What Do You NEED In This Life?

AI Generated Transcript (I only fixed the mis-spelling of my name - I left the rest of the mess just the way AI delivered it haha):

Does God want you to financially and materially prosper in this life? Welcome to Jon's Voice Notes, where I, Jon, take a topic, like the one I just stated, and then I just go stream of consciousness with no plan and say what I want to say today. It is very hot, but I don't feel it.

Sunny, partly cloudy, but beautiful. Still day. The trees are hardly moving out in my backyard. I'm sitting in my living room here in northern Illinois. There's a parking lot across from the living room. Some of the sun is glaring in my eyes off those cars. Darn it. But still beautiful. Beautiful house. And a nice air-conditioned room. So let's get to it. I am sure I have talked about this kind of thing before.

I am sure I am starting to repeat myself. But you know what? I don't care because this is what I want to say today. So deal with it. So I'm just pondering. I ponder with this before the Lord regularly. I wrestle with this before God regularly. Because I believe that in some ways I was taught a poverty mentality.

by various sources. I don't know if I want to get into who's to blame, but I'll take responsibility myself for my own poverty mentality. And so I struggle. Sometimes I don't struggle. Sometimes I really struggle. I struggle with wondering, am I worth having more wealth? Am I worth getting paid for the things I do? I spent most of my young adult career with a job where I didn't get paid. I was a volunteer.

And I sort of got paid because people could make donations because I was a member of a religious order. People could make donations to feed me and clothe me and send me on my ministry trips, give me a little pocket money. That could happen, but I didn't really get paid, and I didn't have an income, and I didn't have an expectation of one. I kept getting promoted to more and more responsibility, but that did not come with a pay raise because there was no pay. Yeah.

I'm not blaming that. I just, I feel like in that atmosphere, I did learn some poverty mentality. I learned how to do the bare minimum. To this day, if someone asks me, what is the bare minimum? Like I've been going on a trip and raising money for a missions trip. And someone would be like, what is the bare minimum you could go with? I've learned this often means they're planning on covering the rest. And they want to do the least possible to cover all the rest.

But I don't even know the answer to that question. In fact, I struggle with trying to figure out what do I need? Because need is a very, very relative term, actually. For example, if you live in a village in India, if there's any of those left, like I saw back in the 90s, with no electricity...

no running water. It was like an old-fashioned village, you know, like something out of National Geographic. What do they need? What do they need? They need whatever crops they're growing to come in and for them to successfully harvest them and to not be robbed or killed or, you know, something done to their hut so that they can live in those huts and eat that food and live.

What do I need? Do I need a hut? Do I need the harvest to come in? I think I saw such staggering poverty in the world. Like I have seen some staggering poverty. Like when I see poverty in the U.S., it's there and it's real. But it's pretty different. It's usually not as staggering as what I've seen like in India. I've seen people that are, I mean literally the look on their face is almost like a blank look. Like there's nothing there. Right?

Might be demonic. That might be demonic. But there's like a stark poverty. Absolutely nothing. Absolutely no hope. No sense of if I take these actions, I'm going to prosper. Just complete poverty. So I've seen that. And I know that we live in a world where that can happen. So then I ask myself, what do I need?

How can I say, for example, that I need a car when there's people in the world that are that poor? I am talking to you from the perspective, I believe, of the poverty mentality that has gotten into me. Because the real thing is, the real question is, what do I need to flourish and fulfill my calling? That is really what we need. And people are different.

People know how to live differently. Like, I don't know how to live on a farm. I don't know how to live on an Indian farm. Like, if you put me in a village in India, I wouldn't even know how to contribute. I would have to learn a whole other way of life. You know, so I need something different than what they need in order to flourish. Now, the thoughts that are going through my head, the racing through my head that I want to speculate on...

Part of me wishes I'd never seen this kind of poverty. Another is glad that I have. But we need to get them out of a poverty mentality. My observation about how the world really works is that most of the time, there are exceptions to this, but the vast majority of the time, the way a people or a community or a family is lifted out of poverty is in stages.

I don't know if I can say this is divine revelation. This is just an observation that it happens in stages. And there's this stark difference between West and East, so to speak, which there's plenty of wealth in the East, but maybe a greater acceptance of extreme poverty as well, even in wealthy areas. But there's this... Okay, I almost blew up my brain there. Putting too many thoughts in.

But the observation is that increase comes in stages, yet when you come from a very poor culture and you meet a very wealthy culture where poverty isn't even the same in each place...

