Dear Partner,
Everybody wants to be blessed. You want to be blessed; certainly I want to be blessed. Because of the importance of this biblical truth, I’m going to ask you to read every word of this letter very carefully. I believe what you are about to read holds one or more keys to releasing the abundant blessing of God upon your life. Right now, as I write this letter, there is an anointing on my life to help as many people as possible to know that it is God’s plan for each of them, as His children, to prosper and be in health…
A very IMPORTANT FACT concerning the Law of the Harvest: Let’s settle a life-changing truth right here and now… And in doing so, let’s commit not to allow those who have no understanding of the Word to take this powerful principle of seed-time and harvest from our lives. The law of the harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act; you reap a habit. Sow a habit; you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.
A few days ago, during an exciting time of personal prayer and praise unto the Lord, I made some notes that I have included in this letter for every Believer who is serious about becoming a personal participant in God’s blessing plan for them. These are SIX (6) Bible reasons to be blessed.
Now is one of those times when you want to guard your thoughts as you are reading. There are some people who say, “Well, Richard, you don’t know what I’ve been through.” Then there are those––and you may know some of them––who actually say, “I’m not worthy to be blessed. You don’t know what has happened in my life; you don’t know what I’ve done.” I’m telling you right now, by the authority of the Word, as a child of the Most High God, I believe God wants you blessed. He said in 3 John 2, “Beloved, I wish above all things that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers.”
He wants you well in every area of your life. However, you must understand blessings and the part they play in God’s divine plan for your life. So, shut down doubt, fear, and every thought that does not line up with the Word, because you don’t want to miss a single one of the SIX (6) foundational reasons for you to be blessed.
Reason for you to be blessed #1
I believe God wants you to be blessed because it’s His will. Psalm 35:27 says, “Let them shout for joy and be glad that favor my righteous cause. Yes, let them say continually, ‘Let the Lord be magnified which has pleasure in the prosperity of his servants.’” God wants to bless you because it brings Him pleasure to see you prosper. I challenge you not to take this lightly. Pleasing God should be at the top of our daily to-do list.
Reason for you to be blessed #2
He wants you blessed because Jesus came to give you abundant life, not abundant lack. John 10:10 says, “The thief (or the devil) cometh not but for to steal and to kill and to destroy. But I have come that you might have life and you might have it more abundantly.” Unlike far too many Believers are acting, it is important that YOU know and understand, Jesus didn’t come to give you abundant lack; He came to give you abundant life.
Reason for you to be blessed #3
I believe He wants you to be blessed financially so you can help finance the Gospel and establish His covenant. This is very, very important.
It is recorded in the New International Reader’s Version in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “You know the grace shown by our Lord Jesus Christ. Even though He was rich, He became poor to help you. Because He became poor, you can become rich.” I challenge you to allow this powerful truth to take root in both your thinking and your spirit. These words were written by the Apostle Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to the church he personally established in the city of Corinth. Paul understood it was going to take money to accomplish the needs of the church as they reached out to the lost and hurting of their day. That same powerful principle continues today. There are hurting people who need our help… There are the sick we must reach with the message of God’s healing power… There are the lost who must be reached, and all of this takes money to accomplish.
So why does God want you to be rich? To fulfill His covenant. What is His covenant? Here’s the KEY to victory over those who are constantly trying to rein us (you and me) in when we talk about prospering in Christ: God’s covenant is that you might be blessed so that you can become a blessing. When you are sold out to God and acting on your faith in His plan for your life, there are NO dead-end blessings! There are NO blessings for hoarding… Blessings from God don’t stand still. Blessings FROM GOD are NOT PASSIVE… Blessings FROM GOD are ACTIVE… They come to you because God knows He can get them THROUGH YOU to those in need!
Here is a POWERFUL KEY to your financial future. All you have to do is embrace it and then, by faith in God, the author and finisher of your faith, ACT on the financial freedom that can be yours when you make His blessing the motivation for your giving and receiving.
Remember the instructions: We are blessed by God so we can become a blessing. It’s not just so we can say, “Look at us; we’re so blessed.” No, the blessing is so that we’ll be blessed, and then turn around and be a blessing to others. God has given us the power to be rich for a purpose. Deuteronomy 8:18 records it this way: “But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore unto thy fathers, as it is this day.”
