MOney Wisdom 2

Hi all,
I'm continuing the series about wisdom in finances, but first... A small group of us from our Tulsa house churches will be visiting our Arlington, Texas affiliate on Sunday November 14. If you can join us email Jason and Verna Snoddy at snoddyfam@sbcglobal.net.

To the right you'll see links to Saturday's Webinar (6 Nov) on "The Kingdom of Heaven". Part 1 is understanding Jesus as an Oriental King. This is how I walk with the Father and Lord - the perspective I have and how I approach them. It will help many pieces of your puzzle about God fall into place.

Also to the right, a new 2-cd series "What the Bible really says about divorce". Lastly, my new 4-cd series "Salvation Displayed in the Stars" also includes a 36 page study guide. It's about God's original intention when He said in Genesis 1:14 of the stars: "Let them be for signs..." They've been perverted by mythology and horoscopes and such, but this study goes back to the original star names, original pictures portrayed in the constellations, and so much more.

Bringing you up to speed
Last week I shared that while the opening of the windows of heaven in Malachi 3 for those hearers in 400BC was literal rain for their crops, for us the 'water' is a type of the flowing Holy Spirit in revelation, creativity, and wisdom sent to water our "crops" - our work, family, possessions, etc. Today I'm building on that.

The issue: I'm not getting rich on $4.25 an hour
Most pastors preach that if you give to God He will give you increase, so church members naturally look for at least some 'bump' in their finances from God when they give; something to indicate God is really fulfilling what they believe He promised to do. When that doesn't happen they wonder what they are doing wrong.

I've talked to people working hard at hourly jobs wondering why God isn't giving them the big increase. I've talked to salaried employees wondering the same thing - they give generously to their own financial hurt, yet seem to be treading water in their bank account.

Back in the late 1970's to early 1980's the fad doctrine many pastors focused on then was the 100 fold return. In the 80's there was talk of giving to the temple in order to be blessed. In the 90's giving to the apostle or pastor, sometimes so corrupted they demand the tithe to the church, but any outside income has to be tithed directly to the man of God. (Run don't walk to the nearest exit)

Today the fad is to focus on giving as it relates to Jewish feasts. But what goes around comes around, so elements of all these are still out there and pulled off the shelf by pastors from time to time to motivate parishioner's to give, and all have the common denominator of promising wealth & blessing from above.

In 1978-79 I worked at Jim Bakker's PTL Club in Charlotte, NC, and Barb and I faithfully tithed on my $150 per week paycheck (net $111.50), thinking that with every $15 check we wrote we'd get back 100 fold, or $1500, and it couldn't come fast enough. Never did though, and we wondered why.

But we repented of that foolishness when we felt grieved every time we wrote out that check, but didn't know why. One day Barb nailed it. She said that we used to give out of a heart of love, and when we got caught up in the 100 fold return teaching we left love and got into greed, giving expecting a big return right away instead of just giving out of love for God and man - and she was right. As I said, we repented, continued to give, and the Father took care of us, though not with the abundance the preacher said He would. We wondered why.

Back in 1982 I was between churches and took a job with Domino's Pizza. I was 24 years old with a family to support, and the $4.25 per hour made it tough to pay the rent. Just when we needed some cash, I'd get a chance to deliver pizzas which gave me cash and a net hourly pay of about $10. We've always been givers, and we made it through, but we never saw that super abundance our pastor kept saying we'd see. So I started digging in the Word for answers, and asking the Father to show it to me.

What your job does
If you examine the people in the Bible where their jobs are mentioned, you'll find a common fact; Their job puts a roof over their head and not much else. Perhaps I should state it another way: Their jobs alone didn't provide abundance for them. A few examples:
Luke 5:10 says Peter, James, and John were partners in the fishing business, which meant they were business owners, but they were the only 3 employees. They took care of their families, but they weren't rich.

Paul worked as a tent maker in Corinth in Acts 18:1-3 for 18 months or so, the only time he worked a regular job in over 30 years of ministry, but it was needful in Corinth at that time. He partnered with Aquila and Priscilla, but they didn't grow wealthy from it.

When we consider Matthew's job as a tax collector made him sole proprietor and lone employee, and that he could just get up and walk away, shows us he did well enough to support himself, but not above that.

Streams of income
Your job, your single paycheck, should be thought of as a single stream of water flowing towards you. In the Bible, in the examples above, no one gathers wealth by 1 income source, 1 steam flowing towards them.

