honey, it is all of that that we read back in Deuteronomy. That's what God has for us.

But we need to bear in mind that it's also a land full of giants and of walled cities where there are things that you have to endure, things you have to conquer, things you have to work out, things you have to put up with.

This is what Jesus is indicating here. You get all of that abundance back, but just bear in mind you're going to have trouble handling it. There's going to be persecutions. There'll be misunderstandings. There'll be tests. There'll be jealousies. There'll be problems with it. It's not going to all be easy.

Nevertheless, God's will for us, Jesus says, is that for everything you give away to the Lord, for the gospel's sake, God intends to bless you with it a hundred times over.

Okay. I want to mention one other thing, then we'll come to the conclusion. I think it may help you to understand that there are basically three kinds of provision that God has for us.

This reverts back now to the Old Testament teaching of God's dealings with the children of Israel. God's dealings with them is like God's dealing with us. When God... Took the children of Israel as they were in Egypt, in the land of Goshen, but that's not where they were to be permanently.

God's will for them was to get them out of Egypt, to get them out of Goshen, through the wilderness into Canaan, into the promised land that we read about earlier.

And there's a sense in which each of those places, Goshen and wilderness and Canaan, represent the way God deals with us, represents the way we are looked after or are provided for.

There's a Goshen provision, there's a wilderness provision, and there's a Canaan provision. I'll not even take time to read all the scriptures because it'll take too long to lift this up for us to lift them up.

But you remember that Goshen at a time was God's provision for Israel. Goshen was the best of the land of Egypt. When Joseph went down there and became the number two man to Pharaoh, and then eventually Pharaoh had him invite his father and his brothers down, that was God's provision to keep the nation of Israel alive during the time of famine.

Famine and they came down with Joseph to Egypt and because Joseph was in favor with the Pharaoh Pharaoh says put them in the land of Goshen which the scripture says was the best part of Egypt. And they found favor with God and with Pharaoh because of Joseph's leadership.

But Egypt was not the promised land. It was an intermediary period, a period of time when God made a special kind of provision for the children of Israel to keep them alive.

But then inevitably a time came after Joseph died. The scripture says there was a Pharaoh came to office who knew not Joseph. And the children of Israel lost their favor and they became slaves and under hard taskmasters and so forth.

So, what's the characteristic of the provision we have in Goshen? It is security, but it's the security where you work for the other fellow and you're in bondage to him and his will.

And that's where an awful lot of people are in their Christian experience. I've had people all across America tell me, oh, bless God, I'm working for General Motors now, but when I retire, I'm going to serve God.

Now, and in a sense, that's a kind of Goshen provision. It's a security, but you're working for the other fellow, and you're under his direction and under his will, and at times that will prevent you from being faithful in your service to God.

Now, don't go out here and say, I'm telling everybody who works for General Motors to quit. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just giving an illustration of one kind of provision.

And there was a period when Goshen was God's best for the children of Israel, but it wasn't to be permanent.

And the way God had of getting them out of that was to let them fall on hard times and let them get under a difficult situation. And because God's ultimate for the children of Israel and his provision for them was not Goshen and not wilderness but Canaan.

So things got tough enough and God sent a Savior in the form of Moses and Moses gathered the children of Israel up and with a lot of supernatural help, got them set free from Egypt and out they went into their wilderness journey.

Now there's another characteristic about wilderness provision. Wilderness provision is miraculous provision, supernatural. For 40 years, their clothes didn't wear out and their shoes didn't wear out.

For 40 years, they were led by a pillar of fire, by a pillar of cloud by day that would shelter them from the desert sun, and it was a pillar of fire by night that would give them light and heat from the desert coast.

And God provided quail supernaturally. He provided water out of the rock supernaturally. And most

Here is the cleaned-up sermon transcription with proper punctuation, capitalization, and natural paragraphs:

Prepared to come into Canaan, but let me say again about wilderness provision that while it is miraculous, it was never meant to be permanent. And the children of Israel grew tired of the manna, even though it was prepared day by day. They could bake it, they could boil it, they could fry it, eat it however they wanted to. Tasted like coriander seed and honey and oil. Tasted all right, but they grew tired of it. It was a miraculous, supernatural day. They even yearned for the flesh pots and the garlics and the onions and leeks of Egypt back when they were in Goshen. And they'd complain to Moses and say, "What did you bring us out in the wilderness to deny?" And they'd long for what they had back there in the security that they'd known in Goshen.

