The laws of money 4

This week concludes the four-part series of discourse on the guiding principles that make money and wealth possible. Before my own personal encounter with the Lord in this regard, I lived like everybody else. At that point our church was making 20,000 US dollars a month, yet before the end of the month we were already in the red. It was catastrophic, until the lord pointed out to me to read the story of the parable of servants in Matthew 25:13-30 again. While reading the story, I kept on comforting myself that I was a good servant, because I had a big church at that time and people were grateful to me for the changes and differences God has used me to make in their lives.

What a shock it was to me when God told me that in this story I wasn’t the good servant! I was not even the second servant that got two talents. What totally devastated me was when the Lord told me that I was worse than the last servant whom He condemned in that parable. My sense of pride and self-worth was so much offended that I was angry with God momentarily. I felt it was by all means unfair to have compared me to a wicked and lazy servant. But to now say I was worse than him totally shattered and ruined my day. I needed a proof and an explanation. Then God began to take me to school.

He said, at least in the case of the wicked and lazy servant, he was smart enough not to spend everything that his master trusted into his hand. In my case however, I was spending over 20,000 thousand US dollars on needs and bills, thinking I had excuses. I could not get myself to save talk less of multiplying. The Lord also reminded me that there was a time I was making only 2,000 US dollars in a month.

At that time I had prayed to God that He should increase me. My belief was that if God could only help me make 5,000 US dollars in a month, I was going to be grateful and that will be more than enough for me. Guess what? God answered that prayer, but once we started making 5,000 US dollars, the needs were already overwhelming, so much that that amount was again not enough, because I was not following the laws of money. When you don’t abide by the laws of money and like in my case you don’t even know them, this means that caterpillars and cankerworms are always standing by to consume the little that you make.

Here I was again rushing to God in prayers to increase our income to 10,000 US dollars. I was sure that if we could earn 10,000 US dollars we would never be in need again. Well, you can guess what happened. My rude awakening happened when we were already making 20,000 US dollars and yet not meeting our needs. God’s conviction was so strong that I had no option but to break down in sorrow and repentance.

The stroke that broke the camel’s back came when I told the Lord, I know I am not lazy by any standard, but you spoke of that man as being lazy. At that point I was working for 18 hours a day. How can I be working for 18 hours and still be called lazy? Again the lord came to my rescue, He said by being lazy, He was talking about my refusal to think; laziness of the mind in relations to money. He said the laws and the principles of managing money were out there; I should not have been lazy to go in search of them and my failure to develop myself in the question of finances was also a form of laziness.

The fact that I did not bother to study financial matters or even go for financial consultations all pointed in the direction of this laziness – mental laziness. I thought I had an excuse. My argument was: “I am a pastor, I want to face my business. Besides I have never heard any pastor preach or teach on this.” But the Lord told me: “That is not an excuse and you are answerable only to only me. I have all forms of knowledge out there for anyone that is diligent enough to ask, seek and knock.”

This revelation changed my life for good. Right from there, I called the board of our church and I declared to them that we were going to cut a lot of our expenses with a significant part of our income going to savings and eventually into investments. That was another huddle I needed to surmount, because my board said, “we are a church, and we don’t do investment, we only spend, we don’t invest or multiply.”

To cut the long story short, I was able to get the church to start by putting aside the first ten percent of all that came in for savings and investments. We gradually moved from there to thirty percent of all that came in for savings and investments. As a result, I was able to make our church a millionaire church in one year, which is in surplus. After attaining this with the church, I dared to challenge myself to make my first million US dollars in the next two years. I studied all I could on the subject. With my experience from helping the church make money; I was surprised when after nine months I was able to make my first million US dollars instead of two years.

Next in my target, I decided to prove the efficacy of these principles by helping my church members become millionaires. I started with ordinary people and by the grace of God in the next three years, I was able to raise 200 millionaires in US dollars from within our congregation. Yes, the die had been cast. The Lord was right after all. I had learnt my lessons. No more going back.

Ladies and gentlemen, why am I taking my time to go into all these details? I simply want to help you to understand that if we could open the eyes of our people in Africa and other developing countries to know the laws of money, then we can indeed help our continent. I am convinced that giving out food or money will not last for long, but if we will change the approach to money in our people, we will have empowered them to be forever free. Ignorance indeed is the only killer around. “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” Hosea 4:6.

It is what we don’t know that is killing us. Because of ignorance, most people waste money; others spend money, while only a few invest money. Looking back, I can actually see now that even in my 40-hut village of Idomila, with the abject poverty around, I could have had enough, if only I had known these laws of money. Nobody could have been living in the type of poverty that I grew up in if only we had been educated in the rudiments of the laws of money.

It is therefore my belief that the true key to financial liberty for our continent and the world at large is to bring the knowledge of the laws of money to become a common subject in schools, governments, institutions, community centers, cultural centers, churches, mosques, etc. If we could teach our people not just to know these laws, but to religiously observe them, we would have dealt a heavy blow to the dragon of poverty in our world.