 If you're taking notes, let's write a few thoughts down when it comes to building freedom in our finances. One is we must have a prosperous mind. In 3 John 1 verse 2, apostle John is telling us that he prays that you will prosper even as your soul is prospering. It's very important to understand that the foundation of your financial success is not your diploma, it's your mindset. It's not even your job, it is your mindset. If you have a poverty mindset, this mindset will attract only problems in your finances. There's nothing wrong with having poor wallet, poor bank account. But when you have a poor mind, you become a magnet that attracts bad things. What does it mean to have a prosperous mindset? It means we don't have to think on the level of our wallet. You may be poor financially today. Make sure you're not poor in your mind. Make sure in your mind you're constantly filled with thoughts that God is my provider. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not lack. Who I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. My cup will run over. That your circumstances do not determine how you think. God's word determines how you think. Somebody say amen. Having a prosperous mind also means to maintain a positive attitude in the face of hardships. What does it mean to have a prosperous mind? It means not to think on the level of my current situation. And to constantly have a positive attitude in the face of hardships. Positive attitude is actually a simplest definition of what faith is. It's to be positive in your attitude in the midst of challenging, difficult or lingering situations. Your attitude in life will determine your altitude in life. If you want to go higher, you cannot do that with a bad attitude. Bad attitude is like a flat tire in the car. You can't go very far until you have to change it. You have to change the tire if you want to go far, so is bad attitude. You can blame your financial problems on the job, on the president, on your family, but one thing you are responsible for is your mindset and your attitude. Nobody likes to have people around them. A boss does not like to have employees. Even in the family, it is extremely difficult to live with the person with a bad attitude. It's almost like living with somebody, please excuse me, who keeps on farting. You can see bad attitude, but you can smell bad attitude and you can sense bad attitude. When somebody walks with a bad attitude and you tell them you have a bad attitude, this will tell you, no I don't. Show me a proof. It's kind of like showing a proof that who keeps releasing gas. You can't point to anything in the ground, but everybody smells it. It's like here this person walks into the office with a bad attitude and everybody goes like this. Or everybody goes quickly hiding. If you have a bad attitude and you blame it on your circumstances, until you change the attitude, God will not change your circumstances. Can somebody say amen? A prosperous mind is having proper thoughts, it's having proper attitude, but a third thing what it means is to have a proper speech. Proper words. You can use your words to describe your situation, or you can use your words to change your situation. And many people use their words to describe their situation, instead of using the same words to change their situation. The scripture says, when the earth was full of darkness, God used his words not to describe the darkness. God didn't go into saying this is so bad, this is so hard, this is sort of order, this is a mess, the devil is all around this mess. No, no, no, God used his words to change the situation. He said, let there be light. And the Holy Spirit took those words as the material with which He built the earth. You and I walk in today. Your words are the material Holy Spirit will use to build your destiny. The question I want to ask you, what kind of material are you giving it to Him? If you constantly saying about your life, I am poor, I'll never amount to anything. Things never work out for my family. God does not want to bless me. Things never just work out for me. We will always be like this, we'll never have enough. You're giving the Holy Spirit material. Say, Holy Spirit, can you build a life of poverty for me? And here is some more material, here is some more. And you supply so much material that the Holy Spirit builds a beautiful fortress in your life. But that fortress will not be something you will enjoy. God cannot build a life if you are destroying it with your own words. Prosperous mind means three things. Proper thoughts, proper attitude, and proper words. Amen? The second thing, the second foundation to having a financial freedom. It is to repent from stealing, or to repent from wrong financial dealings. There is mainly two financial sins that people commit. The first sin is when they fall in love with money. The Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil. Many people misquote the scripture and they say that the money is the root of all evil. Even one person wrote me today on the Snapchat and says, you know, you're going to talk about money. Money is the root of all evil. And I said, brother, you don't know a lot of scriptures, and even the one that you do know, you keep misquoting it. The Bible does not say money is the root of all evil. The scripture says love of money is the root of all evil. When we fall in love with money, when we see money as the source of our life, something will happen. We become covetousness, we become materialistic, and we become possessed with that money. And you don't have to have a lot to fall in love with it. Many people have this idea that only the rich people fall in love with money. I've seen some poor people hold on to that last thing like to their dear life. And I've done it myself. It's not a lot or little. It's the hard issue and we all need to check our hearts constantly in Jesus' name. When there was a scripture that is constantly causing a lot of people to stumble, especially, you know, when they hear a message about God wanting to bless people. The verse where Jesus said, it is difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now, many people like to take that verse and blow it out of the proportion and not take it out of the context instead of reading the whole chapter of why Jesus said that. Another problem that we have is that each person feels like the person who drives a better car than you, lives in