Well, what does the word “rich” mean? I looked it up in the dictionary. Webster’s Inter-collegiate Dictionary defines rich as “having abundant possessions, especially material wealth.” There is nothing wrong with wealth! It is how you handle or respond to wealth that makes it a blessing or a detriment. This is why it is important for you to have a firm grasp on the understanding of wealth and the part it plays in God’s plan for your life.
Partner, please read this carefully: For the past several months, I have been talking about how God has impressed upon my spirit the message of GREATER WORKS. I have done my best to be a faithful steward of the challenge the Holy Spirit placed on me that very first day. Because God is honoring the plan He placed into our hands, many of our partners have responded with Greater Works Offerings unto the Lord.
Blessed to be a blessing… This ministry is blessed by our partners, and in turn we are blessing hundreds of Pastors and lay leaders in Ghana, West Africa by being the pipeline God is using to get His Word (the Bible) and powerful Holy Spirit Bible teachings into their hands through an easy-to-use tool that is both powerful and cost effective. After Ghana, Greater Works Tablets will be delivered to other parts of the world where they can be used to point literally millions of non-believers to Christ while strengthening the new Believers to become disciples of the Most High God.
Reason for you to be blessed #4
God wants to bless you so you can honor Him through your financial success. Proverbs 3:9-10 in the Amplified version says this: “Honor the Lord with your capital and sufficiency from righteous labors and with the firstfruits of your income. So shall your storage places be filled with plenty and your vats shall be overflowing with wine.” The Hebrew word for “honor” is the word kabad. It means to be weighty, to be rich, be glorious, enjoy honor, be made abundant, get oneself glory or honor, gain glory. That’s what the word honor literally means. So, therefore we honor and glorify God through our financial success. Now, in reading and re-reading Proverbs 3:9, it says, “Honor the Lord.”
I trust you are allowing this to take root in your spirit. Far too many Believers are honoring a long list of insignificant “things” today. But the Bible says, “Honor the Lord with your capital and sufficiency from your righteous labors,” otherwise known as your job, your business, your ministry, and your family. Honor them. But it also says that we should “honor Him with our firstfruits of all our increase,” which is our income, meaning that we should have several or multiple streams of income. Now, look back for a minute at verse 9 in the New Living Translation. In this translation, the scripture becomes very clear when it specifically states, “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce.” To me, that sounds a lot like being blessed with multiple streams of income.
Reason for you to be blessed #5
We’re to be blessed so that we can be a part of funding His church and multiple outreaches. God wants us as Christians to reach out beyond ourselves and help fund ministries. This is a very important principle. I’ve been doing something the Lord recently laid on my heart; I’ve been sowing into organizations that help widows and orphans and things of that nature, here in the United States, in Canada, in Central America, in Europe, in Asia and especially in Africa. I’ve been sowing into those groups, and I sowed a seed recently to a group down in Texas that particularly ministers to widows. I found out that a long-time friend of mine has a great ministry down in Texas that reaches out particularly to widows. And so I sent a tithe gift to her to bless those that she blesses through her ministry. Well, she wrote me back and said, “You don’t have any idea what this gift means. I’m just dealing with an 85-year-old woman whose husband had passed away, and she was just about to lose her home. If she can’t make the payment within a couple of days, she’s going to be put out of her home at 85 years of age. She’s distraught; she doesn’t know what to do. And this money will take care of her entire payment and possibly part of the next.” And I’ve sown several times now into that group. It gives me a great blessing to know that I’m helping widows and orphans. It’s God’s plan…
Reason for you to be blessed #6
God wants to bless you so you can be the head and not the tail. Deuteronomy 28:10–13 says this in the Amplified version: “And all the people of the earth shall see that you are called by my name and in the presence of the Lord they shall be afraid (have godly respect) of you.” All the people of the earth… Not just those in your family, not just those in your neighborhood, not just those in your local church. All… all means everybody that you come into contact with shall know that you are called by the name of the Lord.
Here is another KEY TRUTH: Please read the following very carefully. It is important that you not misunderstand what I am writing to you. You cannot be a closet Christian and expect to prosper. Please let this truth sink into your thinking… You cannot be a closet Christian and expect to prosper. You can’t be namby-pamby about who you are in Christ. With His protection about you, I challenge you not to play around with the illusions created by the enemy of your success. You must give them NO PLACE in your thinking. Continually renew your mind with the washing of the Word. In other words, flood your mind with the Word of God. Say with conviction, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel. I am not ashamed that I’m a servant of the Most High God, the possessor of heaven and earth and the one who delivers me from all of my enemies.” When you personally settle this issue, you position yourself for God’s blessing.
