Faithful Living: Trusting God Over Wealth

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Brother Victor came from a Hindu family many years ago. He told me that if you want to be a good Bible teacher, you must grow up in a Christian home. People who come from Hindu homes become evangelists. But do you see how God has helped our brother to teach the Word of God so clearly? [00:00:18]

I find most preachers are lazy. Most Christians are lazy. They don't study the Bible, and they expect to grow spiritually. They neglect the one book God has given. As I've heard Brother Victor many times, it's always so refreshing every single time, and I praise God that God raises up such brothers in our church. [00:01:17]

Don't come to the church just to get a benefit. Say, "Lord, I want to be useful to you," and I'll tell you, you will never be useful to God if you're not diligent in your study of the word. And so, one of the most important things, don't have a casual understanding of the word of God. [00:02:36]

There are so many Christian groups I know personally and that I've studied about that started out in great simplicity, zeal, pursuing holiness, wanting to overcome sin and all that. I mean, from the time of John Wesley, holiness has been preached by many, many groups. When in most cases, in almost every case I have seen, as I've studied them, that downfall was money. [00:04:34]

No servant can serve two masters, and the two masters are not God and Satan. Nobody imagines that they can serve God and Satan. The two masters are God and wealth. Read verse 13, see what Jesus said. There are only two masters, he said, not three. Satan is the master for many people in the world. [00:07:50]

You cannot say, "I love money, but I love Jesus more." And all of you who are living like that, I want to say to you in Jesus' name, you've got the spirit of the harlot. You won't hear that in another church because they want your money. We don't want it. 45 years in all our nearly a hundred churches, we have never once taken an offering. [00:09:39]

Seek the kingdom of God first, and these other things will be added to you, and we have proved that. I remember when I left the Navy, I said, "Lord, I want to prove." I owned a lot of money in the Navy. I was a very, very highly paid naval officer. But when I left, I gave all my entire life savings away for God's work. [00:10:36]

I proved in those years and subsequent years also that he is faithful. He tested me through years to see when you're in need, will you go and tell somebody? Will you write a letter describing your work to people so that they'll support you? No. And then I tried, proved it in my life. We got married. I proved to my family. [00:12:11]

I have never borrowed money, one rupee from anybody else. If I don't have the money, I say, "I won't buy it." If I don't have the money for something, I won't go on a vacation. I won't go on a holiday. I won't travel. It's fine. I can live without traveling. I'm not going to get into debt. I will not owe one cent to anybody. [00:13:47]

We are talking about enduring in love until the end. If you want to endure in love to Jesus until the end, you've got to stop loving money, and you've got to prove it. Don't jump into the big ministry first. Start in your personal life. God taught me in my personal life first, then in my family life, then in a small church. [00:21:37]

I want to encourage you. So we proved it in our church for years in Bangalore, no offerings. And those who were with us in the early days know that we never asked, ever made any driving, never sent reports to anybody. People would sometimes give an alkyl one example. After six years in our home, we found it was getting a bit crowded. [00:16:21]

I said, "Lord, I want to live for you, and I will trust you till the end of my life. Money will never be an important factor in my life." And I can say today, after 54 years of full-time Christian work, God honors those who honor him. You should be able to say at the end of your life, "I spent my life seeking the kingdom of God." [00:27:04]

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