I Refuse to Be Poor: Favour Upon Favour Is Your Portion

Sermon outline

God is a God of blessing who is for you and not against you, so expect favour, believe for it, speak it, and measure every dream, vision and word against what is written.

1. This church is cut from a specific cloth

   You may come in poor, but that will not be your end status, because the Word of God will change you. Believers will face attacks, sickness and financial trouble, but they overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Christ has redeemed us from the curse, wealth also means walking with God and knowing his voice, and what God wants is not a clever mind but a great heart of faith.

   Illustration: There are windy days and stormy days, but planes still fly, and we will still fly irrespective of the weather.

   “You could come in here poor, but that won't be your end status.”

   • Revelation 12:11
   • Galatians 3:13
   • John 10:10
   • Ephesians 6:12
   • Deuteronomy 28:13
   • Romans 8:31

2. For 2015, meditate on the favour of God

   God's favour was on the child Jesus, and the Lord blessed Samson as he grew up. That is the only God he knows: the God of the blessing, and blessing is an empowerment to prosper. Prosperity and success are no more up for debate than oxygen. A God who impoverishes and takes you on a downward spiral is not God; that is the nature of the devil. People only see the result now, but it took God decades, line upon line, to form it.

   Illustration: Don't ask me whether I believe there's oxygen. I'm just living.

   “Prosperity is not an issue we should debate.”

   • Luke 2:40
   • Judges 13:24
   • Isaiah 28:10

3. God creates the fruit of your lips

   You will regularly eat the fruit of your words, whether they are faith-filled or fear-filled, so ask what kind of diet you are on spiritually. Expecting favour and believing for favour are two giant steps to your next level, and confessing it is essential. Parents must be careful what they say over their children, their finances and their church, and he says he will step down any leader whose words are not in line with God's Word. He declares that the church will never go down, because it began with a revelation and a calling of God.

   Illustration: Israel was a small nation, yet God gave Moses and then Joshua victory upon victory. In the same way God has raised FCI: it was not a man-made thing but a God-made thing.

   “It's with our words, brothers and sisters, that you will create your future.”

   • Proverbs 18:21
   • Isaiah 57:19
   • 1 Corinthians 1:18-21
   • Ephesians 6:13

4. Our lives must show the world the God we serve

   If we give up now, what hope does the world have? People who do not know Christ will ask who blessed us, and we must be able to say, come and serve the God I am serving. He does not represent a God who is a failure: God brought him out of the pit and the prison like Joseph and put sandals on his feet, a ring on his finger and a robe on him. God will make each believer a trophy of his grace that relatives and old school friends will marvel at.

   Illustration: When Adrian was about 13 he ran to the musicians in a big church and asked them to help him play the drums, and they chased him away. He came crying to his father in the car park. His father, who once had a fierce temper, chose not to go back in and told him that one day God would raise him up. When the church began they played CDs, and Adrian started on the drums and then the keyboard.

   “I started poor, but look at me now.”

   • Luke 15:22
   • Revelation 1:6
   • 1 John 4:4
   • Proverbs 16:7
   • Matthew 4:4

5. Remember the rock from whence you were hewn

   Go back to your roots and ask how your journey started. His own start was devastating, with hardly anything to eat or wear, and what began his journey and gave him a revelation of God was faith. God is not looking for perfect people but for people who have faith. He is not picking on anyone in the room, only on the spirit that wants to bring its thinking into their lives.

   Illustration: He once did not want to go to church because he had pressed his one pair of trousers so many times that it shone from being overused, and the church he attended was full of well-dressed people.

   “God's not looking for perfect people. God's looking for people that have faith.”

   • Isaiah 51:1

6. From shouting in prayer to quiet faith, and no more fear

   It begins with the declarations of your mouth and the ponderings of your heart. He was brought up to think that the louder you shouted in a prayer meeting, the more God heard you, but he grew to the place where he could quietly thank Jesus for favour, or simply ponder a thing in his heart, and God would do it. He is no longer afraid of ghosts, witchcraft or curses, because Jesus the high priest makes intercession and the angel of the Lord encamps around the righteous. He tells parents that their children will exceed their wealth.

   Illustration: As a young boy he walked past a cemetery on the way to where his mother worked, and because of the stories he had heard he would run past it like the wind and only get his breath back on the other side. He also says someone described curses as homing pigeons: they go back to where they were sent from.

   “I'm not friends with the devil. I'm friends with God.”

   • Matthew 17:20
   • John 16:23-24
   • Hebrews 4:14
   • Hebrews 7:25
   • Psalm 34:7

7. A prophetic blessing: God shall provide for you

   As Abraham blessed Isaac and Isaac blessed his children, he blesses the church, their children and their children's children with favour, protection and victory upon victory, with spoils from wars they did not fight and water in dry places. Sickness has an expiration date because Jesus bore our infirmities. He retells Abraham and Isaac on the mountain and gives it as a prophetic word: God shall provide for you, and from today he unleashes his favour. God is a multi-generational God who will also care for relatives far away, and he will move quickly.

   Illustration: He sometimes asks God whether he will do for his children what he did for him, and God answers that it is not his concern: I'm their God too.

   “God has already endorsed you for success.”

   • Genesis 22:5-14
   • 2 Chronicles 20:25
   • Deuteronomy 32:13
   • Isaiah 35:1
   • Matthew 8:17
   • 2 Corinthians 3:18
   • 2 Samuel 5:20
   • Exodus 15:26
   • Revelation 3:8

8. My final point: go back to the Word, not to vain imaginations

   He asks why anyone would go back to vain imaginations. Jesus answered Satan with 'it is written', and our dreams, visions, prophesying and preaching must all line up with the Word of God, which is a lamp to our feet. Anything else he calls fortune telling and charismatic witchcraft. He has the church shout 'the Word' and declares what is written: favour is yours, success is your portion, God is with you, and the hundredfold is yours.

   “Our dreams must line up with the word of God.”

   • Matthew 4:4
   • Deuteronomy 8:3
   • Psalm 119:105
   • Joshua 1:9
   • Romans 8:31
   • Mark 4:20
   • Joshua 1:3