a bigger house than you, gets more money than you and has a better vacation than you. They are the rich and that verse is for them. There are people in Dongebash, Tanzania, who when they will find out that you drive on the car and you have a house that doesn't leak and you have food and clothes, they will think that verse applies to you. So word rich is a verse is a word that means different things to different people. A millionaire will not feel rich as long as he hangs out with billionaires. So do not read that verse for your neighbor, always read that verse for yourself. If you have food, if you have clothes and you have a place to sleep, you are rich. You may not feel rich, well that is your problem, that is my problem. But you are rich if you have a place to live, if you have food to eat and if you have a house and if you are one of those rich people, you even have a house for your car, you are very, very, very rich. So the Jesus is saying, Jesus is not saying that rich people cannot go to heaven. He was saying that phrase in the story where a man came to Jesus and Jesus tells him, I want you to leave everything behind and follow me and this man said, I can't do that because I love my possessions more and that's when Jesus said, it is difficult for people who hold on to the riches more than they hold on to God. And honestly, it's not only people who hold on to the riches, people who hold on to relationships more than they hold on to God. Hold on to things in this world more than they hold on to God. They will not be able to go into heaven, it will be difficult and impossible. The first sin people commit financially is when they fall in love with money instead of falling in love with God. The second sin we commit financially is when we begin to steal from people and stealing meaning when we take from some people what is not ours or we stealing is when we take what's not ours or not give what is someone else's. This happens when sometimes people break into other people's houses or cars and they commit robbery. This also happens on the lighter note when you go into the mall and you think that they have been too big and too successful and there is nothing wrong if you take shoes or a shirt with you and not pay for it. Shoplifting. This also happens when we borrow money from someone and we do not return back to them. This happens when somebody works for us and they do a one little poor job and we refuse to pay them completely and we find a loophole and we find a cunning way to keep the money and to keep their work. This happens when employees go to work and begin to take stuff home and enrich their lives at the expense of their employer. This happens when the citizens feel like the country is not serving God so it gives me the green light not to pay taxes. All of these are different types and shapes of stealing and what stealing does is it opens the door to the devil and the devil after that has a legal right to destroy your life. You can be on your way to heaven but if you are falling in love with money and you are stealing or doing things with money that hurt other people you have to understand God does not love you less. The devil has control over your life already. The first sin humanity committed was an act of robbery. When God said this is forbidden and we said it's mine. It wasn't money we stole. It wasn't an iPad or a phone. We took a fruit and ever since then it has been in our DNA and in our nature to take what is not ours and the last person Jesus forgave before he left the earth was a thief which means there is hope for all of us. Can somebody say amen? When you have committed stealing or maybe you are committing that today downloading illegal things and so on and on if you want to prosper in your financial life you have to close the door to the devil. You have to drop illegal things today. You may not have gotten caught you have to drop to today and only then God will prosper your life. When Jesus walked into the house of tax collector Zacchaeus and the presence of Jesus brought such a conviction that the scripture says Zacchaeus got up from the table and says I will give half of my income away and anybody I ever duped or ripped off I will come to them and not only apologize and say I'm sorry but I will give them four times more than I stole it from them and that day you would wish Zacchaeus would have stolen from you and it's interesting that Jesus sees that and Jesus doesn't say Zacchaeus wait you don't need to do that. First of all Zacchaeus you don't need to give half of your income to the poor you're not under Old Testament I am Jesus I am embodiment of grace you don't need to do that and Zacchaeus you sure don't need to go back to those people I've forgiven you for your sins you just live your life you don't need to go back to them and give them anything and tell them anything this between me and you Jesus never said that. We have a generation today that steals from people and they think that cheap I am sorry God will fix everything between you and God but not between you and the devil Cheap I'm sorry after we steal and rob and hurt people will fix everything between you and God God will forgive you of that sin but the devil will still have the right to attack your life until you deeply repent and until you do what you can in your power to make it right to the people you have hurt not for forgiveness of your sins but to close the door to the enemy and open the door for the blessings now sometimes you lost the contact with those people sometimes you don't you have so many that you might not even have the power to do to all of them it's important that you try your best we have our leaders and people who consistently come to our church I know a particular young man who this year took three to four days of fasting and during that fasting that's what he was focusing on God bring to my mind every person I ever stole from and ripped off and then he started to call each one of these people and he said, he said, passive lad, I died million deaths calling them, some of them were my relatives to call them saying, you know that thing that was missing that everybody was looking for and that was me and I'm sorry I had one of our leaders, most of you know this particular gentleman who actually went to the stores he stole from and there was a new management, new system but he didn't do it for them, he did it for himself and he says, I came here to