Sunday Sermon By Pastor Rajesh Mathew, 30 April, 2023 

Worship is nothing but connecting with the Lord in our spirit and soul.

Deuteronomy 8: 18- 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today. 

Mathew 11:5-6- 5 The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy[a] are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. 6 Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” 

• Preach the good news to the poor. There is an anointing in that preaching, the same Jesus who cast out demons, and healed the sick is saying “preach this Good News to the Poor” so that the bondage of poverty will be broken.
• Deuteronomy 8 says to remember the God Jehovah who confirms his covenant by giving you the power to have wealth! 

Wealth is not bad. If it was, God wouldn’t give you the power to produce it. • Wealth in itself is nothing wrong. How you use it is what is important.

God is giving you an anointing from this Word to have wealth.

WHY DOES GOD GIVE YOU WEALTH? 

• He does so that He can confirm his covenant with His children. God is not saying I will give them peace but God says I will give them power to make wealth.

When I married my wife 10 years ago, I made a covenant with her. I also made promises. I asked her what she wanted and she said ‘take me out for a dosa once every week’! If I keep those promises, I am securing my covenant with her. You may have made many promises to your wife when you got married like ‘I will get you a good car or build a good house for you’. When you keep those promises you are confirming your covenant with her. Similarly, God made a covenant with His people. The Lord says I will confirm and secure that covenant but send you an anointing that will help you obtain wealth to fulfil your desires, in line with MY plans for you.

• There is an anointing of the Holy Spirit that will help you make wealthy. 
• God knows Money is important. It has its own strengths, it is very powerful. Delilah gave up Samson for money. She was a nice person. She was in love with a man called Samson but money changed her. This good lady became an untrustworthy and bad person for money. Judas was a disciple but just for 30 silver coins, he betrayed Jesus.
• In Mathew 28, Jesus died on the Cross and rose again. The first person who saw the resurrection were the soldiers at the tomb. They were afraid and they went running and told the leaders about it. The leaders told them to lie about the resurrection. They told them that they would pay them money if they lied and spread false news that the Body of Jesus was taken away by the disciples. If the soldiers could change the story about such an important event like the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, just for the sake of money, money sure has power!! 
• Money is important, not to speak false testimonies but to serve God. For the gospel to spread we need money. To buy a land and to spread the work of the ministries, we need money. Money is needed even for a good sound system. 

That’s why God says I will establish my covenant with you by empowering you to make money and to prosper. Holy Spirit ‘Anoint me to make wealth’. 

There is a book in Amazon titled ‘Money is an Idiot’.  It has no mind of its own. It can also make people idiots. You can’t allow money to control you but you should control money and that happens when you have the grace of God. Money doesn’t have a religion, it doesn’t have honour. Does it say goodbye to you when it leaves your pockets that has housed it for months? No, it doesn’t. Money doesn’t honour qualifications. That’s why even PHD holders struggle for money.

Prayer doesn’t bring money, but a consciousness that we are not called to be poor does! 

• In Mathew 16 Jesus says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom. There are different keys. Keys for healing – lay your hands on the sick, agree in faith, apply anointed oil, the prayer of agreement. There is a key to casting out demons in the Name of Jesus, there are keys to break your bondage and curse - The power of Jesus’s Cross and His precious Blood.

However, the key that brings financial deliverance is not prayer but the awareness and revelation/ conviction that you are not called to be poor and broken, be begging for money or be put to shame. But the truth that God is sufficient for all you need. He will supply ALL my needs according to His riches in Glory.

THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS MONEY

1. Knowledge and awareness

If the knowledge and awareness that God is enough for all my needs, come into your life, along with it will flow the anointing to make wealth and prosper. Along with that key, may the Lord give you the anointing. 

