Why Seeking the Kingdom First Unlocks Supernatural Provision | Part 1

Hello and welcome to our weekly podcast, 'Business, Money, and Christianity.' We're a financial podcast that approaches topics from a faith-based perspective. Today, we're sharing a segment from a recent public event where I discussed biblical principles for living within God's abundant provision. The topic is 'Why Seeking the Kingdom First Unlocks Supernatural Provision.' We believe this episode will be a blessing to you. 

You got your Bibles? Amen. Got your believers? Amen. I’ll tell you, I’ll give you a good tip from Andrew’s commentary.

I don’t ever let my tank go below half a tank. And I’ve got a 33-gallon tank, so I can get someplace even on half a tank of gas. So you ought to do the same thing with your faith.

Don’t ever let it get below half empty.

You know, the story he was telling about—it was me, but I was kind of on assignment for Pastor. Pastor wasn’t there. And I noticed the guy actually followed a lot of the stuff I did and talked about. He asked me questions, did different things, and then we had that experience. He was also involved in the project.

This is the part where I was kind of on assignment for Pastor. And what I felt was that he was over his head, beyond his faith. You know, there’s nothing impossible if you can believe. But there are things you can’t believe, which makes them impossible, because we all have a faith level.

You know, if we could put numbers on faith—say, one through a hundred—we’re somewhere in there. If you’ve got 98 faith, there are still two numbers beyond your faith. And we should always be challenging ourselves to increase our faith. But if you’re at a 23, you don’t jump from 23 to 55. You might be getting out beyond yourself.

And so we had a lot of discussions. I really felt that, yes, he was a man of faith, but he had stepped out way too far. And I was in a foreign country, and I think his faith was that Americans would make up the difference instead of him walking it out with God.

And so, in the wise counsel I gave him—which Pastor actually agreed with me on—he didn’t stay in touch anymore. But you know, we all can do that.

So this is where I’ve been talking about manifesting the manifestation of divine provision. It’s already there. How much can I walk in? Well, I need to build my faith to be able to walk in it. We don’t get out over our head.

But then we’ve got to learn that we don’t trust in money. We trust in God. But a lot of people think that means, “I’ve got to go broke serving God.” That’s not what He said.

I mean, the Bible says a good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children. Well, you can’t even leave an inheritance for your children if you’re broke.

So we’ve got to manifest—or create the manifestation of—God’s divine provision, which, as I’ve talked about, is more than enough.

And what I’ve been talking about over the last two sessions is that you and I get to define what enough is.

You can live in a 300-square-foot place, and that could be enough. That’s fine. You can live in a 2,000-square-foot place. That’s fine too. The “enough” doesn’t matter. I mean, God has everything. We get to define what enough is.

But the amazing thing is we also get to define what more than enough is.

And more than enough could be $100 a month. If it’s more than what you need, it’s more than enough. But if you really want to expand the Kingdom of God and do something for God, then you’re going to have to get into some real numbers that can actually make a difference.

And so, you know, we’ve been involved in projects before. Like the Kenya clinic right now—we need, I think, $70,000 this year. We already have more than half of that. But that clinic isn’t going to get established with $300. It’s going to take more than that.

There are some other things happening with it now. KOPI Kenya has decided to sell a piece of property that was originally intended for another business. The people in America who wanted to make that business happen to fund the ministry backed out. But KOPI Ministries owns the property, so now they’re looking at selling it to finish off the rest of the clinic. And everything is moving along to make that happen.

But my point is, on this particular project, it’s $70,000 this year. That’s a lot of money.

We put a roof on a church in Liberia one time. This goes back a few years. I don’t remember exactly, but it seems like it was $1,200. Ten dollars isn’t going to cut it.

I know we built a church in India for a congregation that was meeting under a tree. Somebody wanted to build that church, and it was $10,000.

So we get to establish what the “more than enough” is.

I think one of the reasons a church of this size has been able to do what we’ve done is because—even though I’ve only recently started using this terminology—we’ve had a “more than enough” attitude, believing there’s nothing we can’t do.

I mean, our goal this year is to put $148,000 into world missions. Most churches our size don’t even have a $148,000 budget. Because we’re not looking at people; we’re looking at God.

But God uses people.

And I’ve talked so much about being able to do something far beyond where you’re at.

So, to recap what we’ve been talking about: I have not been talking about prosperity. I’ve been talking about more than enough.

God doesn’t expect us to struggle through this life. He sent His Son Jesus to die on a cross. He who was rich became poor so that we might become rich.

Now, when we hear the English word “rich,” we tend to think of it differently. But that word means having an abundant supply. It’s a wealth word. It really means having more than enough.

But it’s not just so we can continually buy and consume things upon our own lusts or desires just to have more. There’s nothing wrong with having more. But again, it’s about the priority of where God is.