apologize I've stolen a lot from your store ten years ago and here's a check I just want to reimburse that the management were shocked why? because that's when God prepares a person for a blessing when you see somebody doing that watch their life it's in a matter of short time and they begin to prosper have a prosperous mind repent from stealing number three, build the kingdom of God build the kingdom of God Prophet Haggai, we read here that Israel returned from Babylonian captivity and the house of God, the temple of God was completely destroyed and in ruins and people's houses were destroyed as well and when they came back and their first passion was to go and quickly rebuild their houses and they said that we don't have time to build God's house and honestly we don't have much resources to build God's house we are going to build our own houses and once we're done with building our houses if we have anything left if God will still need help we will go and help God's house and God comes to them and he gives them this stern rebuke and he says, guys have you noticed he says, you've been sowing a lot, reaping very little he says, have you noticed you've been eating a lot but you're very hungry you've been drinking a lot but you're very thirsty have you noticed all the money you make there's a hole in your pocket and you happen not to see where that hole is he said, has anybody noticed that? and God says, this is why he says, you're using an excuse that your life is busy you're a college student you're a single mom you just got a baby and only one of you is working you're just starting your business so you're using your situation to say this I don't have time to build God's house and I need money myself so I can't give to building God's kingdom because I got to build my own who's going to build my kingdom if I won't and God says, because of that attitude you are left building your own life with your own hands good luck but God says, I'm going to give you a better way to do it why don't you put my kingdom first and why put my kingdom first? because if it wouldn't be for my kingdom you wouldn't even exist my kingdom created your very existence you didn't even exist before I was secondly, why my kingdom is more important because after you're dead after the house you're building will be in shambles and completely new land we build there my kingdom will still exist and when you breathe your last in my kingdom you will be asking to go into not into yours build my kingdom Matthew 6.33 says seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and everything else will be added to you you want to prosper financially put God's kingdom above your own this does not mean you ignore your family this does not mean you ignore your finances this doesn't mean you ignore your budget this doesn't mean you ignore your business and this does not mean you ignore your children personal needs it just means you keep a proper perspective putting God first David did that wanting to build a house of God God in return build him house to that degree the kings always said who were David's descendants and the Lord Jesus Christ carried a messianic title son of David and when he's coming back he will still sit on David's throne why is it important to build God's kingdom where does the money that we give to the kingdom of God where they go or where should they go we must understand this very important concept when Israel came out of Egypt the Bible says out of 12 tribes that they had God asked that one tribe will be completely free from working and that their main work will be from morning till evening to worship God, kill the animals and to serve God and the rest of the 11 tribes had to bring certain portions of their income to the temple of God not so that priests could ship it through UPS to heaven God has no need of that but so that the work for God will continue beyond this earth and God promised that he will bless the rest of the 11 tribes for taking care of that one tribe so in the Old Testament roughly, approximately any time there was 12 people one was on the staff that means out of every 12 people in Israel one person was completely free not working like everyone else and dedicated to one thing the kingdom of God and they were not even spreading the kingdom of God they were trying to preserve it Jesus comes on the scene and the first thing he does how he starts his ministry is he calls guys out from their jobs and says I want you guys leave your work and leave your business and follow me now most of us have this and I used to have this very crazy idea that disciples actually left their business at that day and next morning went back to work and then at five when they got out of work they went and followed Jesus but that's not what happened they actually left their jobs and they had families they had wives and they had children so then we have the second concept most likely Jesus just did some miracles and money supernaturally ended up at their families houses or some of us think well their families just left those disciples and went their way no their families still remain provided for who provided for 12 families and then there were 70 families was it miracles? not really the bible says there were some miracles but the rest of it people sold their possessions brought it to Jesus and Jesus helped to cover the needs of his disciples how do I know that to be true because when Jesus went to heaven that's exactly what disciples did with the rest of the church and we see that mentioned in the bible here at hungry generation good news church the kingdom of God is bigger than our church the kingdom of God is a movement the kingdom of God is a force to be reckoned with we are a small part of this big movement our assignment as the church since the day of Jesus till now is not to preserve the church we don't have any killing of the animals at the church and praise God for that we're not doing any weird ceremonies here like they did in the Old Testament our main assignment is to take the message and the movement of Jesus and spread it as far as we can through as many venues as we can all of our tithes all of our partnerships all of our offerings that go into church yes they cover the bills yes they pay for the mortgage yes they pay for some of the renovation and for some of the things that we need to have to keep the building running and to keep the building good but the main focus of