by Rev. Gina Johnson
So today we are beginning a three-week series on prosperity. Now for some people to hear their minister say something like that might automatically put them in the place of like, “Okay, well she suckered me in today, but I'm not going to be here the next two weeks because I do not want to listen to my pastor talk to me about finances and prosperity/abundance.”
Is this going to be a series where we're going to get lectured each week on how we can give more and what we can do more? Well, I don't know. We'll just have to come all three weeks and find out what this is about. That's what I think.
But I'm going to tell you, people associate words like prosperity with how much you do or don't have in the material sense, and they really do use the measurement of the world, the world's definition of prosperity. And so I want to start off by clearing that up because if you're looking to the world to define for you what is abundance and prosperity, then you are looking in the wrong direction.
It doesn't fit. It never has. It never will.
If you just look at the story of Jesus, you can understand why people were so disappointed when things weren't going their way because they thought, here is our king, our king that's going to free us from all of these earthly circumstances, and there's not going to be any oppression, and we're not going to be under the rule of the Romans. And when he fell short of their mental image of a prosperous, mighty king, then that's when things started to look a little bit different, but not for Jesus. He knew good and well what it meant to have the Father's abundance and prosperity.
So I'm telling you, if you use the world's definition, it just doesn't fit. Now, you know, I did hear a story about a lady who was in church one Sunday, and the minister was challenging them because he wanted to increase the abundance of the church. And he said, anyone who gives $1,000 today gets to pick three hymns.
Now, for some of you, that may sound ludicrous, but if you know church tradition, and you know how people get caught up and how things should go, whoo, $1,000, three hymns. And so one lady jumped up and started writing the check right then and there. She didn't wait.
She came down, and she handed it to the pastor. And before he could do anything, she turned around, and she goes, I want him, and I want him, and I want him.
We need to laugh because we need to recognize that money, finances, prosperity, abundance is not as heavy of a subject as we make it out to be. And anyone who has sat with me in any form of money conversation, especially if it's about me, knows I don't make good eye contact.
I don't like it because I tend to fall into the wrong thinking of prosperity as well. I am just as guilty of forgetting how abundant we truly are, and then I'm only limiting myself. The word prosperity or prosper in the Bible, in Hebrew, is selach.
And what that means is to push forward. Pushing forward means regardless of whatever situation is before you, you're using that beautiful substance of faith, and you are pushing forward. Perhaps the situation before you is illness, and you are going to push forward. Perhaps it's some financial troubles. You're going to push forward. Perhaps it's a relationship in your life that's not going the way it should.
You're going to push forward, and that takes having that substance of faith that we have in abundance, that we have an overwhelming amount of. We just have to tap into it. It's so important that we recognize there is nothing that's going to come before us in this lifetime that we cannot push forward, push through, and stand on the other side of, which is abundant and prosperous.
It's like that on this side too, but sometimes because of our own illusions, it's not until we push through the circumstance, the challenge, the situation, that we're able to see how prosperous we really are. So that's one way that I want you to look at prosperity and what it means to prosper. It means to push forward.
The other way that I'd like you to visit it is actually tied to what it says in Proverbs 11:25, a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. Prosperity God's way starts with generosity.
It says right there, whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. When you have a generous heart, when you can look at what is in front of you and recognize, I can always do something to show love, to show kindness, to show God's love and mercy to someone else. And you continue to think that that's going to be my motivating thought when I get up in the morning. It’s, “How can I be generous today? Is it with my time? Is it with my talent? Is it with my treasure? Is it with my tithe? What is it with?” But I promise you, if you learn to start with generosity, if you make it not just something I'm going to do one day and not the next, but you make it a part of how you live, then prosperity will come to you as a result of that. It's one of those things that you know. What you sow, you reap; what you give, you get back.
If we're going with some new age stuff, you throw it out in the universe and it's going to come back to you. Well, throw it out in your neighborhood. Throw it out in your home when you wake up in the morning. Throw it out in your workplace. Throw it out at the senior center. Throw it out in your school. Go out there with a generous attitude.
And generosity isn't just about your money. Generosity is about your love. It's about your time. It's about your listening ears. Generosity is looking at all that you have and recognizing that you always have something you can give. And that something isn't always something you can hold in your hand, but you always have something you can give.
So we redefine the definition of prosperity. It's about thriving and it's about flourishing, not just surviving, but it's doing it from a place where you have an abundance mindset, where you have a generous heart set, where you're deeply rooted in gratitude and appreciation. That's what prosperity is.
It's recognizing that this is what I have and this is enough. And with all of this, it's actually more than enough. So I am going to give and I am going to give.