2. Absolute surrender

Job 22:21-24- Now acquaint yourself with Him, and be at peace; Thereby good will come to you. 22 Receive, please, instruction from His mouth, And lay up His words in your heart. 23 If you return to the Almighty, you will be built up/prosper; You will remove iniquity far from your tents. 24 Then you will lay your gold in the dust, And the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brooks. Yes, the Almighty will be your [e]gold And your precious silver; 26 For then you will have your delight in the Almighty, And lift up your face to God. 

• If you read these scriptures carefully, it shows what brings prosperity. And it says in verse 26 that you will delight in the Almighty. A child of God who is prospered by the Lord will delight in the Lord and not in the money. Your joy is to worship Him, is to obey Him, to love Him, to walk with Him, to dwell in Him. And if you do that, Good and prosperity shall come to you.

God doesn’t want your offering. God wants your heart. 

• Give your heart to Jesus. The heart of man or woman is dangerous. If your heart is not for God then the blessings that God gives you can destroy you.

2 Corinthians 8:5- 5 And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us by the will of God. They first gave themselves to God. They surrendered. 

If God doesn’t have your heart, you are not ready to prosper. 

I was speaking to a few people and was telling them a few things:

• If you are not able to give back to God what HE has given you, then you should be able to tell God, “God, don’t give that to me”. It may be a car, a house, family life, children, or wealth, you should believe that this is what God has given, and it belongs to God. If you are not able to believe and say this from your heart then you cannot experience the richness of this anointing.

Whatever you give me God I will give it back to you, can you truly say this? 

• Whether it is your business, gold mine, oil well, share market, health, or long life. This is what God has given me and this belongs to God. 
• If you can say that, you are at the right place as a believer to enjoy the richness of His anointing and His blessing.
• It may just be one coconut tree, goat or cattle if you can truly say that this is given by the Lord and belongs to you only Lord and be able to give it back, you are on track.

Also remember that if you say that, God will test youin that regard. 

• God gave Abraham Isaac, he was the son of the promise. One morning, the Lord asked Abraham to sacrifice that his only son on top of the Mountain. I am amazed at what the Word says- Early next morning, Abraham took his son and went. Can you imagine that? If it were me, I would have fasted and prayed for one week to be sure that this is truly the voice of God. I would have thought it is the devil asking me for God’s blessing. Abraham being the father of faith knew that he could trust God with HIS intentions. God Could turn even this for His good. God could bring back his son to life even if he was sacrificed and his blood was shed! That is faith! 
• Even if God tests you in this matter, wake up early and say “Yes Lord. Here I am Lord. Take what belongs to You. if yes, He will reveal Himself as Jehovah Jireh!!” 

Isaac was Abraham’s future. He was willing to give that to God. 

We have to learn as a believer to respect the place of surrender. When you are surrendered, God can trust you with anything! 

• Many people get blessed and that very blessing takes them away from the Lord. You have a baby and you can’t even pray anymore. Don’t say that. If this is given by God, the baby also belongs to God.

God has given us three children and the fourth is on the way. We can’t reduce our time with God because of that. Our worship and ministry have only increased and not reduced. Lord, you have the first place. You have the most important place. We will glorify you.

• May the Lord’s special anointing come upon you. When God blesses our bank account, we find it difficult to give. It is easier to give when we have little. We gave 100 Rs before and now when we have 10 lakhs in our account, we still give only 100 Rs.

When we first bought this church land, we stood outside the registration office and prayed. I think the admin team will remember this. We prayed and said the Lord gave this to us and that if God wanted us to give this land to some other ministry, we would be ready to do so.

• The place of your surrender before God is what will bring the blessings of God into your life. The devil came and said if you worship me, I will give you the kingdoms of the earth. Even the 

devil wants to be worshipped but if you choose to worship only the Lord, if you do not miss Sunday service, if you do not stop carrying your Bible, you will be blessed. 

• You need to give up your chequebook before God and bless Him.

God gives you wealth to accomplish God’s purpose on earth. If you have a surrendered heart, you will be like a MONEY MAGNET 

Every blessing and wealth and every kind of godly prosperity will get attracted to you. it will follow up. I sense that grace flowing. The Lord is going to bless you. 