But there are examples of wealth we can look at to see what God's pattern is. In the book of Job we have just such an example. According to Job 1:3, Job had many streams of income flowing towards him:

7,000 sheep. That meant wool to weave and meat to sell.
3,000 camels. Camels were the semi-trucks, lorries in the King's English, long haul vehicles of the day. That meant Job was into import/export business in long caravans across desert expanses. An average caravan was less than 50 camels, so at any given time he had 60 'trucks' on the caravan road.
500 yoke of oxen, or 1000 oxen. Plus he would have had cows and calves. A yoke of oxen was for plowing fields and grinding grain, so he was a farmer and rancher. He would have had income from milk, cheese, leather, and buying and selling cattle, etc.
500 female donkeys. These were the short haul trucks of his day - local deliveries - individual 'vehicles'.

Look at the streams of income flowing towards him: Wool, mutton, imported goods, more meat, leather, milk, cheese, grain crops, the real estate for that whole operation. Every one of these items is a separate stream flowing towards him. How many streams do you have flowing towards you? How many streams do you have where money is flowing AWAY from you? Cut the outward flow, develop the inward flow.

In chapters 29 & 31 Job talks of how he lived to give and was honest in all his dealings. This included everything from feeding & lodging strangers with his own food, to clothing the needy with his own wool. He was a generous employer and took care of orphans and widows, and God blessed him.

But Job had not 1, but many steams of income flowing towards him, and he built them up over years in concentrated effort, sowing profits back into the business and diversifying as one stream naturally flowed from the original. What I mean by that is the having a cow/calf lends itself to milk, buy a bull and you make more cows, get enough and you can sell meat and milk - one stream is a tributary from the main, and flows TOWARDS you.

For pastors to focus on giving as the end all answer to be blessed financially, is great error and has enslaved many good hearted people. Giving is a part of being financially blessed, but only part. Developing various streams of income is foundational!

Ladies too
Consider the Proverb 31 woman, mentioned in verses 10-31. She owns a weaving business and has employees, and is compared to a merchant ship, meaning she isn't making those linens and wool material for herself, but to sell.

Verse 16 says "She considers a field, and buys it, and with the fruit of her hands (her profit in other words) she plants a vineyard." So she is diversifying to gain other streams of income.

We could make comparisons from Abraham (many streams of income) to Gideon (single stream) to even Jesus, who in Luke 8:3 says many people from various backgrounds gave to support him and his disciples.

If you think your 1 paycheck will make you rich, you are mistaken, unless that income is derived from many streams flowing in. That's just chapter and verse.

Some examples in our day of those streams of income can be retirement plans, stocks and bonds, owning more than 1 business, diversifying a client base, investment in rental properties/land, and so forth.

This principle is the same for businesses. I was asked to provide guidance to a karate studio that was losing money. The owner was the daughter of one of my mom's friends in south Florida, and I could see the problem immediately. She was providing karate instruction to children under the age of 12. That was her sole source of income. She lived among a high concentration of retired people, but catered to kids.

My advice was to meet the needs of her area, and expand to include classes for teens, adults, self protection classes for women, exercise classes in her studio, partner with instructors who would bring clientele in to her shop and work a split on the fees charged, etc. She had never thought of her business as needing several streams of income flowing in.

If a business has 1 main stream, it will dry up, or at least is highly susceptible to changes in the market, just like that employee who's sole source of income is that 1 paycheck from that 1 company.

Putting it together thus far
Last week I shared what the Father taught me about the flow being revelation and wisdom from the Holy Spirit to water our 'crops' - what do you think those creative ideas are for? They are to provide us different streams of income. We have to sort out what ideas work and don't work, as the Proverbs 31 woman 'considered' the field before she invested, but if we do our homework God will bless.

The Father is rarely a get rich quick kind of Father. Rather than depending on miracles to see us through each crises, we are to be in a flow of revelation put to good use to establish different streams of income flowing our way.

Learning what is our responsibility and what is God's, among other things, is the subject for next week.

Blessings,
And once again, remember for personal email to use cwowi@aol.com
John Fenn
www.supernaturalhousechurch. org

Money Wisdon 1

Hi all,
Over the next weeks I'd like to share about what the Bible actually says about finances - and in all probability you've never seen anything like what I'm sharing in these pages.

But first - a small group of us from our Tulsa house churches will be visiting our Arlington, Texas affiliate on Sunday November 14. If you can join us email Jason and Verna Snoddy at snoddyfam@sbcglobal.net.

To the right you'll see links to next Saturday's Webinar (6 Nov) on "The Kingdom of Heaven", part 1 is understanding Jesus as an Oriental King, thus understanding what 'the gospel of the kingdom' is all about. It will explain SO much and help many pieces of your puzzle about God fall into place.