And we should become righteously frustrated if we don’t have more than enough, because Jesus went to the cross and finished everything so that our lives could have more than enough.

But what happens is most people go from problem to problem in life. God’s Word says we go from faith to faith. We go from glory to glory.

So we should have a longer-term perspective in how we look at things.

Most people are just focused on what they’re going through today. And they can’t break that cycle: how people treat me, how hard it is, how difficult things are.

I had somebody here not too long ago tell me some things, and it was all based on this idea: “I’m there for people, but people are never there for me.”

And I kept my mouth shut. Everybody clap.

But in my mind, I was thinking, “Grow up.” That’s what leadership is.

Because you have presented yourself as somebody who knows the Word of God and has something to give to others. So why are you falling apart because somebody isn’t meeting your expectations? What does that have to do with anything?

My goodness, if I lived like that, I’d be in an insane asylum after 28 years of doing this.

So we get to determine the enough, and we determine the more than enough.

What if we disagree? Well, we’re not going to manifest it.

If we can’t wrap our minds around God’s system, how are we ever going to do it?

Now in Isaiah chapter 55, God says, “My thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” So you and I don’t think like Him. “My ways are not your ways.” We don’t do things like Him.

So when He says, “Here’s My system, here’s how it works,” and we can’t wrap our minds around it, we struggle to step into it.

What are we going to do if we stop just because we don’t agree?

What’s going to happen if we say, “I just don’t know how that’s going to work”? We’re not going to move forward because we can’t see how it works.

And if God doesn’t think like us, and He doesn’t do things like us, why are we so stuck on ourselves?

Well, there’s a reason for it—because it makes sense. When we’re doing things our way, what we’re doing makes sense to us.

And where it becomes deceptive for a Christian is that because we know the Bible, we start finding Bible verses to support what we already think instead of allowing Bible verses to challenge us to rise up to what God thinks.

And at some point, we’ve got to bridge that gap so God can manifest in our lives.

So is there anything—we’ve got this Word of God—is there anything to prevent us from apprehending what God has given to us?

There’s only one thing: us.

Because when God says, “I’ve given it to you,” guess what? It’s been given to you.

Now the question becomes: can I receive what He’s given me?

Has anybody ever tried to give you something and you tried to turn it down?

Maybe it wasn’t something huge or life-changing. Maybe it was something small in the overall scheme of things. But we still do it, don’t we?

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

You little prideful thing.

See, if we’re believing for God to do something for us, and then something happens that’s for us, why would we turn it down?

Because we have emotional problems. We have identity problems. We’re prideful.

So in the scheme of life, in how this whole thing functions, nothing can keep us from possessing what God has said He’s given to us.

If you’ve been around here for a long time, you remember Jim Welsbacher—Darrell’s brother, Reba’s brother-in-law. He fell while visiting his daughter in Marietta and broke his neck the same way that Christopher Reeve broke his neck.

If I remember the story correctly, he had gone back out to get the last suitcase while they were carrying things into the house. Maybe he stepped wrong on a little step in the walkway, fell, hit his neck, and they ended up calling an ambulance. I think the ambulance drivers even had to resuscitate him. Isn’t that right? Didn’t he flatline? Anyway, it was serious.

He was paralyzed the same way Christopher Reeve was paralyzed, and he was in a hospital in San Diego.

So over time, Tammy and I went down there several times before he got moved back up here. One time they took us into the ICU ward or something like that. He was in this specialized unit with several rooms.

We walked in, and he was in the bed farthest from the door. And when we walked in, there were two deputy sheriffs standing there beside a young man in the other bed. I don’t think it was a visitation.

So we walked past them and went back to talk to Jim. Since it was all one room, you could hear everything being said. Apparently the young man was listening while we were encouraging Jim in faith and praying for him.

Then as we walked out, we had to pass by the young man and the deputies again. And the young man looked up at us and said, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.”

And when he said that, it really struck me. Because it appeared that he had become separated from God. I didn’t say separated from the love of God—I said separated from God.

Unless those two deputy sheriffs were there to minister to him. I’m not sure. Do you guys do that, Andrew? That’s not part of the program? Okay.

And in my mind, I thought, “This young man was probably raised in Sunday school. His mama probably took him to church,” because he knew a Bible verse and quoted it.

But I was thinking: while nothing can separate us from the love of God, we can separate ourselves from God.

But it wasn’t God who separated Himself. It would have been the young man.

Because the love of God could have kept him from this particular situation.

Now, I don’t know why he was there. Maybe he was diabetic and they just bring sheriffs in for situations like that. But there was some reason he was there, and there were two deputy sheriffs. Each one of those deputies was about twice the size of the young man, so I don’t think it took two of them. Maybe it was a safety issue for the nurses. I don’t know.

But if nothing can separate us from the love of God, then nothing can separate us from the things God has given us.