This lesson was taught by the founding Pastor Willie George at a men’s breakfast at Church On The Move, Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 5, 2019 #000279

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Men and Money – Part 1 of 3

By Pastor Willie George

I want to talk to you about money. The reason I want to talk to you about money is I know it’s been neglected. Jesus said “for the children of this world in dealing with their fellow man act with more business sense than those who have the light.“ Wonder why that is?

I think when you become a believer you almost think that all you got to do is have your relationship with God right and all the money stuff will work itself out. But that’s not really the truth. It doesn’t happen that way, and if it did Jesus wouldn’t of said what he said. Jesus is the one who said that God‘s people don’t understand money very well. Now, the Scriptures are full of warnings about people going trying to get money. Here’s one, 1 Timothy 6:9: “people who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge man into ruin and distraction.“

So here’s a warning, there’s a temptation to think that you shouldn’t even bother to do anything about money. Not true, it’s because we don’t rightly divide the word of truth. We don’t look at everything scripture has to say about money.

 Let’s look at a Proverbs for just a moment, in chapter 8. “Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice? I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently ind me“. This is wisdom talking, “with me is wisdom, riches and honor. “with me are riches and honor, enduring wealth and prosperity. My fruit is better than fine gold; and surpasses choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, bestowing wealth on those who love me and making their treasuries full.“

Wisdom, is Gods Currency. Not the dollar, not the peso, not the euro. Wisdom, is Gods currency. So when God gives people a blessing financially it does not come in the form of dollars first. That’s how we would like to get it, but God‘s kingdom doesn’t work that way

Money Comes from Properly Applied Wisdom.

The Bible doesn’t say that God gives us money. In fact, it says in Deuteronomy 8:18 “Remember the Lord your God for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so command or confirms his covenant which he swore to your forefathers as it is this day. “

He doesn’t give us money, but he gives us the power to get it. When we begin to readjust our thinking to what the Bible teaches about money, it changes how we pursue our finances. Most people don’t know how to get it. Most people don’t know how it comes. Here’s what Paul said to the Philippians,“moreover as you Philippians know in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel when I sent out from Macedonia, not one Church shared with me in the matter “, listen to this, “in the matter of giving and receiving, but you only.“

So Paul was saying here that this financial teaching that he had in Scripture, was not just about giving, There’s not a church you can go to anywhere where they don’t teach about giving. Some better than others, some more frequently than others, but we get taught about giving all the time. But very little do we get any kind of education about how to receive, and that’s as much a part of the gospel as is the giving side. Unfortunately, this is about the sum of what most people learn at church about receiving.

Giving and Receiving

When the preacher is talking about giving and he wants to give an illustration abut how God gives back to you, and he gets up and says, “somebody I didn’t even know gave me a $10,000 check, walked right up and just gave it to me. We had to have the money the next day and God sent that person to us.“

So they give you a false impression. You as a businessman you go back out into your world and you’re thinking OK if I really had strong faith, I guess someone would come up and give me money and it usually doesn’t happen. Can I tell you that most people don’t get up in the morning thinking about ways to give you their money? I can be pretty confident in saying I don’t know that anybody is thinking about giving you their money, and you’re not thinking about how you can give your money to someone else. That’s not how money works, and what I want you to see is that we’ve got to learn how this works.

When you go to work out, depending on the time of year, depending on the conditions, sometimes you’re going to sweat a whole lot more than others. So you can’t measure the success of your work out by how much you sweat. It may be a little cooler outside and you’re jogging, so you sweat, but not nearly as much as you would in the summertime. Money is a byproduct of wisdom. You operate in wisdom and as a result money starts coming to you, sometimes more than others. So if you are pursuing wisdom first Money is not going to be number one in your life. And so what I want you to see is that we got to learn to think right.

Converting Wisdom to Money

Money has to be converted. It doesn’t come to us in the refine form. I learned this when I first got saved and I would drive to church without enough gas in my tank to get home. But I had to get there and I knew I did, and I would pray for God to supply my need to get gas money. And I would open my wallet at the end of service and see if he put anything in there, and I know that sounds stupid but I grew up in a situation where I had no adults really speaking into my life, I had a lot of silly ideas. But what I started seeing is that God would touch the hearts of people in our church, and they would come and hand me five dollars, or $10, and I would see that was the hand of God. So I thought If I had real faith, he would just create the money. But if he would have, he’d have been a counterfeiter. God’s not going to create money and stick it in your wallet or stick it in your bank account. That’s not how money works, money flows through people. Now, it has to be converted. Everything you see constructed around you was here when God created the garden of Eden on this planet. But it didn’t look formed yet. The glass window you look out of, that was on a beach somewhere in the sand, all of the steel we use to construct things was in the heart of the earth. Everything that we see here,was here, but it didn’t look like this. It had to be converted.

One of the best ways to think about money is to think about electricity. Electricity doesn’t do you any good unless it comes to you in a channel. Now years before man learn to harness electricity, they discovered electricity, but they didn’t know what they could do with it. And even to this day there has not been a really successful conversion for using and harnessing lightning, it’s not something we been able to do, unless there something that just recently happened. It shows some promise because there is tremendous amount of energy in lightning, and I suppose maybe someday they’ll find someway to capture it, but right now we don’t do that. But electricity doesn’t start as electricity, it starts out as coal or natural gas or hydroelectric dam with the ability to spin turbines that generate electricity or we have steam fired engines in the coal and gas plants. That’s how our electricity come it’s converted and so money has to be converted.