But Goshen was not God's best for them, neither was the wilderness God's best for them. And this is one of the things that I failed to see when we stepped out of our own particular Goshen into the wilderness experience, the life of faith, and began to receive the miracle help from God. And I thought at those times that basically that's what I'd do the rest of my life. But you see, I missed it. I didn't understand that God had something better in mind.

God has Canaan in mind for all of us. No matter how long we may be in Goshen or no matter how long it may take us to get through the wilderness, our ultimate goal is the kingdom of God, which is... kingdom provision, which is Canaan—the land flowing with milk and honey—where all of those good things are that we read about in Deuteronomy chapter 8.

Now, after 40 years of wilderness wandering, once more by a miracle, God introduced the children of Israel into Canaan. The waters of the Jordan River rolled back, stood up in a heap, and they walked across the Jordan the same way they'd walked across the Red Sea and entered into the land of Canaan, which was their inheritance and their promise.

But the significant thing is, from the moment or within days after they entered into Canaan, the manna ceased, and they ate from the corn and the fruit of the land. And that land which was going to be a blessing, and it was so abundant where it takes, the grapes grew so prolifically, it took two men carrying one bunch on a stick to carry it.

And it was, as the author, as Moses said in Deuteronomy, "It's a land where he can dig the iron and the metals out of the land, where there are flowing streams, where there's gold and multiplied gold in abundance." All of that is Canaan, which was God's provision. But it wasn't to be miraculous.

So the point I want to make is, in spite of all I've said about... Building on all I've said about God's ability to provide and God's kingdom provision, the miracles of God—Like I could give testimony to about all of these answers to prayer and how the check could come just in time to pay the bill and I could tell you how God Supernaturally provided us a new car every year for five years for free and many other testimonies similar to that.

The point I want to make is that that is God's provision for us for a season and for a time through a time of wilderness. But God's highest for us is Canaan provision, where we eat from the fruit of our labors and where what we have is shared because we're living in the kingdom of God.

Now, I think this may be new to some of you, but let me explain it this way: Which is the highest kind of provision? Healing or divine health?

You know why healing is necessary? It's because we're not living in divine health. And so because things are abnormal and because we get sick, then there is God's provision for healing to get us from an abnormal to a normal situation.

But what's God's higher provision? God's highest provision is that we would live in a way where we would experience day by day divine health. It would be better to be well all the time by God's grace than to get sick and have to have a miracle of healing and then get sick and have to have another miracle of healing.

Now, that's not to knock the healing miracles. All I'm saying is there is a higher provision than healing, and that is divine health.

I want to say there is a higher provision than the miracles of supply, and that is in the kingdom of God where there is the abundance that God talks about, and it is properly distributed to everyone, where we can begin to eat from the fruit of our labors, where God will begin to bless and adjust us in a situation where, as he promised through the children of Israel in the land of Canaan, where there is an abundance.

Where there is an abundance, you don't have to have a miracle of supply. The abundance is there tied to the fact that you're in your inheritance, that you're properly placed, that you're related to the right people, and that you're doing the right job.

And all of those things flowing together then creates the kind of Canaan existence where God is free to bless everyone abundantly and nobody lacks and nobody has any need and everybody prospers in the high sense of the word.

Now we're not there yet. And it'll take years, I suppose. And so there's always going to be those moments of miracles for which we're grateful. But you need to understand this: The need for miracles stems from an abnormal situation. You only need a miracle where things are abnormal.

And it's the miracle then that creates something that's normal or meets a need or supplies something that's lacking. And in the description of Canaan, the promised land, God said back there in Deuteronomy chapter 8 that Canaan is a land flowing with milk and honey where there's going to be wealth and prosperity and everything else that everybody needs.

But it has to do with us being properly situated in that kingdom. Each tribe had one section of... of Canaan that they were to occupy and to drive the enemies off of it was a lifetime proposition even at the end of Joseph's life, they were they had not all uh they had not yet conquered all the land.

But let me give you just an example in closing about the difference between uh needs being met one way and kingdom provision. I can illustrate it out of something that happened in my own ministry. I've been traveling in ministry for about 10 years, and basically Honorariums have been part of the supply which has supported my family and the sale of books and tapes, things like that.

But one of the major sources has been honorariums when you'd go and travel. And one of the reasons why God has had from time to time to provide for our needs supernaturally is because in moving in that teaching ministry, oftentimes we're in an abnormal situation where people don't understand Christian principles and where I've been taken advantage of.

Now not too long ago I was traveling with some young brothers who are also in ministry and they were teaching They were doing some of the sharing in the teaching and I was the main speaker and I was responsible for them, and we were on the road for a number of days.