the church's money to be aware of that is to spread the message of Jesus Christ that is why our pastor put people on the staff when our church was very small we had less than 12 people we already had one person on the staff because our pastor was trying to be better than the Old Testament and he put people on the staff and people would ask why do you have people on the staff when you have very small church you don't even have nothing to do for them 100% right because most of the time when I was first on the staff I didn't know what to do at church I would ask the pastor what do I do he would say well I pay you you figure that out and he would tell me this and he would tell us this all the time he said I don't put you guys on the staff because we have work I put you on the staff so you find work so you create a workflow for volunteers and so that you begin to move forward to other things as of today we have four people on the staff as of today you know our church most of you know when you come into services they are structured when you come into services there is a sense of purpose when people outside we have even right now with us sitting people that drove all the way from Portland to be with us to receive prayer how did that happen last Sunday I was in Tacoma and this Friday flying to Florida spread all around not just tri-cities but even outside of Washington outside of even this country of people writing and commenting who are being blessed why is there 4,000 subscribers on YouTube and thousands of people signed up to emails and hundreds of people come every single month for prayer line because when we give for the kingdom of God it begins to spread it begins to spread not just locally but even outside I want to also make you aware that not only our church spends money so that we have people on the staff and not only that we spend money so that person like me person like the pastor can at least once a year go to a conference where we can be fired up to come back here and to be with more vision and more passion but every single month from 3,000 to 2,500 dollars and outside of our church to help other ministries that feed the poor about 7 to 800 elderly other ministries who start churches this particular ministry that we support every single month they started 300 churches just one year this particular ministry that every month about 2,500 dollars that go from our ministry they have people getting saved every Sunday from 300 to 500 people every Sunday and they feed about 1,000 elderly poor people and give them food for the whole month so that's something that your tides, my tides go in, not just our church but completely outside of our country last month on the top of that that was about and I received from the treasure this information that was about 3,000 dollars that was sent to about 5 or 4 different missionaries that came to our church although they were in our church our pastors and elders they knew them from the country before some of them from other countries and some of them run orphanage homes and so many other charitable events and our church graciously blessed them their ministry so they will continue their work and so we do a lot of other things that I'm not going to mention here right now like we're trying to do a studio a music studio so that each year we'll be releasing awesome worship songs and we're trying to also see we're going to have at least 3 to 4 flows in our Sunday service that we will have a thriving youth ministry that we'll start with as teens right now and that they will grow into being powerful leaders we know that all of this is not going to be free and we know that they're going to be on the staff and that God is going to be using them eventually to move the kingdom of God further and further for the glory of God because somebody say amen let's put our hands together for the Lord so with that said I just wanted to inspire each person I go to churches regularly and I go to a lot of traditional churches kind of the churches I grew up in and I see the deficit when at churches maybe 100 or 200 people and you walk in and the youth pastor comes late or the pastor comes late to the service and you find out he just got out of work and then you talk to him after the service and usually this is the story Vlad after I'm done from work my mind doesn't even work to turn on a lawn mower he says I can't even open the Bible I am worn out, I am exalted I am exhausted and you see that in the service you put your pinky in the atmosphere and you feel it people don't know what they're doing yes there's a big flock who are running everywhere and people are not getting saved there's no structure, no home groups the church is not advancing no website, no Facebook this is destroying me and then when you're asking what about giving, do people give? each person gives about 10 to 20 dollars a month I said well our teenagers who don't have a job give more why? because no vision and no proper understanding to build the kingdom of God and as a result people suffer because God's blessing doesn't flow in their life and the church is stuck and stagnant and our church it's not gonna be like that we're gonna be blessed people and we are gonna move the kingdom of God there's somebody say amen in the conclusion just write down these two things about giving God wants us to establish consistent giving now consistent giving to the kingdom of God means you choose either a percentage or you choose a certain number that you give consistently it's better to do a percentage and it's good to start with 10% I know a lot of our leaders they're doing 20% I've heard recently of one of our leaders who's I guess been giving each month 40% out of all her income to the kingdom of God so it's good to start with a percentage and it's good to start with a 10% and build your way there this percentage has to be something you give first not last you can't wait until well I pay my bills I pay the mortgage and the car payment I'll give to the kingdom of God you will most likely figure out by the time you get to the end of your month you won't have anything left but if you give first God will give you wisdom and give you strength to manage the rest of it and it's important that this consistent giving is not done automatically pay your mortgage automatically because whether you have feelings for it or not you still have to pay for it but you have to give with compassion and passion