I don't like that phrase, give till it hurts. I say give till it stops hurting because the more you give, it won't hurt as much when you really understand why you're giving. This series title is Prosperity Road, it's a path to peace, power, and plenty.
The road that we're going to travel on is the road of the Ten Commandments. Now, the Ten Commandments have been so often misunderstood, misused, thrown out by one group because they're so dated, clung to so tightly by another group because we're legalistic and we're condemning, and it goes all over the place. So I'm going to do my best to share where the Spirit's leading me in the Ten Commandments that are with our life in a way that we can find Ten Commandments of Prosperity.
We're just going to start with three, and we'll start with the First Commandment. And the First Commandment is, You shall have no other gods before me. No other gods.
What God is saying there is that there is no other source to acknowledge for life and love, for wisdom and power, than God. And I’d like to spend a little time on this one, but not too much because there's a lot of times where people hear that, You shall have no other gods than me, and they get really caught up in this condemnation of other cultures, other races, other religions, other traditions, and that's not what He's saying. We've learned from Jesus over and over again that, where is God? God is in Him, and He is in God, and He is in us.
God is within us. Our highest self is in complete alignment with God. So when you're seeking, “What would God want me to do here? Where do I turn for my source of life and love and wisdom and power?” We turn inward.
We turn to our highest self, that complete oneness where there is no separation, and our only guiding light and power is God. When we take that commandment and say that you shall have no other gods, you shall look nowhere else for your source of prosperity. You shall look to nothing external, nothing outside of you.
You're not going to find prosperity from God in your job. You're not going to find prosperity from God in your bank account. You're not going to find prosperity from God in your popularity, your networking.
That's not how it works.
Now can you find blessings and things to celebrate and affirm and get excited about in all those places externally? Absolutely.
You have to inwardly have the right attitude in order to look at the pile of dirty laundry and say, wow, all of my kids have clothing. We don't have to worry. Actually, gosh, that's so tall and there's still so much in their closet. I could put this off for another week. How blessed am I?
But I tell you, if I look at that situation and say, “Man, you know, I don't know if God loves me. Gosh, you know, there is just so much I can't do. And the amount of time this is going to take me and you know what? I'm really strapped for money right now. I can't even afford to buy laundry detergent today. And oh my gosh, the water bill.”
We could do it that way, but I'm not looking toward what I have or don't have as my source of my prosperity. I am looking to my source of prosperity as God. And that is that first commandment of prosperity is you shall look to no other source than God for your supply.
Your supply may show up in different material ways. Your supply may show up through feelings, through encounters with other people, through conversations, but they all start from God. You need to look to God as the source of your supply and he will manifest that supply in many different ways.
If God is faithful and abundant, then there comes that question of why. God is so faithful and so abundant, Gina. God is going to give us prosperity and God is going to give us abundance that we can't even measure. Then why did this happen and why did that happen?
Well, a long time ago, I used this phrase that I believe that this life is our educational sandbox. And every now and then, sometimes more now and other times more then, we have lessons to learn. We have lessons to glean. Why do we put those lessons there for ourselves? I don't know.
I talked about a coffee table a long time ago, saying, “I just keep stubbing my toe on that coffee table.” So do I take it out to the yard and I chop it up and set it on fire and say, ha, never again? Or do I embrace the lesson? Why did I trip over this again? Why did I look at my promotion in this company as whether or not I'm prosperous? Why did I look at my friendships and my networking and the people around me as to whether or not I'm prosperous? Why did I look at my checkbook balance to decide whether or not I'm prosperous?
You shall look to no other source for your supply than God. You shall look to no other source than inward and the Spirit revealing to you all that you are and all that you have.
It says in the prayer that we pray every Sunday, give us this day our daily bread. When we pray those words, if our heart is in a place of true understanding, if our minds are in alignment with God and if we're in that place of surrender, then those seven words, the way Jesus taught us to pray them, there's no begging. There's no give us this day our daily bread, God, because I don't know where I can get it.
It's nothing like that. There's no bargaining. Hey, God, you give me today my daily bread. Boy, what am I going to do the rest of the week to make it up to you? It doesn't go that way. It's a place of confidence. It's our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven and the kingdom of heaven is within. Give us this day our daily bread. It's trusting that as we are in the kingdom, that we will have everything we need.
It's trusting that the abundance that we are looking for is going to show up day to day within us and then manifest around us and it is always going to be enough. Not only enough for us, but enough for whoever else that we need to encounter and be a source of a representation of prosperity and abundance through Christ.
Give us this day our daily bread. That means give us all that we need spiritually, God. Give us the truth of your love and who you are and I will get through this beautiful day. I won't just get through this beautiful day. I will experience this beautiful day. I will love it. I will live it. I will embrace it and I will share it.
