A Fresh Look at Biblical Prosperity - a podcast by Hari Rao

Let me start by defining my goals for this series: 



1- To teach Biblical truths on money, prosperity, and blessings. 2- To share how you can prosper in your life in a holistic way. 3- To make this series as practical and pragmatic as possible. 



My hope is that as you journey along through this series you would be able to take back more than just head knowledge and information but actually take back practical steps to grow in your finances. 



In this first segment, I’d like to lay the foundation by sharing a few thoughts with you. There’s an exaggerated, imbalanced, divisive emphasis on this topic of poverty and prosperity. 



When you listen to thought leaders in the Christian world today and many of them seem to have an exaggerated focus and imbalanced way of teaching and sadly the worst is that these teachings can be divisive in nature and can potentially cause damage in the body of Christ. Rather, my heart through this series is I’d like to show a more excellent way to personal finances that exist in the Bible which I believe is balanced and rewarding. I’d like to call this idea/concept: The Stewardship of Finances. 



What Does it really mean to be blessed vs. broke? 



If we don’t define these ideas we’ll have a very subjective understanding of these topics. Depending on who you’re asking the question to the answer will vary depending on where that person is in terms of life experience and circumstance. We must come to a place where we understand and define what Biblical prosperity looks like. 



What does it mean to be poor? If you’re in a place in life where you don’t have enough money to fulfill every assignment God has given for you then there’s a definite lack of resources. You’re in a place of lack if you can’t fulfill your God-given assignment because of insufficient resources and if you can’t take care of the family God has entrusted you with. God’s ideal best also aren’t living from paycheck to paycheck. 



What does it mean to be blessed?



To be blessed by God is a far greater and superior thing than to simply be rich financially. To be blessed by God means a lot more than just having a healthy bank balance. You’ll see throughout Scripture that there have been people that weren’t necessarily very rich according to societal standards and yet were considered blessed by God because they had the favor of God on their lives. 



The blessing of God isn’t just about having money, the fullness of the blessing is His favor on the life of a man/woman. It’s about the measure of God’s presence that carries favor in the life of that person. 



If you only measure based on materialism and money you’ll miss the point. Of course, the blessing of God does also include financial prosperity but is not limited to it because His blessings are far greater and bigger than that. There are spiritual blessings that God can release that add weight and depth to your life that causes things to work in your favor. 



Let’s consider the life of Joseph in the Bible, the Word of God tells us that the Lord was with him, but a lot of times, especially in the first part of his life, you probably wouldn’t consider his situation blessed. He was imprisoned and sold as a slave and yet through all those seasons the Bible still says the Lord’s presence was with him. Because of God’s favor on his life, irrespective of the situations he was put in, he always found a way to come up in life. He always found a way to prosper, to grow, to go higher in life and that is the proof of the blessing of God.

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