Also a new 2-cd series "What the Bible really says about divorce". There is so much junk teaching out there about divorce, and people don't even realize God Himself is divorced - this series examines why God got divorced, why He gave permission for couples to get divorced, what His intention was, and what Jesus and Paul said about it's place.

Lastly, my new 4-cd series "Salvation Displayed in the Stars" also includes a 36 page study guide. It's about God's original intention when He said in Genesis 1:14 of the stars: "Let them be for signs..." They've been perverted by mythology and horoscopes and such, but this study goes back to the original star names, original pictures portrayed in the constellations, and so much more. (Thus the 36 pg guide). I designed the guide to follow along the cd's as I teach, and also to be read independently for a personal or church Bible study. For anyone wondering about the true meaning in the stars, this is a jaw-dropping study.

Second verse, same as the first
How many times have you tuned out when offering time comes in a traditional church, and the leader says 'Turn to Malachi 3'? Me too. The company line is that if you tithe to the storehouse (traditional church) God will pour blessing out on you that you cannot contain - right? They promise your bank account will overflow, your kids will get saved, you will be healed, promoted, your business deal will go through, you'll sleep better at night, grow your hair back and even lose weight :)

Floodgates explained
Malachi 3:10 says God will "open the floodgates of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there will not be room enough to contain."

I admit I didn't understand what the Lord was saying in this passage until 1987. That's when we moved to a farming community in Southeast Colorado to pastor a church, and local crops were watered by irrigation.

Floodgate is 'head gate' in Hebrew. When we lived in SE Colorado we rented a 14 acre farm, and the owner raised alfalfa on 10 of those acres. A canal flowing from the nearby Arkansas River was about a mile away, and from that canal ran ditches along the road side. Those ditches were called "borrow ditches", because you 'borrowed' the water for your land.

When it was time for your farm to receive water, a man from the water company opened the head gates or flood gates about 1 mile away, and water flowed to your land. The water flowed down the fields in the furrows, and whatever did not soak into the ground flowed to the back of the field and into another ditch, where it flowed to the neighbor's farm, and so on and so on until all the farms were watered.

Not room to contain
Our farm did not have room to contain the blessing that the floodgate/head gate opened for us. The water is the blessing God said He would send that would overflow - I will pour you out a blessing you won't have room to contain. I saw Malachi 3 played out in real life.

Do NOT make the mistake of thinking the blessing is "If I tithe to the storehouse I'll....see a raise at work, close that big deal, show God how seriously I need a financial breakthrough, get my car/life/child/parents fixed and or saved."

All God promises is to pour out WATER to water your crop, He never promised He would increase your crop (your job, your car, your rent, your _____ ). All He promises is to open the flood gate so the water flows.

What is the water then?
Remember everything is based on Christ living in you, and in the Old Testament it was looking forward to these days of Christ in us, so everything is geared towards having Him inside.

Think of the water God pours out. It waters a crop and then the crop grows. Your 'crop' is your bank account, your job, all you own. But what is God's water that He promises to pour out?

What really waters your job, your bank account, your life? Step back and look at it this way; What does water often stand for in scripture? Answer: The Holy Spirit

We know the whole body of Christ operates by revelation from the Father via the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 16:16-19) So the water is revelation from the Holy Spirit that waters your 'crop' - that is what the Father promises to pour out so that you won't have room to contain - revelation from God via the Spirit.

In the work place that means ideas, plans, wisdom for problem solving and finding answers. Can you count the number of times a problem presented itself, you prayed, and suddenly the solution flowed up from your spirit across your mind? That's what I'm talking about - the 'water' is that revelation from the Spirit, which 'waters' your 'crop'.

Chapter and verse please
Remember Jacob and how he peeled bark and placed the 'spotted' branches in front of the animals at the watering trough so that when they mated they'd produce spotted offspring? Know where he got the idea?

That event happened in Genesis 30: 37-43, but in 31:8-13 he says he got that idea in a dream when an angel appeared to him. That 'water', that revelation, caused him to set the branches, which by faith caused the animals to conceive spotted offspring.

Within a few calving and lambing seasons he became so wealthy from that 1 revelation Laban and his agreement to partner with him could not contain the blessing, and he returned to his family. The water was the revelation, the crop was his animals.

