POVERTY IS NOT A CURSE! JUST AN INCONVENIENCE…

I agonised over writing this reflection for several months. My agony was not from a lack of content, but from a foreboding that it could be widely misunderstood. For I am writing on a multi-faceted and emotive subject within the restriction of a few thousand words. But I can no longer forbear – it will be a worthwhile venture even if only a handful of people see the point I’m trying to make. Here goes:

All over the world, billions of people are consigned to the backwaters of our societies, unable to meet the basic necessities of a decent life – or even afford a decent, balanced meal. Billions of people. Some of them are hard-working, faithful believers in Jesus Christ. Would you look across this huge block of humanity and pronounce them cursed, simply on account of their financial condition? I suspect that your answer will be negative. Deprivation is an inconvenience. But it is not always a curse. Just in the same way that possession is not automatically a blessing. Jesus made this clear in Luke 12:15, when He said a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of what he possesses. There are other more important indices to measure the value of a man’s life. In this respect, it is a LIE to generalise and make this statement, “Poverty is a curse”.

Let me stretch this a little further, in looking at the second aspect of the issue. Some of the most blessed people on earth today are poor. And some of them will die in that state of poverty. These are the people that Jesus Christ has drawn out of their comfort zone to go into obscure and deprived regions of the world to help humanity to know The Way. Or to advance the interest of the Kingdom in frontiers that our generation of fortune-hunting, breakthrough-thirsty believers will not dare to approach – even when it is clear that the Lord may be pointing them in that direction. Who is more susceptible to the ‘curse’ tag; the one that answers the Master’s call and dies in penury, or the one that ducks the call and abounds in the comfy land of material prosperity? In this scenario also, poverty is not a curse.

And so, we ought to drop the generalised nonsense of using the phrase ‘Poverty is a curse’. The phrase was planted in the Church’s lexicon by the greedy multitude of the get-rich-quick preachers that are festering covetousness in the body of Christ. And the goal is simple: to make us FEAR poverty so much that we would avoid it at all costs. This FEAR will benefit them in two ways. First, it propels us to sow financial seeds into their ministries so that we can harvest and become rich (and dodge the poverty ‘curse’). Second, as we move forward in life, our tithes and numerous offerings from our earnings become a regular source of cash flow for the expansion of their kingdom (masqueraded as the expansion of God’s Kingdom). This is how these evil men profit from the FEAR OF POVERTY they have sown in our minds.

Now, let me tell you how the Kingdom suffers from this same FEAR OF POVERTY. First, it causes us, unintentionally, to look down upon the poor in our midst, and in our society. They are the misfits. They are the bad examples of what we do not want to become. Conversely, we look at the rich in the Church, and they are the image of the future we crave and pray for. Proverbs 14:20 captures this brilliantly: “The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich hath many friends.”

The second disadvantage of this fear is even much more insidious and devastating to a disciple of Jesus Christ. For, subconsciously, it programmes our minds this way: ‘if it is good and shiny, it is God’, ‘if it is hard and imposes hardship, it is the devil’. That is, if it involves suffering, it must be from the devil. That is why this crazy song is very popular in Pentecostal circles, “Me, I no go suffer.…” Yet the truth is that some of the most sublime callings (in terms of selflessness) that the Lord will give His disciples WILL involve suffering. Much suffering. The type of suffering that caused Him to leave His throne of glory to die a miserable death on a dusty road in Golgotha. It is along this unappealing path that He invites us to follow Him.

This is the way that Apostle Paul starts that popular passage in Philippians 2:5-9, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus….”. But how many believers today have this type of mindset? We are quick to rejoice in, and proclaim the fact that Jesus has a name that is highly exalted above every other name. But how many of us truly want the type of mind that got him to that exalted position? How many are willing to leave their glorious mansions in the city to go to a deprived community in the middle of nowhere – NOT TO DIE FOR THEM, but just to preach the Gospel to them! And, probably live with them to face what they face, and eat what they eat. Is that the mindset of the believers that the corporation-churches today are breeding in their millions.

Yet, “LET THIS MIND BE IN YOU…” is not a request, it is a divine imperative that is at the very heart of Christianity. Tamper with this mindset, and you have removed the soul of Christianity. And that is what the devil has done, and continues to foster, with the fear-inducing mantra ‘Poverty is a curse!’

This will become a huge issue in the days ahead as the Lord begins to raise His end-time army. He will render some of them poor, not as a punishment, but as an inseparable part of their service package for the Kingdom. Ask the countless missionaries that left the affluence of the western world to die in the mosquito-infested backwater of African villages. That was how the Gospel reached us in the contemporary times. Ask also the direct Apostles of Christ who had to forsake all to follow Him (Matthew 19:29). Particularly, ask Apostle Paul who suffered the ‘loss of all things’ (Philippians 3: dear to him that he may ‘finish his course with joy’ (Acts 20:24).