It was my intention and their expectation that we would share the offerings together which was proper. I mean I would have to get the larger portion since I was the main speaker But we were roughly dividing what we would receive with me taking approximately half, and I was wanting to bless the other brothers with the other half, and we were naturally expecting and looking for good offerings to have that happen.

Well, we'd been away several days ministering, and it wasn't looking too good financially. And we went into one place for a couple of days, and I'd been there once before some years ago with some of these same brothers, and the people got a little upset because they didn't like the idea of paying for more than one speaker.

So they said to one of the men that was with me, he was making an arrangement, he said, "Well, now we're not going to pay anybody's hotel bill but bash them because we want to be able to give him a real big offering, a good blessing and good honorarium this time." Well, I thought, well, that sounds kind of encouraging because I can share with these brothers when they give it.

Well, it was all talk because after a couple of days of ministry and we left there, they gave me $150. That's the kind of situation that happens where people don't understand kingdom principle or understand fatherhood or what it is to honor ministry.

But I'll show you the difference between that and Canaan provision. It's where you live from the fruit of your labor. We went from there to another situation where it was Covenant Brothers and Sisters, where I was going to have just one meeting, speak one time, and it was a celebration of a group of people coming together for an all-day picnic and this sort of thing in the church.

And there was about 700 people there, but they were all people who were walking in relationship. And the minister stood up when there came time to take the offering. He said, "We want to take up an offering for Brother Dom." And for his ministry. And then he said, "How many of you here have ever been blessed by any of his books or any of his tapes?"

And it's gratifying. I saw hundreds of hands go up. And then this brother, who I'm appreciative, said he was taken along. He said, "Now, we want to receive this offering for our brother, but not just because he's here today to speak, but because of what he's meant to the body of Christ and for what his ministry has meant to all of us here.

We really want to lay a blessing on this brother." Now just two days before, in another situation, with a crowd about the same size where I administered two days, I got $150. In this one session, among people who were related in the Lord and who understood the principle of kingdom blessing, they took up an offering over $1,500.

Now, that enabled me then in turn, of course, to share generously with the brothers who administered with me those three days. But you know, the difference is this. The $150 represented... kind of wilderness experience where God has to make up the difference miraculously.

The $1,500 love offering represented a Canaan experience where I was being blessed by the fruit of my labor. And I use the personal illustration with apologies, but it just illustrates what I'm talking about.

The highest kind of provision God has is when we are in the kingdom of God in Canaan where God can bless abundantly and there's enough for everybody to be shared and to have it passed around. You understand, people, that the real problem in the earth is not lack of supply, it's distribution.

God has made enough of everything, money, wealth, minerals, energy, everything else. That's not the problem. The problem is that it's been improper distribution. And so miracles of God take care of that improper distribution.

But in Canaan, in the kingdom of God, where everything flows right and people are properly related, there's going to be that proper distribution where there will be nothing but blessing and provision and all needs met all across the line because there is no shortage in the kingdom of God.

And God's will for us is that kind of experience, that kind of blessing. Okay, let me just close with this simple observation: They've been working on Federal Highway out there practically ever since we've been in Fort Lauderdale or Pompano.

Something's always going on up. And all over Fort Lauderdale, they're building streets. and putting down base and gravel and so forth and laying asphalt on it. All over the place they're building houses and condominiums and all that out of CBS construction. Cinder block covered with stucco.

Those are the standard building materials in southern Florida. Concrete and asphalt on the street. And that's all right in this earth's provision. But let me tell you something about the kingdom of God.

The eventual revelation of the kingdom of God is the new Jerusalem that's going to come down out of heaven. And John the Revelator got a picture of what it was like. You know what the building materials are up there? The walls of the buildings were built out of jasper and studded with precious stones.

You know what the paving material is in heavenly Jerusalem? It's gold. They don't use asphalt. They don't use concrete. It's gold. Twelve gates. three gates in each side of the heavenly city every gate not made out of wood and binded by iron made out of pure pearl inlaid pearl all twelve gates.

What I'm telling you about is there is no short supply in heaven. Everything in heaven is the greatest kind of wealth and the greatest kind of abundance. That's the kind of God we have. God's not glorified in poverty. God's not glorified in lack or need.

What God is glorified in is the abundance which represents his glory and represents his provision. And it's his heavenly provision that he wants to give to us. And when we come into Canaan, when we come into the promised land, there's going to be nobody lacking, nobody needing, nobody doing without.

There's going to be more than any of us or all of us could ever want or desire. because it's God's will for us to experience kingdom provision. Amen.