Joseph is another example of a man who received such revelation poured out that his life could not contain it. Genesis 41:39-41 says Pharaoh said to Joseph "Since God showed you all this, and there is none so discreet or wise, then you will be in charge of all of my house and Egypt..." The water was the revelation from the interpretation of the dreams, the crop was 7 years of overflowing harvest that fed a nation in famine.

The Proverbs 31 woman, who I'll share more about next week, is seen in verses 10-31, and it says she owns a weaving business. She has employees, she works hard and the demand is so great they have to work into the night to keep up with demand. But then it says "She considers a field...." (v16)

That 'considers a field' is the process of revelation going on in her mind and spirit. That verse goes on to say of the field...'and buys it, and plants a vineyard'. So she has taken the profits of her weaving company, seeks wisdom and revelation about what to do with it, and settles on venturing into the winery business. The water was the 'considers a field', the crop was the new business (and the grace over her existing business).

When Solomon was made king he wanted the nation to receiving God's blessing, so in I Kings 3:2-6 when the Lord appeared to him, he asked for and received wisdom. That's the 'water' that allowed him to prosper, to make right decisions like the famous 'who's baby is it' incident, to the extent he made "...silver as common as stones in the path..." (II Chron 9:27) The water was wisdom in all areas, the crop was a prosperous nation in all areas.

New Testament please
When you realize the water of Malachi 3 represents the revelation of the Holy Spirit being poured out on us, and that in turn waters our 'crops', our jobs, then you'll recognize Jesus operating in this.

Examples include when He told Peter, James and John to cast the nets in deep water in Luke 5: 4-6 and they caught so many fish the boats were overloaded to the point of sinking - they didn't have room to contain them. That wisdom, that revelation, was so overflowing it caused the 'crop' of fish to overflow.

The same of water into wine in John 2, the multitudes fed by a boy's lunch multiplied in John 6, and so on.

We know Jesus was a huge giver, for in John 13:29 when Judas, the treasurer for the group, left at what must have been about 9pm, they all assumed he was leaving to give money to the poor. How many times has someone left you unexpectedly at 9pm and you naturally assumed they were going out to give money to the poor? Exactly. That's how big a giver Jesus was.

In the early church this same 'water', that revelation and wisdom from above, led many in Jerusalem to sell excess lands or properties and give the proceeds, and it was so much they could not contain it - all the needs of all the believers in the city were met and more kept being added! (Acts 4:34-35) The 'water' was the wisdom on what to do with their assets, the 'crop' was all the needs met in the body of Christ in the city.

While God relates to us on the basis of the blood of Jesus, and revelation flows from that, there is a whole other realm of revelation and grace in the lives of those who live to give. The Luke 6:38 statement by Jesus of givers, that it will be given back to givers full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, is merely a re-statement of Malachi 3's overflowing blessing that comes to givers.

Often there is so much revelation it all cannot be acted upon as it would overwhelm us. These things have to be thought through, sorted as to what would work and what would not - run through processes to the point that 'water' can grow a crop, thus blessing the lives of ourselves and others.

Many have gotten an idea, rushed to grow it without doing their homework, thinking just because God gave the idea it will sell - wrong. He gives the 'water', but we have to follow through with diligence.

Joseph did it. He strategically placed storage bins for the overflow and all that entailed . Jacob did it by organizing his animals. The Proverbs 31 woman did it. Jesus operated in it. The church in Acts 2-6 operated in it. Are you a giver? Do you have revelation pouring in your spirit and mind to the point you can't contain all the ideas? Is He pouring that blessing out to the degree you can't contain it sometimes? Then you are just starting to operate in true New Testament giving and receiving as taught in the Word.

I have so many business ideas, inventions, real estate ideas, and have had over the years I could be very rich, but I'm like an OT Levite unable to do that because I'm called in full time ministry. But that doesn't stop 'water' flowing to me - I have more revelation than I can handle.

I'm sure that you too have all sorts of ideas and inventions and wisdom for areas you aren't called to, and some you may be called to. Having revelation isn't a sign you are to do something with it, it's just that our ever creative Father and Lord are so full of life and light, that in every situation that light reveals new things that can be done, new inventions, new ideas...wow, can you imagine how creative the ages to come will be?

BUT...when I start to get low, I pray Paul's prayer of Ephesians 1:17-19, and Colossians 1:9 - fill me with the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation, let the eyes of my understanding be opened, let me be filled with spiritual wisdom and understanding - and I make sure I continue to live a life of giving, for once started on this path, one feeds the other in a never ending flow of revelation and then provision and more revelation...


Blessings, (remember to email me at cwowi@aol.com for personal email)
John Fenn
www.supernaturalhousechurch. org