If the rich young ruler had agreed to follow Jesus in Mark 10:17-22, the relationship would have undoubtedly impoverished him. But, like the ‘wise’ believers of today, he also probably believed that ‘poverty is a curse’, so he quickly backed away from Jesus. (Just as many of us have backed away from Him today in reality – though we are still in Church, warming the bench and keeping up a false image of being a disciple.) Also, it is difficult to imagine that following Jesus did not cost Zacchaeus his wealth. By the time he gave half of his property to the poor, and made the restitution of giving his victims four-fold of what he took from them, it is easy to imagine that there would be little left for a man that presumably made his wealth by swindling people (Luke 19:1-10). This is the blessing, and joy of poverty that many of us today may never know because of our fear-of-poverty mentality.

Furthermore, Jesus appeared to have been very comfortable with the poor, He didn’t tell them they were cursed. To the poor faithful believers in Revelation 2:9 , He said, “YOU ARE RICH!”. On the other hand, he described the wealthy, affluent church of Laodicea as ‘poor’ (Revelation 3:17). Jesus never condemned the poor, or encourage them to pursue material wealth, rather, He taught the rich in the church to take adequate care of the poor in their midst. They were not to look down on them, or ill-treat them (James 2:1-.

Please let me be clear. Jesus did not come to consign His disciples to a life of poverty. But neither did He come to declare a Dollar-splash as a reward for discipleship or godliness. Again and again, He cautioned against the danger of material wealth. He taught His hearers not to lay their treasures on earth, but to send it upward by giving (not to His ministry!), but to the poor. He taught that our material possessions have no bearing with the value of our lives. Apostle Paul was clear in warning that the pursuit of material wealth will lead many into perdition (1 Timothy 6:6-11). Today, most of our greedy, prosperity-focussed general overseers have turned all these truths upside down. Virtually everywhere you go, you will find believers that are thirsting to become overnight millionaires – purportedly as an evidence of the goodness of God.

God is able to make any believer wealthy, very wealthy. But that is if wealth is a required component of the calling of such a believer. Such people will not labour excessively to make money, for money will come to them by grace. Not all of us are called into this category. Generally speaking, Jesus did not promise his believers abundance of material wealth. What He promised, and confirmed through the mouth of Apostle Paul, is that He will meet our needs (Matthew 6:31-33, Philippians 4:19). He didn’t promise to satisfy our wants or insatiable appetite for the glitterati of the world. He has financially blessed some believers so that they can be a blessing to the rest of the body. But some of these channels have become very greedy; tossing a few crumbs to the table of the poor, and satisfying their own lust for material acquisition. No wonder Jesus said it will be difficult for the rich to make heaven! The day it becomes clear to us that the purpose of being granted wealth is to make us distributors of God’s goodness to His people (not just to consume it on our wants), that is the day that we will stop chasing wealth-at-all-costs. For many will thereby perish. I repeat this: material prosperity is not for every believer!

Are you hoping to be used by God in these last days? Please re-adjust your mindset. If your mind is set on the glitz and glamour of life or ministry, you may never hear the still, small voice calling you to be God’s agent to the thousands of children dying daily from neglect in the areas that the corporation-churches have abandoned. IT TAKES HAVING THE MIND OF CHRIST TO HEAR THE VOICE OF CHRIST. And that voice, at times, may choose to “carry you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18). The condition that Jesus set for discipleship is clear: “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him DENY HIMSELF, and TAKE UP HIS CROSS daily, and FOLLOW ME. (Luke 9:23). It is not about what we want – it is all about what HE WANTS.

Are you called to be poor so that you can better serve God and humanity, please embrace the call. And wear your badge of poverty with gratitude and honour until God changes your condition (if He chooses to do so), or until He calls you home to glory. In this, Christ is truly glorified, and mankind is truly blessed. Please be a blessing – in prosperity or in poverty.

Thanks for reading, God bless.

POVERTY is not only a curse, its a SIN.

New International Version (2 cor 8:9)
For you know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that though he was rich,
yet for your sake he became poor, so
that you through his poverty might
become rich..

Suffice to say that all Poor people will go to hell..

Maybe not all, 98percent.

--

Poverty indeed is not a curse. Many of Christ's disciples were and are poor. Like James rightly said, Has God not chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith, to be heirs of his kingdom?
This is not saying that the rich aren't saved too, but that many true Christians live and die without wealth.

God may prosper a believer for the purposes of advancing his Kingdom, or make them pass through poverty to build in them such faith that they never would have had had he made them rich.

So many false churches in this country led by GOs and pastors who have not been converted. They are self righteous, covetous pharisees masking as wolves in sheep's clothing.

And they deceive people by twisting the Scriptures to suit their selfish ambitions.

I can't wait for the Lord to return, and see many of them crying out for the rocks to fall on them to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb.

May our Lord Jesus guide and protect his little flock in this country.