Obedience And Prosperity

9 “I will look favorably upon you, making you fertile and multiplying your people. And I will fulfill my covenant with you.
10 You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need to clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest!
Leviticus 26:9-10(NLT)

The above are a part of Moses’ Law in the Bible. Is it still relevant to us? The answer is yes on two counts. First, when Jesus died at the Cross, he only took away the curse of the Law. The Law is not only about curses alone. It has blessings as well. As Jesus took our sins, we take upon his holiness. As such, all Christians are pre-qualified for the blessings of the Law, which include the above blessing.

Secondly, it tells us the mentality of the Israelites from Moses’ time until Jesus and the early church. They associate holiness and obedience to God with prosperity. Leviticus 26:10 speaks of real physical prosperity, not spiritual. The Jews do not separate prosperity into physical and spiritual. Spiritual prosperity always brings upon its physical equivalent. Therefore it is totally impossible for the Bible not to tell us that God wants us to be rich. The idea that says God wants us to be poor is nothing more than the invention of theology, which is a lie from the pit of hell.

What can we learn from the above verses? It tells us that our God’s will is not just to provide for our needs alone. He loves to provide exceedingly and abundantly above all we dare to hope or ask for. Your barn may still be filled with last year’s harvest but that does not stop God from giving you more harvest this year until you have a problem on finding space for that new harvest. This is the abundant prosperity God wants us to have.

Knowing this truth will give us confidence to go through life’s challenges. All of us have challenges especially in today’s situation. Right now, we have the worst recession plus an outbreak of swine flue. In Singapore, we already have 11 cases. The situation certainly looks bad. However, as Christians we are not limited by the situation around us. We have the Almighty God on our side who loves to give us more harvests than we have the space to store them. In other words, the only problem God wants us to have is to be in a situation where we have more money than we know where to put them. Who cares about the recession or the swine flue? Our God is greater than them all.

If you happen to be affected by the situation around you, God wants you to know that he has not forgotten about you. In fact he is working behind the scenes right now to deliver you. All he asks you to do is not to give up hope and continue to trust in him. He wants you to live by faith and expect to see the manifestation of his blessings in your life. When you obey him in this area, you will yourself in the position to receive all the prosperity he wants you to have. Your poverty will turn into prosperity. Your sickness will turn into health. Your failures will turn into success.

This is the result of obedience.