I remember back before Ken and I knew we could trust God to take care of us financially, I thought it was my job to worry about how we were going to pay our bills.

I spent a great deal of my time thinking things like, "What am I going to do about this light bill? How am I going to keep the electricity from being shut off?" To me it would have been irresponsible not to worry about such things!

Then I found out it wasn't God's will for me to worry. It was His will for us to believe Him to care for us. I also learned that as believers, we're not to seek after material riches. We're not to pursue money like people do who are without God.

They have to pursue it. They don't have a covenant with God, so if they don't seek material goods, they won't get them! But we're not like those people. We're not in the world without God and without a covenant (Eph. 4:12-13). We have God's promise of provision. He has assured us in His Word that He will not only meet our needs, but He will give us an abundance.

It's important for us to remember, however, that a covenant is always between two parties. It has two sides to it. A covenant says, "If you do this, then I'll do that." God's part of the covenant is to prosper us—spirit, soul and body as well as financially. What is our part of the covenant? It's not to seek after that prosperity.

If we do that, we'll get sidetracked. Our part of the covenant is to seek first His kingdom, His way of doing and being right! Our part is to say, "Lord, I'll do whatever You tell me to do. I'll obey Your Word and do what is right in Your sight, even if it looks like it will cost me."

Of course, obeying God's Word never costs in the long run. It pays! You always put yourself in a position for increase when you seek after God and do things His way. I'll be honest with you though, there will be times when you can't see how that increase is going to come.

Ken and I know about those times. We've been through them. When we saw in the Word of God that we were to "Keep out of debt and owe no man anything, except to love one another," (Rom. 13:8, AMP), we weren't too excited about it.

At that time in our lives, it looked to us like we would never be able to do anything financially without borrowing money. We thought, How will we ever get a car? How will we get a home? How will we finance our ministry? We're doomed!

But we had already decided to obey God no matter what the cost, so we committed to Him to get out of debt even though we thought it would be to our disadvantage. Of course, that decision has since turned out to be one of the wisest financial decisions we've ever made. That's the way it always is. Obeying God always works to your advantage in the end!

It's easy to see how following God's instructions to get out of debt affect our prosperity. But the fact is, our decision to obey other, seemingly unrelated commands seen in the Word also have an impact on our finances.

That's because you can't separate God's financial principles from the rest of His principles. They all work together. So you have to take the whole Bible to have a good foundation for godly prosperity.

The primary commandment Jesus gave us, for example, is to "love one another." (John 15:12) To the casual observer that commandment may seem to have nothing to do with money, yet to have true prosperity love must be the guiding force of your life.

Think of it this way. Every right action you take, every godly decision you make, every time you go love's way instead of the selfish way, you're putting another block on your foundation of prosperity. When you pray for your enemies instead of hating them, you become a candidate for increase.

When you turn away from immorality, you're turning toward blessing. When you see things in your life that you know aren't right and you correct them according to the Word of God, you're preparing yourself to handle greater financial abundance.

The book of Proverbs is full of God's wisdom about everyday things and decisions. It will help you learn how to handle your affairs in a way that is pleasing to God. And since it has 31 chapters, by reading a chapter a day along with your other Bible reading, you can finish it in just a month.

It will increase you to read Proverbs over and over. In Proverbs you'll find out, for example, that the quality of faithfulness and the blessing of prosperity are tied together very closely. Wherever you find one, you'll find the other. For as Proverbs 28:20 says, "A faithful man shall abound with blessings."

According to Webster's dictionary, a faithful man is one who "adheres to duty, of true fidelity, loyal, true to allegiance, and constant in the performance of duties or services." Luke 16:10 says, "He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest and unjust in a very little thing is dishonest and unjust also in much" (AMP).

So if you want to be trusted with more and be promoted to a better job, be faithful and honest in the job you have right now.

You may think Christian people don't need to hear about honesty and faithfulness, but they do. I know personally of cases where Christians have stolen money from their employers. They may not have intended to "steal" anything. They may have just thought, "Well, I'll borrow this money for a couple of weeks and then I'll put it back and no harm will be done.

The problem is, you can't borrow something from someone without their permission. That's stealing and you can't be blessed and steal. Taking that money may have seemed all right to those people when they did it. They may have made excuses and justified it in their own minds. But if they'd been studying and obeying the Word of God, they wouldn't have fallen for those excuses.

That's because the Word discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart (Heb. 4:12). It teaches you what is right and what isn't. It reveals not man's way, but God's way of doing and being right. It enables you to lay a firm foundation for godly prosperity.

With that foundation laid, you'll be ready to step out in faith and receive the abundance God has in store for you. Many people who have lived godly lives have failed to do that so they've missed out on God's financial blessings.

Although they've continually applied the principles of God's Word and become prime candidates for great prosperity, they've unwittingly passed it by because religious tradition has taught them that God wants them in poverty.

Christians like that have great wealth in their spiritual bank account, but because they don't realize it's there, they never tap into it! Don't let that happen to you. Don't just build the foundation for prosperity and stop there. Go on and build the whole house.

Excerpt permission granted by
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka:  Kenneth Copeland Ministries