There's such a stark difference. It's hard for those in the very poor culture to not want to have what they see in the very wealthy culture or to somehow get in on that. Which quite possibly, trading with those wealthier people is a part of their way out of poverty. That's pretty real. But realistically, in most cases, God can do otherwise. He can do it much faster. But in most cases, it will be what you do for your children

that will take them out of poverty. You will be able to increase and be less in poverty than you were before, be freed from the poverty mentality to increase your life. But you can put your children in an even better position. I think I talked recently in another episode about multi-generational Christianity.

So wealth is like passed down. And wealth is not only material goods. Wealth is something that's in your mind. It's something that you create with your mind and your hands. So if you are the child of people who knew how to create wealth and were good at it, you received that in your mind and in your skill set. You also may have received it in connections. Connections and relationships are wealth.

So if you come from a very poor community, there may be stages, multi-generational stages, to lift your family out of poverty. In fact, this is one of the keys, I believe, to prosperity, is to desire the next generation to be more prosperous than you. All of us have inherited something. I was born into a relatively prosperous culture, one of the most prosperous cultures in history, actually, in the United States.

Within that culture of the United States, I wasn't born at the top of that culture at all. So I was born into a culture that is in general one of the wealthiest in history, but I wasn't born at the top of it. So my general expectations of life and wealth are higher than many people throughout history.

We always had running water and electricity. When we were very young, we didn't have air conditioning in the house, but we did when I was getting a little older. We had cars. My parents were able to take us places in motorized vehicles.

We had a two-story house. It was a small house, but two stories. I had my own room. My brother had my own room. They were kind of connected. My sister had a completely separate own room because, you know, she was a girl, so she got her own room. My parents had their own room. There was a downstairs, a dining room, a kitchen, kind of an office, a foyer. You know, we had a house.

Not everyone in history has had this. So being at the, I don't know, middle class or maybe at the end of the middle class where it was becoming, drifting towards a lower middle class, I don't even know if I've got myself pegged correctly, but it doesn't matter. That's how I perceive it. That was wealthier than many people, most people in the history of our planet.

So my expectations, and when I say expectations, I don't mean I have a right to it. I mean my understanding of what would be a normal way to live is like that. If someone took me out into the wilderness and put me in a hut and said, make a life, I would be kind of lost.

So in a sense, I perceive my needs to be that. Now, I don't need all of that in order to biologically stay alive. So how do you define need? Maybe that would be a better title for this episode is how do you define need?

What do I need to not die immediately? What do I need to have my biological needs for food, water? And if you live anywhere that doesn't have a magic climate, you need shelter, right? Or you'll die. If you live where I live and you didn't have shelter, you would die. You might die in the heat of the summer. You would definitely die in the cold of the winter. So shelter is a need for biological survival. A certain kind of shelter. But there's pretty minimum of what you would need in order to not die.

But now the real question would be is what do you need to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion? Now that's totally a different game we're talking about. The word need is being used differently because it's not what do I need to not die. I mean, the children of Israel needed manna and water in the wilderness. And they didn't apparently need it as often as they thought because God let them go without until they sinned by complaining.

Then they complained that they didn't have meat. But God provided meat. It seems to me that what they actually needed out there in the desert was the water and the manna and their tents. And whatever they were getting from their animals. God had a different idea of what they needed. But that wasn't his final plan for them. That was a stage plan.

That was a stage. His actual plan for them was to take them into a land flowing with milk and honey, with houses that were already built, with vineyards and fields that were already planted, to prosper and grow on the fat of the land. The word fat of the land is used. So in order to completely fulfill their destiny, they needed a lot more.

So what they needed to survive in the wilderness versus what they needed to flourish and multiply and be what they were called to be in the world, we're different. I believe a part of us as Christians shaking a poverty mentality is to realize we don't have to live at the lowest level that we biologically need to survive.

We don't just have to have what we need to survive. We need to pursue what we need to fulfill what God has called each of us to do. And that's different for different people. Elon Musk, I have no idea what his faith is, but he apparently needs billions of dollars, not to survive, but because he's trying to build a rocket to go to Mars. And I'm not addressing whether he should be doing these things. I'm just showing the relative difference of the idea of need.

