What is Prosperity?
Prosperity is the state of thriving, flourishing, and experiencing success or good fortune. While it is most commonly associated with financial wealth and economic abundance, a broader definition encompasses health, happiness, personal fulfillment, and peace of mind.
Key Dimensions of Prosperity
- Financial & Material: Having sufficient resources, meeting needs with surplus, and experiencing economic success.
- Health & Well-Being: Physical vitality, mental clarity, and emotional balance.
- Personal Growth & Peace: A sense of purpose, positive life experiences, and the freedom to pursue joy.
God is not opposed to His people being prosperous, but He is opposed to His people being covetousness.
Covetousness is a strong, often excessive desire to possess wealth, material goods, or something that belongs to someone else. It is rooted in discontentment and is often accompanied by envy, acting as an intense longing for what others have.
Core Characteristics of Covetousness
- The “I want it” factor: An insatiable eagerness to acquire things.
- Discontentment: A feeling that what you currently have is never enough, often fixated on the property of others.
- Lust for ownership: Desiring material goods without a willingness to do the proper, honest work to earn them.
For something to be Scriptural, you must be able to find it in the Scriptures. AND you must be able to find it in more than one place.
Matthew 18:16 NKJV But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY WORD MAY BE ESTABLISHED.’
Prosperity Defined:
3 John 1:1-2 NKJV The Elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth: (2) Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.
3 John 1:2 AMPC Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in every way and [that your body] may keep well, even as [I know] your soul keeps well and prospers.
3 John 1:2 TPT Beloved friend, I pray that you are prospering in every way and that you continually enjoy good health, just as your soul is prospering.
There is a connection between your soul prospering and your natural material man prospering.
Prosperity does not begin in your bank accounts. Prosperity does not begin in your wallet or purse.
Prosperity begins in your spirit and soul.
This is the problem with programs that try and help people financially and materially. It might temporarily address natural circumstances but does not change anything on the inside of the people they help. Therefore, in the long term, people are not helped to get out of their current circumstances.
How does your soul prosper? The Word of God is what makes your soul to prosper.
God is not about pushing people down – He is about pulling people up!
No matter how bad your natural circumstances are, God wants to make them better.
No matter how good your natural circumstances are, God wants to make them better.
I have never seen anyone in the Scriptures, that had a true heart-felt encounter with the Lord, stay the same.
We are going to prosper outwardly as we prosper inwardly!
2 Corinthians 9:8 NKJV And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.
2 Corinthians 9:8 AMPC And God is able to make all grace (every favor and earthly blessing) come to you in abundance, so that you may always and under all circumstances and whatever the need be self-sufficient [possessing enough to require no aid or support and furnished in abundance for every good work and charitable donation].
Kenneth Copeland – True prosperity is the ability to use the power of God to meet the needs of mankind in every realm of life: spirit, soul, body, financially and socially.
2 Corinthians 9:8 TPT Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything—every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.
2 Corinthians 9:8 TLB God is able to make it up to you by giving you everything you need and more so that there will not only be enough for your own needs but plenty left over to give joyfully to others.
2 Corinthians 9:8 20th CENTURY TRANSLATION – God has power to shower all kinds of 8 blessings upon you, so that, having, under all circumstances and on all occasions, all that you can need, you may be able to shower all kinds of benefits upon others. (As Scripture says — (9) ‘ He scattered broadcast, he gave to the poor ; His righteousness continues for ever.’
2 Corinthians 9:8 (Moffatt) God is able to bless you with ample means, so that you may always have quite enough for any emergency of your own and ample besides for any kind act to others;
Prosperity is having ability.
Prosperity is having options.
More Definitions: Poverty –
Hebrew: destitution, want, to ruin, disinherit, dispossess, expel,
Inadequate, insufficient, scarce, scant, small
Greek: beggary, indigence (If you experience indigence, you have a critical need for food, money, and other resources.) that which is behind; Penury: a noun that means extreme poverty, destitution, or a severe and oppressive lack of resources.
Psalms 37:25 NKJV I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread.
You have to despise (to regard someone or something with a deep, intense dislike, combined with a total lack of respect) that which you want to come out of!
- You must despise sin!
- You must despise strife!
- You must despise sickness and disease!
- You must despise poverty!
Prosperity (Hebrew and Greek): to advance; to push forward and make progress; to help down the road, to succeed in reaching, successful; thriving; abundance (John 10:10)
There is a misbelief that if you begin to accumulate things materially, that you are destined to backslide and lose your salvation.
1 Timothy 6:5-10 AMPC And protracted wrangling and wearing discussion and perpetual friction among men who are corrupted in mind and bereft of the truth, who imagine that godliness or righteousness is a source of profit [a moneymaking business, a means of livelihood]. From such withdraw. (6) [And it is, indeed, a source of immense profit, for] godliness accompanied with contentment (that contentment which is a sense of inward sufficiency) is great and abundant gain. (7) For we brought nothing into the world, and obviously we cannot take anything out of the world; (8) But if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content (satisfied). (9) But those who crave to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish (useless, godless) and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction and miserable perishing. (10) For the love of money is a root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have been led astray and have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves through with many acute [mental] pangs.
The first step that is going get you headed to Godly Prosperity is to be rooted and grounded in the will of God (for you).
Romans 4:20-21 AMPC No unbelief or distrust made him waver (doubtingly question) concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong and was empowered by faith as he gave praise and glory to God, (21) Fully satisfied and assured that God was able and mighty to keep His word and to do what He had promised.
You can never get too assured or confident in the will of God for your life.
What Kind of God Do We Serve?
Is He a God of poverty or prosperity?
What kind of God did Abraham know?
Genesis 17:1-4 NKJV When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless. (2) And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.” (3) Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying: (4) “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations.
Did God multiply Abraham?
“I am the Almighty God” – “El Shaddai” – “El” emphasizes God’s might and power. “Shaddai” – the root of this word is “breast” like a woman’s breast.
Genesis 49:25-26 NKJV By the God of your father who will help you, And by the Almighty who will bless you With blessings of heaven above, Blessings of the deep that lies beneath, Blessings of the breasts and of the womb. (26) The blessings of your father Have excelled the blessings of my ancestors, Up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. They shall be on the head of Joseph, And on the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brothers.
Shaddai – signifies nourishment, supply, and satisfaction. An infant’s total source of supply is the breast of his mother. That is what God is to us.
He is mighty to nourish, supply, and satisfy.
He is our complete source and supply.
When you understand this, you no longer look to people to meet our needs. You no longer put pressure on people to meet our needs.
This is the God Abraham knew.
I will always be fed because He can never and will never run out.
Another Thing Abraham Saw in God
Genesis 22:7-14 NKJV But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (8) And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together. (9) Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. (10) And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. (11) But the Angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” So he said, “Here I am.” (12) And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” (13) Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. (14) And Abraham called the name of the place, The-LORD-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”
“Jehovah” – the name of God meaning “the self-existent One”
“Jireh” – Sees
Pre-vision and Pro-vision – God is the Provider that makes provision for what He sees before
yehôvâh yir’eh
BDB Definition:
Jehovah-jireh = “Jehovah sees”
1) symbolic name given by Abraham to Mount Moriah in commemoration of the interposition of the angel of Jehovah who prevented the sacrifice of Isaac and provided a substitute
yehōwāh yir’eh: A proper noun designating Jehovah Jireh, a name given to designate the Lord by Abraham for providing a sacrifice in place of Isaac (Gen_22:14). It means “the Lord will see to it” literally but also means “the Lord will provide.”
God saw ahead what was going to be needed and provided the supply.
God is never surprised by your need!