Revelations 4:10- 0 the twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: 

They cast their crowns, that is real worship. 

• It is normal for some people to be broke. It is normal to be old also. But please don’t be old and broke. That is a tragedy. That won’t happen. God will bless you from this day forth. Say that to each other.

FROM THIS DAY FORTH GOD WILL BLESS YOU 

3) A strong and intense desire

• You should come a point in your life where you need to just stop and decide- I will never take another loan. I will not roll money borrowed from someone else. I will not stay in a rented house anymore. There needs to be an intense desire for this change! I am tired of walking to church, I want a nice car to drive. I am tired of asking people for money to pay the fees of my children, I want to be financially self-sufficient.

If you have that deep desire, you will cry out to God to break that bondage off and push you into that blessing. God will honour that desire and send financial deliverance your way. 

• A lot of young people stepped out with me when I stepped out for God. When there would be a need, I would have no money and I would ask them if they had and I would roll and lend it to somebody else and this would keep happening until I decided NO! I told the Lord this has to stop and The Lord had to deliver me out of this ‘rolling’. 
• Have an intense desire for God to open up ways for you. If you have the option to roll, you may never come into God’s presence. But you kneel before His presence and ask Him to set you free from this and bless you.

You need a strong desire. Do you have that desire? 

4) Place value on the opportunities that come to you

• Wealth anointing comes to people who place great value on every opportunity that comes their way.

P-O-O-R means Passing Over Opportunities Regularly. 

• But people who grow wealthy are those who value even small opportunities. If you can’t value the small things, you can’t grow big. You need to value it.
• The problem with the church today is that they call any such preaching ‘prosperity gospel’ and the pastor is blamed for preaching this. So, a lot of pastors don’t preach it. But I have no such fears! Let there be financial deliverance in Jesus name. 

5) Place value on relationships

• If you are easily offended, the devil can put you in financial trouble. If are hurt very quickly and easily, you can’t grow. Why?

Luke 6:38- "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. 

• ‘…Shall MEN give into your bosom.’ People will give to you. If you are going to be all alone, and not have strong relationships, you are in a financial trap. There is nobody to give to you.

Hebrews 12:15- See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. 

• Do not allow any bitter root to grow. Don’t be Mr or Mrs Paavakya (bitter gourd). • No matter who has hurt you, or wronged you, if you are a child of God, you should be able to forgive them.
• The Word commands us to pluck out the bitter roots.
• Ten of Job’s children died. His wife mocked him but he still said ‘My redeemer lives’. He looked forward and did not allow his heart to become bitter. If you guard your heart against bitterness, God can restore everything to your life like He did for Job. 

Ruth 3:1- One day Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home[a] for you, where you will be well provided for. 

• Naomi said that she was like Mara- ‘bitter’, but once she returned to Bethlehem and she actually started wishing good and looking to find ways to bless her daughter-in-law’s life, things began to change. If you are ready to get rid of your bitterness, blessings will come. 

Peninah was poking Hannah but she prayed and took victory over it. And the very next year, Samuel showed forth. If you take victory over your bitterness, God will bring forth something prophetic over your life. May the prophetic move come over your life! 

The NOW WORD will be revealed. The unchanging word will speak to you if you cast out bitterness. 

Mathew 26:75- 75 Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly. 

• Some people’s tears are bitter tears, full of bitterness. Peter cried bitterly. His tears were a result of his feeling that he had not stood with Jesus as he should have and he is not right with God. But the Lord had kept a ministry for him. 
• Jesus on the Cross of Calvary, told the Father, ‘forgive them’. You need to forgive. • The Cross is for thieves. It is for criminals. It is for murderers, it is for adulterers. It is a sign of the curse. But the cross also has a testimony. So far, this Cross was sign of shame, but once Jesus took that Cross, it is no longer a sign of shame but a sign of what the Lord did for us-He took away all my shame and my pain. Glory to God.