and with thoughtfulness and with prayer to God number two after consistent giving is it's important to have spontaneous sacrifices spontaneous sacrifices are the things that you may do once a year maybe twice a year maybe once in two years and you gather up maybe you sold the house or maybe you were given a bonus or maybe you got your taxes back or maybe somebody gave you a very generous gift or maybe you had a little bit more extra money be trained right now that each year God wants you also or maybe once in two years but you have to have those things in your faith where you give spontaneous sacrifices now when I say spontaneous I mean they're not necessarily spontaneous in a sense they just out of nowhere but you plan for them but they do not happen regularly it happened in the Bible we see David who didn't build a temple for the Lord because of so much bloodshed yet at the end of his life he handed his son Solomon somebody said according to inflation he handed about 21 billion dollar check for the building of a temple now that's a very spontaneous and a very big sacrifice Solomon gave a thousand bulls a woman named Mary came to Jesus and the Bible says she broke the alabaster box and she gave Jesus poured a perfume worth of a whole years wages and Jesus didn't stop and said woman what are you doing there's so many poor people stop this perfume for goodness sake I'm gonna die anyway and then rise from the dead and have a better body I don't need your perfume you know who actually said those things Judas and Jesus rebuked Judas and said what she's doing spontaneous sacrifices is good for my kingdom anywhere my kingdom is spread she will be also notified we tried to do this once a year but sometimes once in two years just last month we sold the rental property and we took a very large portion and when I was in Ukraine and we offered that to spreading the kingdom of God we tried to do that to stretch our faith and it's crazy how it works out but the more you give sometimes the more you realize oh I'm probably not gonna have anything afterwards and somehow some way it happens you still have things left and sometimes even more than you had before we're already praying even for next year to have we have one that we give consistently each month it's 10% and then there's a very large number for us that we give each month consistently each month we're praying for that to increase each year but once a year or once in two years we try to give a very huge sacrifice to spread and to stretch our faith before God and to position ourselves for his blessing for the kingdom of God what I want you to leave you with is this the reward of giving and the reward of giving is simple one is that you will get rewarded in heaven number two is that God will protect you he will rebuke the devourer number three God will give you ideas and supernatural inspirations and number four is other people will give you things or money now it's important that I mention the last one when you give to the kingdom of God or you bless other people or you live a generous life this is usually how it will happen maybe there's some other things but mainly is your first reward is going to be in heaven and many times you will begin to notice in your life God's protection from other people from other things, bad deals bad things with people or bad things that could cause you a lot of money God's protection will begin to come into your life God won't force his protection you still have to use the brain cells that you have in your mind to apply the protection and three is God will begin to give you ideas like Lori shared the testimony open door for a job promotion God will begin to people when they give to God or the kingdom of God they have this problem because the next day they expect that somebody will give them money you give a vehicle away and like the next week you're walking around now if you have that attitude you will be deeply disappointed because most likely ain't nobody gonna give you a car for a very long time and if they'll give you a car it's the car you don't want so the best thing to remember is reward comes from heaven the way God blesses you he gives you protection which is more important than sometimes any physical blessings he gives you ideas which can bring a lot of money into your life and bring and put you up in this world and God eventually causes that other people will begin to bless your life it could be your boss it could be your parents it could be someone else it could be your neighbor and somebody just says you know what I just wanted to bless you I just have this on my heart and those are things are good but they cannot be the main priority something that we seek right now we are going to come to a time of altar call and actually our altar call is going to be our offering today for those of you who tied each week or each month I want to encourage you to do so for those of you who've never done this thing called spontaneous sacrifice I ask you that you pray about it I know one of the people in my home group came up once and he's a Vlad me and my wife we talked about it and we're going to take a whole paycheck and we're going to give it can you give me specific instructions how to go about giving that to the kingdom of God and it gives me pleasure seeing different young men from our church now especially those who grew up who were never taught to be generous and as a result they were never prosperous their family never prospered they lived from head to mouth and now they're coming they're learning this their family looks at them and says you guys are crazy why you're doing this but they're noticing their life is doing a lot better today than they were before take a step with spontaneous sacrifices and remember God will give you his reward it will be in heaven be protection, God's ideas and God will cause other people to be generously as well we are going to give today whatever you brought we're going to pray for it first if you didn't bring anything it is completely fine I want you to pray in your heart for your finances if you may be saying well you know what I want to give but I don't use cashier checks on your app hungry gen app you can give straight with an honor app or online and we encourage you to do so let's make a commitment to honor God in our finances let's make a commitment to honor the kingdom of God and God in return will honor us and help us in Jesus name amen