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Issue link: http://magazine.kcm.org/i/1471597
As believers, we’ve often had the same problem. We haven’t listened to Jesus when He tried to talk to us about heavenly economics. We just looked at our financial situation and tried to figure out in the natural what we should do. In assessing a job opportunity for instance, rather than seeking The LORD, we based our decision strictly on how much it was going to pay. Or at offering time on Sunday morning, we ignored the Holy Spirit’s leading and just gave what seemed to us to be safe and reasonable at the time. God can do a lot more for us if we pray about those things and listen to what He has to say about them. He has a plan, and if we’ll find out what it is and operate accordingly, it will work! How To Prosper Anywhere, Anytime Take, for example, what God did for Jerry Savelle. When he first came to work with this ministry 50-plus years ago, in the natural it didn’t look like the most financially advantageous thing to do. He had to leave the automotive body shop business he’d built, move his family to a different state, and take what looked like a financial step down. I’ll never forget the suit he wore when he initially came on staff. It looked like something Al Capone would have worn. His next-door neighbor had given it to him when he moved to Fort Worth, and it was the only one he had. Up to then, his entire wardrobe had consisted of work uniforms with Jerry’s Paint & Body Shop embroidered on the front. During the first series of meetings we did after he joined us, he wore some version of that Al Capone suit every day. He’d wear the shirt and trousers during one service, then he’d change the shirt and add the jacket the next. My dad was with us in those meetings and after watching Jerry show up in the same clothes day after day, he bought him another suit. What did Jerry do then? He listened to The LORD, who led him to go into the “business” of sowing clothes. I remember one time he gave his shoes in an offering and had to walk back to the hotel in his socks. A few weeks later, a man brought him 10 pairs of fine-looking shoes, including two pairs made of alligator. When Jerry started training missionaries overseas, he started giving them his suits—not old, worn-out suits but brand-new ones. One day after he began doing that, a clothing company gave him 1500 pairs of slacks, a whole truckload full of them fresh off the rack. Whether you’re a businessman or a preacher, that’s the kind of thing that happens when you do business God’s way! His ways are very different from the world’s. The world’s mindset is to look out for yourself first; to get all you can and keep all you get. But God says: • Seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides (Matthew 6:33, "Amplified Bible, Classic Edition"). • He who sows sparingly and grudgingly will also reap sparingly and grudgingly, and he who sows generously [that blessings may come to someone] will also reap generously and with blessings (2 Corinthians 9:6, "AMPC"). 8 : BVOV