Let me start by telling you a story. Joe had a problem, so he took it to his pastor.

"Pastor, I’m having trouble tithing these days." The pastor asked, "What seems to be the hang-up?"

"Well, back when I made $50 a week, I tithed $5, which was easy. And when I made $500 a week, I tithed $50, which was okay. But now that I make $5,000 a week, I’m having a hard time. $500 a week in tithe is a lot of money! Will you pray for me, pastor?"

The pastor says, "Sure, let’s pray! God, please reduce Joe’s income back down to $500 a week so that he can honor you with the tithe."

Now we laugh, but it’s not too funny when we evaluate the hang-ups many of us as believers have, and the body of Christ in general. Maybe that’s why the Bible has more to say about money and wealth than it does about prayer! It’s the truth! Of the 39 parables spoken by Jesus Christ, over half of them use money or work as a teaching tool. Why is that? Because the Lord knew that we would have hang-ups with it! That’s why He had so much to say about it, to make sure we would get it straight! But have we?

This teaching may challenge some of your deep-rooted belief systems about wealth, but we want to step back and pull the covers off, to determine what the Bible actually says about this apparently important subject before we can proceed with the practical application of multiple income streams and multiple wealth strategies.

We want to present to you a very balanced biblical view of prosperity and wealth, but most Christians have been on one end of the spectrum or the other.

On the one hand, many Christians have believed that God wants His people to stay poor. They believe that God is against wealth because money can’t be spiritual. After all, money is just "filthy lucre" and the "root of all evil." This belief gives them a poverty mentality, which is not a lack of money, it’s a state of mind and a belief of the heart, which causes you not to have any money. It steals your ability to bless those around you.

On the other hand, some Christians believe that as long as they profess prosperity, it will just fall from the sky and land in their lap. We’re not saying that God cannot provide financial miracles, because He can and He does, especially in times of considerable need. We have heard too many testimonies and have experienced too many miracles in our own lives to not believe in miracles.

But we want to be in the middle of those extremes, and that’s us being diligent in learning the principles of how to produce wealth. God’s biggest desire is to teach us so we can learn those principles. Then He will bless our efforts. But the key is that we still have to actually do something to produce it. We have to plant something in the ground as investments, or there is nothing that God can multiply. Are you with me on that? We have to make an effort in order for God to have something to bless.

Deuteronomy 8:18 says, "But remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the power to get wealth." Notice that God does not give us wealth, but He gives us the power to get wealth, which means the knowledge, the wisdom, the ideas, concepts, and insights we need to accomplish it. This is the balanced biblical view of wealth.

We need to be taught the biblical principles of wealth, which is what this first teaching is about, and we need to understand that money is not "dirty," but it’s only a tool to bless ministries and advance the Kingdom. Do you understand that? Get that in your spirit. Money is just a tool – it’s not good or evil. Just like a knife can be used in the hands of a surgeon or in the hands of a killer. There’s nothing good or evil about a knife, and the same goes with money.

Genesis 12:2 says that we are blessed to be a blessing. The money, the wealth, the blessing, is good if we use it for the right reason. We are to be channels of his blessing, where the blessing flows to us but right back out. The Lord is calling us to become apostolic entrepreneurs, which is an anointing that enables you to experience financial increase in many different ways. The word "blessing" used in Genesis 12 in the original Hebrew implies being "empowered to prosper." Yes, as Jesus said, it is more blessed to give than to receive, but have you thought about why that’s true to begin with? It’s because you have it to give!

Proverbs 13:22 says, "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous." If we are not in the process of achieving this goal of leaving an inheritance to our children and grandchildren, then we have to change how we’re doing things or ten years from now, we’ll be in the same place.

For example, how many of us have thought at one time or another, "Wow, if I would have bought that house or that piece of property ten years ago, look at what it would be worth now?" On the outside we like to be spiritual and say, "It just wasn’t God’s timing," but on the inside we are kicking ourselves, "I can’t believe you passed that by!" What makes us think that things will be different ten years from now if we don’t act and start buying real estate now? We have to change something to get different results in the next ten years! Ten years from now, we’ll be looking back at this time and wishing we’d bought more real estate when the prices were lower. Or I should have invested more in this or that…