Poverty, Riches and Wealth

Moving from a Life of Lack into True Kingdom Abundance

Kris Vallotton

• Publisher: Chosen Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780800799014
• eBook ISBN: 9781493414918
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Leadership

Overcome the Never-Enough Mentality to Walk in True Abundance 

Prosperity. It's one of the most dividing words in the Church. Some pastors use it to tell their congregations that God will make them all rich, rich, rich! Others spurn the word and insist that true Christlikeness is found in forsaking all worldly riches and possessions. The truth is, neither of these extremes is fully right or fully wrong.

In his latest book, Kris Vallotton mines the Scriptures in an eye-opening study of what the Bible really says about money, poverty, riches and wealth.

In it you'll find keys to
· overcome the never-enough mentality to experience true abundance
· break free from a poverty mindset that reaps lack in your life
· demystify biblical teaching on money so you can discover peace in your finances
· learn the difference between riches and wealth
 
Kingdom prosperity begins from the inside out. When you learn to cultivate a mindset of abundance, no matter your circumstances, you will begin to experience the wealth of heaven in every area of your life.

Part One
The True Meaning of Kingdom Wealth

In the first part of this book, we will discuss the true meaning of Kingdom wealth as we contrast it with poverty and riches. I will prove that there is a power to make wealth and that there is a spirit behind poverty. I will also help you discover how to embrace the abundant life that Jesus promised and how to avoid becoming rich instead of wealthy.

1
The Net Worth of Jesus

In July 2016, I was invited to meet Pope Francis with a small group of pastors at the Vatican in Rome. I was rocked by the invitation; not that I had anything I wanted to say or ask of him, but come on . . . how many people in the world get to have a sit-down meeting with the Pope of the Catholic Church? I was excited and a little nervous. The day before I left, I lay awake most of the night, envisioning what it was going to be like meeting the Pope. I wanted to make a good impression on him; after all, I was a Protestant pastor and he was a Catholic pope. We were, by the nature of our religious affiliations, archenemies for five centuries!

I spent most of the next morning packing, but I could not decide what to wear. I tried on all seven of my suits, fifteen dress shirts and twenty-five ties. I finally narrowed my selection down to two, but I could not make up my mind. Should I wear my three-piece gray pinstripe suit with my black silk shirt and black tie, or should I wear my two-piece black suit with my gray silk shirt and red Garcia tie? I tried both suits on several times, changing the combination of shirt, tie and shoes. I finally decided that I would bring them both and resolve the issue when I arrived at the Vatican. Of course, each suit required a different pair of shoes, so I polished all four shoes to make sure I was prepared. I was concerned that the suits would be wrinkled when I arrived at my destination, so I packed my portable steamer in my special fold-over suitcase. I also went out and bought two new pairs of socks, one to match each of my suits. I was so ready!

The next morning I got up at 3:00 a.m., put on some comfortable jeans and my Batman shirt and began my two-day journey to the Vatican. I had four connecting flights and several long layovers before I would reach my final destination. But before I could board my fourth flight, the airline announced that the flight was canceled. What?! Suddenly, two hundred people rushed the ticket counter and tried to find alternative flights to get to their destinations. United Airlines finally agreed to put me on another airline—a flight that arrived at the Vatican six hours later. Although I would not be getting much sleep before our meeting with Pope Francis, at least I would get there in time. I was a happy camper.

When I finally arrived in Rome, I was completely exhausted. I dragged my tired hiney down two escalators and arrived at the luggage carousel, along with a couple hundred other exhausted passengers. It was 10:00 p.m. in Rome, and I still had to catch a taxi to the Vatican. The luggage took forever to reach the carousel. Finally, the beautiful sound of the buzzer began to blare. Then another half hour passed, leaving three passengers without luggage, and yes, you guessed it: I was one of them.

“Unbelievable!” I said out loud. I made my way to the Black Hole Room . . . the place where airline employees try to solve the mystery of your lost luggage. (I heard a rumor that these employees train by trying to find unmatched socks that emerge from dryers.) Thirty more minutes passed, and it was now my turn at the counter. A frazzled-looking woman in her late forties greeted me in Italian.

“Do you speak English?” I inquired.

“No,” she responded in a thick accent.

Oh great, I thought. She handed me a form to fill out, which had some pictures of luggage at the bottom. The entire form was in Italian, so for the next twenty minutes, with sign language that was very similar to hieroglyphics, she guided me in her very broken English through the process of completing the form.

I googled a picture of the Pope and told her I was meeting with him at 1:00 p.m. the next day. “I need my clothes,” I kept repeating. “By noon!” I begged.