Give us this day our daily bread. When you look to God as your only source of supply, it's amazing the transformation that takes place.
The next commandment is you shall not make idols. And I'm going to go on to the translation that would be for our prosperity commandment which is, you shall make no mental images of lack.
Make no mental images of lack. I'm sure many of you have heard the phrase “the mind is a powerful thing.” So there were the Israelites who were in the desert wandering and as things weren't going their way they're trying to figure out what can they do and they started turning to their own ideals, their own solutions to try and fix things.
Well have you ever heard the phrase that you can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it? When you think about where you are mentally, if you are experiencing something due to this mental image of lack, constantly thinking I don't have this and I don't have that, constantly going through that, “Gosh! When will I ever have this?” You cannot be clearly in alignment with the spirit because you're spending so much time disconnected in a mindset of scarcity and lack.
I want to share an illustration with you. There is a phrase often called the train of thought. You know there's a train of thought and if you direct that train of thought in your mind to mental lack, across the board whether it's finances, a relationship, health, whatever it is, you are basically directing that train to the thought station of poverty and scarcity.
We start doing these thoughts. It's not even the words, yet. We're not even at the words, yet. We’re just thinking about it. You get up in the morning and, before you even get out of bed, you're laying there thinking about everything. I'm going to have to figure this out today. I don't know how this is going to work.
I want to tell you that anytime you focus on lack and scarcity that train will reach the destination of poverty station. It'll be poverty in the mind, poverty in the body, poverty in the soul, poverty in our finances, in our relationship, because if that's where you want to send that train of thought—to everything you don't have—go for it. Just don't be surprised when it stops at that station.
What does it unload in that station? Well it's going to unload unhappiness. It's going to unload physical problems. It's going to unload worry and fear because you have loaded this train and said, “Hey! I want you to go down that course and along the way let's just think about everything we don't have, everything we're not enjoying, everything that's going to lock us into this place.”
I want you all to understand that we can demolish poverty station. We can get rid of that sucker. It doesn't even need to be an option to stop at any longer. We can do that when we use the beautiful creative power that we have from the spirit instead of talking about what you want. You don't have it start being grateful for what you have. Start recognizing that in every blessing you receive that you are now blessed to be a blessing to someone else. Start recognizing that the attitude of gratitude is going to shift.
I like to use this illustration. Try this yourself. Open your hands and stretch your arms to either side. Now, in one hand imagine you have your abundance, your prosperity. I'm just going to name a few of mine to give you an example. I have a beautiful family. Travis and the children are absolutely a blessing. I have a wonderful home. I have a wonderful congregation. I have a great staff that I work with and a great group of congregation members who are there for me. I have my physical health. This is abundance. This is prosperity.
Now, let's look in the other hand. I'm not able to do for my kids everything I would like to. I have a congregation, but at the same time there is a whole section on Sunday mornings that is empty. I have great staff, but, gosh, sometimes we're not always getting along and I feel like maybe I don't belong here. And my shoulder is killing me today. The list goes on and on, right?
So, turn your head and look at the abundant hand. When you are looking at the abundant hand, can you see the other hand over here? No, you can't. But, if you turn to the other hand and stare at all the lack, all the scarcity, and just focus on that, can you see the abundance? No.
I'm telling you if you get to that place where you're going, “How am I gonna pay for this? When are they gonna get better? What if I can't be there?” Just stop and remind yourself, “I have the opportunity to look at the abundance. I have the opportunity to look at the prosperity.”
It's that load of laundry all over again. I had a seizure at one point in time and I fell on a screwdriver and when I fell on the screwdriver it punctured me in the rear and I had to go and get some little tape stitches because I put a little hole in my rear. I called my Grandma and I was upset. I was telling her all about it and she says, “Well, Gina, there was a lesson in this.” I'm thinking, “Alright, Grandma, let me hear what this lesson is.” She says, “Now you know what a pain in the *** you've been to me all my life telling you in every situation there is a lesson, there is abundance.”
Out of that my grandma and I had a big laugh. She put me in my place, but what it comes to is the mental train only stops at poverty station when we guide it there. You're the conductor. Where are you gonna send that train?
The next commandment is a perfect segue coming off of this one and it is you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. The commandment of prosperity that goes with that is: you shall not speak the word of lack or limitation.
So when you think about lack and limitation, eventually those things will come to life in your words. And once you start speaking it, they'll circle back around reinforce the thoughts in your head and then from there manifest in your actions.
This is what happens. I’m thinking, “I don't have this now.” Then I’m saying, “I don't have this. Why am I even trying anymore?” Then my actions become, “I've thought about this and everything we do is never going to be enough, so now I'm just gonna stop giving because it's not getting anywhere anyway. No matter how many times I try to fix this relationship and bridge this gap, we always come back to this space.”