But he's earned it. He's earned it by supplying other people with what they want, starting with PayPal and other projects. And he's providing the government the ability to get astronauts up into space. He's providing internet for people around the world through Skylink. He's providing electric cars for people who feel like that is ahead of the curve and want to have electric cars. But do you see what I'm saying? In order to do all that he is doing in the world, he needs billions of dollars.

in order to have those companies and do those things. I don't need billions of dollars to do what I'm doing. If I need billions of dollars, I don't know it yet. But if God has called me to do some great thing of that kind of scale that's going to provide a product or a service to millions and millions or maybe even billions of people, I probably will need billions of dollars. I don't see that at this point. I don't even desire it, honestly. I don't really desire to be a 200 billionaire.

That's a lot of work. I think it would just be work just to have the money and know what to do with it. But are you getting the idea, though? What you need to flourish, it has relative to your calling. It is also relative a little bit to your preferences. What would delight you?

and cause you to feel rested and refreshed and take joy in life. God wants you to have joy in life. Now, but wait a minute. What about eternity? Aren't we supposed to be focused on saving the lost? And, you know, how can we say we need anything in this world other than just give me a Bible and stand me on a street corner to lead the lost to Christ?

Well, all of us have a calling to lead the lost to Christ, but we have many different callings. Not everyone is called to be an evangelist in the full-time kind of ministry sense. All of us are called to evangelize. We're all a part of the process.

We're all loving our neighbors and sharing the gospel with them, right? So everybody has that calling, but then there are some people who are set aside by God to focus on. That is their primary job, where they somehow need to be paid. They somehow need to have provision. One of the things I've heard, I've got to give credit to Rabbi Lappin, who doesn't even claim to be a Christian. He's a Jewish rabbi.

But one of the ideas that I heard from him that really rings true to me, send me a message whether you think this is true or not.

that one of the ways what you do is assigned value, whatever you're doing, one of the ways that it is assigned value is assigned by your fellow human beings. And they assign that value by giving you, in the United States, for example, little green pieces of paper with numbers on the corners called money or other forms of money or trade. So they say...

I value this wood carving you made that I can put in my living room and it'll look beautiful. So here are some green pieces of money or a check representing them or a credit card payment. I value what you're doing. So what each of us are doing in some ways is assigned value by our fellow human beings, right?

Now here's a thought that tweaked my brain. I was thinking, well, what about Jesus? Well, the Bible says that Jesus was being supported by wealthy, powerful women. And I'm assuming others too. His ministry was supported. Whatever he was wearing was nice enough that the soldiers wanted it after they killed him. They wanted the cloth. They didn't want to ruin it either. They didn't want to cut it up. So rather than cut it up and each have a part, there was a valuable piece of cloth, apparently.

enough that they cast lots for who was going to get it, right? So Jesus, he says, well, foxes have homes, but the son of man has, foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. So I think he was referring to traveling. I mean, I'm assuming that he inherited the home that his mother lived in, Joseph's home. And apparently he was taking care of his mother in some way until he died.

On the cross, because then he told the Apostle John to take care of his mother. So he may have had a house, actually. So I think he may have been referring to traveling. But even if he had given up that house and had no ownership left in it, and he literally had no house, he had financial support, he had resources, he had clothing. There was a money bag for his ministry, and he had a corrupt accountant named Judas.

So, here's what I'm saying is, what he did had inherent value regardless of whether any human beings recognized it. But as a general rule, even ministers and ministries should have, if they're valid call from God...

They should have people assigning value to what they're doing through money. Think about this, about the missionaries you know and the pastors you know. Are you giving to your church? Are you helping to pay the pastor? When you are on the board deciding how much the pastor should get paid, are you making sure they're paid well and taken care of and that their needs are met and that they can flourish?

I keep encountering pastors who are just dirt poor. And maybe if it's a tiny church plant that doesn't have any people in it, but if there's people there that could be paying the pastor and they're not, I would go so far as to say that that's sinful. You need to pay. The worker is worthy of his wages. We need to pay. Or don't ask them to work full-time. If it's a part-time job, tell them it's a part-time job. Only expect them to work part-time.

and expect them to have another career to pay the bills, which is going to interfere with them being there when you want them there. But you can't have it both ways. But even Jesus said that the worker is worthy of his wages. The Apostle Paul talked about Jesus teaching that the one who preaches the gospel should live by the gospel, should be provided for by the gospel. So it is normal and right and good to be paid for your work

and to prosper financially. If you're a thief, you have been instructed in the Bible to stop stealing and instead work with your hands so that you would have something to give to someone else in need. So it literally, let me interpret that for you, that that literally means, on a pretty small scale, but it literally means do the work to create wealth so you can be generous with others. Hello? We are supposed to create wealth.