She gave me a phone number to call and told me to try calling in the morning.

“Unbelievable!” I repeated out loud again. Before I left home I was so concerned about what suit I should wear, and now I might have to meet the Pope in my crummy Batman shirt and ragged jeans, I mused. Yikes! I arrived at my hotel at 12:30 a.m. and laid my head on my pillow at 1:00 in the morning. I was exhausted, but my mind insisted on playing movies of meeting the Pope. I imagined myself in my old, ragged Batman shirt and tattered jeans, in the midst of pastors dressed in three-piece suits and Pope Francis in his royal robes. What would the Pope think of my humble attire? I mused further. Maybe he would view my unpretentious situation and conclude that a homeless person had somehow slipped into the Vatican.

The problem was that my then present situation did not actually represent my true economic reality. The fact is, I am not destitute. I own seven expensive suits. Furthermore, I am not homeless. I actually have a big, beautiful house nestled on three acres of oak trees in a gated community. Simply put, I may have looked poor and homeless, but Rome was not my home. Redding, California, is. Measuring my affluence by observing my situation in Rome therefore would have led you to the wrong conclusion about my monetary condition.

Earth Is Not His Home

Jesus arrived in the flesh on this planet through a woman named Mary. Yet it is important to remember that Jesus did not originate in her womb; she was simply the vehicle that carried Him to earth. She was His plane ride to this dimension. His conception was otherworldly . . . or more accurately, heavenly. Interestingly, look at the phrase the apostle Paul used to describe Jesus’ earthly entry: “Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Jesus found Himself in appearance as a man—now, that phrase is intriguing in numerous ways! First and foremost, it is essential that we understand that Jesus is not human; He is, in fact, God. I am not sure how He “found Himself” here. Could He possibly have agreed not to remember His true identity when He entered the earth’s atmosphere? Did He have to go through the same process of self-discovery as we do to discover His true identity as the Son of God? Some theologians believe that He did, but whatever the case, one thing is for certain: Earth was not His home.

Much like my condition in Rome with my Batman shirt and ragged jeans, if you make the mistake of judging Jesus’ net worth by His humble earthly condition, you will misjudge His prosperity and undermine His mission. The apostle Paul put it like this: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Wait! What did Paul say? Jesus was rich, but then He became poor so (the reason He became poor) we might become rich. That is incredible!

Jesus’ home is heaven. Now, I am not sure where heaven is exactly, but the biblical description of it sounds pretty incredible. For instance, the heavenly Jerusalem has streets of pure gold, like transparent glass, with twelve pearl gates. Each of the gates is a single pearl, and the material of the wall is jasper. Furthermore, the entire city is pure gold, like clear glass (see Revelation 21). Jesus left His heavenly home and was born in a manger. It might be obvious, but a manger is a barn where the Israeli shepherds kept their donkeys, sheep and camels. It would have smelled like manure, been infested with flies and been filled with poop. When our Lord’s earthly birth is contrasted to His heavenly home, the reality of Jesus’ humble state emerges with startling clarity.

I want to point out again that Jesus became poor for a reason. His celestial mission was to make us wealthy. It is the great exchange—beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, hope for the hopeless, healing for sickness, prosperity for poverty. You get the idea: Jesus called it abundant life.

The Wickedness of Wealth?

I want us to stop for a moment while I make a few observations about heaven. First of all, if wealth and riches are inherently evil, what are they doing in heaven? Why would God describe heaven so lavishly if wealth were bad, or even bad for you? For example, can you imagine God describing heaven as a place filled with opium fields and heroin factories? No, because drugs speak to us of evil—bad, addictive, destructive substances that ruin people’s lives. In other words, we all know that these substances in themselves are destructive, so we would never use them to describe a positive condition. On the other hand, wealth cannot be intrinsically evil, or the Bible would not describe heaven as a place full of unimaginable riches. In fact, if heaven is God’s goal for us, then wealth must be a piece of our prize!

Our idea of “poor Jesus” is similarly skewed. Although Jesus left heaven, heaven never left Jesus, because Kingdom prosperity always begins from the inside out. You can put Jesus in a manger, but you can’t put a manger in Jesus. Wealth, glory and power seeped out of His pores like sweat on a hardworking man on a hot, humid day.