Do you hear those words? We always come back here. When you go down that road your mind is getting reinforced in that negative thinking and then your actions start to follow and, if you're lucky, it'll only start to follow with maybe one or two negative actions, but what happens to most people is it becomes a cycle. Then, I give you my negative actions, so then you embrace them and you give them to her and then she gives them to that person over there and we just spread that negative thinking, the actions.
Or it gets even worse than that. It starts to manifest in our body. I spent my whole day thinking in scarcity. I was talking in scarcity. Why did I go to bed with a sore on my upper shoulder and a headache? Because you're just spending all that time and energy in that separation. That's all it is when you spend time thinking that you don't have this or that, or when you spend time thinking you're not enough. You're spending time in separation.
We are one with God. We are one with source, so to be anything less than that is separation. That's what I call sin.
There is another place where we're just feeding that separation and it comes into our actions. It comes into our bodies. This is one of the harder ones to work with because we've used the same words over and over again. I've had some conversations in the past couple weeks where I've said I just want to stop talking because I can't get the verbiage right. I want to stop saying the things that are not true.
Everyone's heard about when Moses went to meet God at the burning bush. God says, “Say that I Am sent you.” Then we get into the New Testament and Jesus is teaching us that I am the salt and the light. He is teaching that he is the truth and the way and the life, but then he teaches that I am in the father and the father is in me and I am in you. And so I tell you again, as I've told you since the beginning, you are the I Am.
When you walk around and people ask, “How are you doing?” Do you answer like this: “Oh I am sick. I am tired.” or “They're okay, but I am broke. I am really struggling. I am in a lot of pain now.”
Here's the thing: some people hear this message and they say, “Oh well, Gina, are you trying to teach us to spiritually bypass? Are you trying to teach us not to think about those things?”
I say, “Sure think about them. Name them. Dance with them. But don't let them own you. You are not sick. You are not poor. You are not incapable. You are not limited. When you run around and say I am, I am, you are pulling the Lord's name through your mouth, through your words, and you're taking one of his most beautiful masterpiece creations, which is all of you in this world, and you’re saying, “I am no longer the light and the love. I am no longer wholeness. I am no longer abundance and prosperity. I am sick and tired. I am falling short. I am not going to make it through.”
And it just goes back to that sandbox.
I understand life is going to throw circumstances at us. I was talking to some of my congregation who have been in and out of hospitals and care. Like, man, those things are real. You know, there’s a lot going on. Stuff going on at school, stuff going on in transitions in life, stuff going on with family, finances. It’s going on. But you can either choose to be in it and let it consume you and drive your thoughts and your words or your actions, or you can choose to set it here.
You can choose to grab your popcorn, eat it, and look at that story, look at that movie, look at that situation and say, “Wow. I’m learning something from that. I am seeing that in this world there is physical pain, there is financial lack, there is broken relationships, and I am going to be above all of that no matter what my body is doing because I am not my body. I am going to be above the sadness and the sorrow and the brokenness because I am whole, because I am a child of God.”
I invite you all to know that your words, will come from your thoughts and then they’ll manifest into more thoughts and actions. And then you’re just taking that power of the I am and setting that on the shelf. But I’m telling you to do it the other way. Read the chapter on health problems. Read the chapter on broken relationships. Read the chapter of spiritual disconnection. Read all those chapters and then close the book and put it on the shelf. Take your lesson and grab a hold of the I Am you are, which is already in there for all of you, and move forward into the world.
So here is your homework as you move through this next week. I want you to remember the source for everything you need in life, nothing is too small or too big. You already have it. It is your source. It is God. It is light and love. It is the Christ. It is who you are and it is inside of you.
I want you to remember throughout this week that the minute you let that seed of thought that is not serving grow, beware. Beware. Do not send that train to poverty station. Let’s make a decision today that we’ve demolished that place. And then watch your words. Anytime someone says to you, “How are you doing?” If you really want to tell them, “Well, you know, I am not feeling the best,” then why don’t you throw in a but? Because everything before the but is BS. So if you want to say, not feeling the best, so there’s no I am there, but I am certain that I am whole and this too shall pass.
Please pray with me. Our most gracious and loving God, our God of abundance, prosperity. God, we are thankful. We are so thankful because we know even in this very moment that we are blessed beyond human understanding, that our abundance is so limitless, that we are not our bodies, but we are divine, whole, perfect spiritual beings. So God, help us as we go through our daily walk. Spirit, help us, remind us as you are within us that we are whole, that we are children of God created in that beautiful and perfect image, that we are the I Am. It’s in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
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