So you and I are Christians and we read the stuff about store up our treasures in heaven where moth and rust don't corrode and thieves don't break in and steal instead of on earth where all that happens. I don't think Jesus' point there is don't have material wealth. Don't grow and flourish in your calling. I think he's saying invest it in something higher. That's all.

Invest it in something eternal. Don't idolize your wealth. You know, the rich young ruler. Jesus said, he didn't say to everybody, but he said to the rich young ruler, give everything you have and sell it and give it to the poor and then come follow me. So he was giving him an opportunity to be a disciple. Jesus discerned what he needed to hear. So all of us, yeah, we need to hold on to our wealth lightly.

But it isn't inherently sinful to pursue wealth. In fact, I confess regularly that the pursuit of wealth, resources, and money is honorable and good for the sake of the kingdom, providing for myself and my wife, and being able to be super generous with others. Not idolizing it, but pursuing it as good.

So does God want you to prosper? Am I teaching the prosperity gospel? I have a number of episodes like this. I'm still not 100% sure. I don't think I'm teaching the prosperity gospel. But I do think I am teaching a balance to something that's out of balance in the body of Christ, at least for some of us Americans. Rabbi Lappin, a Jewish guy, he speaks in churches. He's very friendly towards Christians.

And he talks about how he's shown up at churches and seen the run-down cars in the parking lot and the buildings run down and everything. It looks like everyone's poor, and he doesn't understand that. I think I understand what's happened there. So I'm going to give you a bold thought. Send me a message. Tell me if I'm wrong. Gospelofeverything.com slash contact. I think it has to do with trying to isolate the New Testament from the Old Testament. We're New Testament believers, right?

But the New Testament came into a context, and it didn't cause the Old Testament to stop being true. It fulfilled it, but there are still many principles in the Old Testament that apply to our lives today. And the Old Testament is much more filled with material prosperity as a result of obedience.

But I've often heard it said that in the Old Testament it was material, but in the New Testament it's spiritual. I don't really believe that. I believe in the New Testament it's been revealed how it's primarily, ultimately, and eternally about our eternal life. But it's not only about that. God wants you to flourish.

Be content. Godliness with contentment is a means to great gain, the Bible says. So doing things in a godly fashion, which includes pursuing dominion and flourishing and blessing others, which will bring wealth, and being content with what you have, is actually going to lead to gain.

So doing things God's way while being content with what you have is going to lead to you having more. You're going to gain. In the world, and this is what we're so afraid of and why we embrace a poverty mentality, it's all about material things alone. I only got one life. Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. I need to live it up best I can. This isn't what we want. In Christianity, increased wealth is increased kingdom stewardship.

It's not just about your fleshly desires. Now, you may be able to buy that bigger bed that you need because you're a big person, or you may be able to add on that room because you have four kids now instead of three. You may be able to move to a nicer house. There's lots of blessings you may be able to enjoy from having greater wealth, but ultimately...

Greater wealth is just greater stewardship. You've been entrusted with a few things here. Take responsibility for many things. Happens even in his life. So, okay. Wow, another long one here, but I think I'm working it out myself, and I'm also trying to get others to see that

Whilst, yes, knowing God is greater treasure than all the wealth in the world. That's true in the Old Testament, too. Wisdom is greater than silver and gold. Even in the Old Testament, doing the right thing before God. It's better to be poor but have the knowledge of God than to be rich and have a tense, frustrated, unhappy household, you know?

But none of this means you shouldn't pursue wealth. You shouldn't idolize it, but you should pursue wealth as a part of everything else you're doing. In fact, if you're pursuing greater responsibility, greater stewardship, greater dominion, and greater service to others, this is the pursuit of wealth. And it will express itself as money in our culture. That's the way we trade. We don't trade with whiskey or tobacco. We trade with money, with currency in this country.

But that's wealth. Properties and expansion of your dominion is an increase of wealth. It increases your ability to serve and bless others. As well as to serve and bless your family. As well as to enjoy life better yourself. All of this you can do while still putting Jesus first. And it's all not... Don't compare yourself to others. It's really important. Because you'll feel poor.

I feel rich when I compare myself to the villager in India. I feel poor when I compare myself to an upper middle class or higher American. Neither are true. I am right where God wants me to be and I need to flourish and grow starting where I'm at up to whatever level he has for me that I don't even foresee. Alright, thank you so much for listening to Jon's voice notes today.

Jon and Jon's Voice Notes signing off.