Here is a case in point: Jesus went to a wedding in a village called Cana. Soon after He arrived, the party was in danger of ending prematurely because they did not buy enough wine to sustain all the guests. Mary, His mother, convinced Him to make more wine for the wedding. Jesus ordered the waiters to fill six stone waterpots with water. The water instantly turned to wine (see John 2:1–11). There were no grapes necessary, which means the entire process of growing the vines and picking the grapes was bypassed. Furthermore, the long process of fermenting the wine, which takes years to complete, was also circumvented. When the headwaiter tasted the wine, he was stunned because it was so good.

It is important to remember that Mary is the one who insisted that Jesus make wine. How did Mary know that Jesus could make wine from water? Could she have experienced Jesus making wine at home? My point is that if Jesus could make wine from water in two minutes, then it stands to reason that He may have been living modestly on the outside, but wealth flowed out of His innermost being. Mary and Joseph may have been a middle-class carpenter family, but they might have been drinking wine that reminded them of heaven at home. In fact, the wine was so good that the Bible says that when Jesus made wine, He “manifested His glory.” Now, that is great wine! I guess He was not kidding when He said that He is the vine and we are the branches (see John 15:1–14).

The Tax Man

One time Jesus and Peter were traveling together without Judas, who carried the money box. When they came to the village of Capernaum, the tax collector insisted that they both pay a poll tax. Although Jesus felt as though they were being taxed unfairly, He instructed Peter to go down to the sea and catch the first fish that bit his hook. Then he was to look in its mouth for a shekel (a coin) and use the money to pay their tax bill (see Matthew 17:24–27).

Did you catch the full impact of what just happened? Jesus just commanded a fish to produce the money they needed to pay their taxes. Did the fish find the money at the bottom of the sea, from some wrecked merchant ship, or did Jesus supernaturally cause a coin to appear in the fish’s mouth? I have no idea, but I do know this: If Jesus could command one fish to bring Him money, then He certainly could command a school of fish to duplicate that miracle a thousand times if He needed to. I guess my mama was right; money doesn’t grow on trees. But maybe it does grow on seaweed.

Apparently, Jesus took God’s command to “rule over the fish of the sea” seriously (Genesis 1:26), because He became quite famous for impacting the fishing industry. The gospels record Jesus supernaturally chumming the fish into the disciple’s nets on at least two occasions. Take a look at the first one:

When He [Jesus] had finished speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered and said, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as You say and let down the nets.” When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break; so they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats, so that they began to sink.

Luke 5:4–7

These guys are not fishing recreationally; this is how they make their living. Fishing was a middle-class, feast-or-famine kind of occupation . . . that is, until Jesus showed up. He quickly transformed a meager living into a prosperous vocation.

Let’s look at one more fishing expedition so we understand that the previous story was not an isolated incident. It was the nature of Jesus to behave extravagantly. He never provided just a few more fish . . . heck no!

Jesus stood on the beach; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. So Jesus said to them, “Children, you do not have any fish, do you?” They answered Him, “No.” And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right-hand side of the boat and you will find a catch.” So they cast, and then they were not able to haul it in because of the great number of fish. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord.” So when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put his outer garment on (for he was stripped for work), and threw himself into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat, for they were not far from the land, but about one hundred yards away, dragging the net full of fish.

John 21:4–8

Jesus is into the boat-sinking, way-too-many, catch-of-the-year kind of fishing. In America we say time is money, but in the fishing business fish are money. Jesus was not just increasing their catch; He was increasing their cash! It is worth mentioning here that if having a lot of money is a bad thing, then Jesus should have made sure they had minimal catches.

What I am pointing out is that if Jesus can circumvent the process of wealth creation by creating money out of thin air, or by making wine instantaneously from water, or by taking a boy’s lunch and multiplying it ten thousand times to feed a crowd that would fill an entire NBA basketball stadium, or by increasing a fisherman’s catch by 1,000 percent, then there is no way He can ever be called poor . . . at least by worldly standards. Yes, Jesus became poor when you contrast His heavenly home with His earthly visitation. But Jesus was no homeless transient, traversing the countryside with twelve vagabonds. He actually was a famous traveling rabbi who grew up in a middle-class carpenter’s home and had a very well-funded ministry.

Funded by the Wealthy

Although Jesus was born in a manger, His birth was announced with astonishing fanfare. God assigned a star to Jesus that the Magi followed to find the Messiah. The Magi were wise men from the East that later tradition holds to be three kings named Casper, Melchior and Balthazar. These kings brought gold, frankincense and myrrh from their treasures and presented them to Jesus at His bi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: The True Meaning of Kingdom Wealth
• Part Two: Practical Ways to Grow Your Capacity for Wealth
• Notes
• About the Author
• Other Books and Messages by Kris Vallotton
• Back Ads
• Back Cover