When you spend time in His presence, you can walk into every situation you face with boldness which will create confidence of who you are in Him. No, you’re not anything in yourself; you are who you are because of Him. Deuteronomy 28:11 says, “And the Lord shall make you have a surplus of prosperity through the fruit of your body, of your livestock, and of your ground in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you.” Those words mean the Lord will make you have a surplus of prosperity… Not a government stimulus package, not even an inheritance from a rich relative. Notice this scripture doesn’t say He will give you a surplus of poverty. It doesn’t say that. It says, “He’ll give you a surplus of prosperity.”
And it doesn’t stop there… This verse even shows a variety of ways in which God can get money to you. And if you are thinking, “Why does He want to bless me so much?”, the answer is simple. He promised our forefathers, and God keeps His Word. He is not a man that He should lie. Deuteronomy 28:12 says, “The Lord shall open to you His good treasury, the heavens to give the rain on your land in its season and to bless the work of your hands, and you shall lend to many nations.”
Here is another KEY TRUTH: The reason, I believe, far too many Believers are yet to walk in God’s promises is because they, like ostriches, bury their heads in the sand — afraid to take a risk. If you are content, as a Believer, to hide yourself from life and everybody and everything that’s passing by, then you are going to miss the exciting life God has for you. What a shame… All that God has planned for you traded for a lack of understanding about the power that is yours as a blood-bought child of the God of More Than Enough.
Think about it… This is the time to Praise God. This is the time to sing praises unto Him. We are laying foundation stones upon which God’s blessing plan for your life and those of your family and friends can be established in new and exciting ways… “And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord; because He is good, for His mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid” (Ezra 3:11).
“And there ye shall eat before the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice in all that ye put your hand unto, ye and your households, wherein the Lord thy God hath blessed thee” (Deuteronomy 12:7). Let these thoughts be your thoughts, for they are from God Himself… Rejoice in Him.
Please Read This Out Loud… Allow your heart to rejoice: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise Him” (Psalm 28.7).
Make this your heart’s cry as you rekindle the flames of praise and thanksgiving… Begin to prepare yourself to receive from the Lord as a participant in the magnificent plans God has for the days, weeks, months and years ahead. “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (Joshua 1:8).
Jesus Himself is the one who first said, “I must be about My Father’s business.” Well, that’s your job and that’s my job. Our job is to be about our Father’s business… Praise God! And as you complete and return the enclosed Prayer and Praise Sheet along with your Blessed To Be A Blessing Offering unto the Lord, you’re being involved in a great part of His business.
Since my salvation at the age of 19, just two weeks before my 20th birthday in October 1968, and since being baptized in the Holy Spirit that night in my college dormitory… the greatest thing I’ve learned is how to make my life a seed. My love, my time, my money, my prayers, my smiles, a pat on the back, a good word, all of these are seeds. And God said when I bring that to Him, He will multiply it back and He will bless me so that I might become a blessing. The cornerstone principles I have outlined in this letter govern thoughts, directions, how I pray, how I praise, and decisions I make. In other words, they impact my life more and more every day. Because of them, new doors of opportunity have opened… Because I have personally adopted these principles, I continue to move closer and closer to the center of His will for my life.
As ministry partners, you and I have been given a big assignment. As you read this letter, I am preparing to leave for Ghana, West Africa, where phase one of our Greater Works Tablet campaign becomes an active part of what God called us to do. Greater Works Tablets will be distributed to more than 300 pastors representing thousands of men, women and young people who attend their churches.
For some time, I have closed each letter with this powerful truth: I believe there is nothing like being in association with men and women of like precious faith. And because of the importance of our mission, I’m coming boldly in the love of God, asking you to continue to stand with me through your prayers and faithful financial support of what God is doing in and through this ministry. In my spirit, I feel we must lift up Jesus. We must win the lost… We must help the new Believer plug into the power that is theirs through the Word. We MUST do GREATER WORKS, and we must not slack in our commitment to see His life at work in and through us.
This month, I need your prayers and financial help in a very special way.
Right now, I’m being told that we need $90,000 over and above our normal operating cost––a cost we have cut to the bare minimum––to allow us to remain focused on the next steps in the Greater Works Tablet campaign. I’m asking you to help me cover the cost of the translation into the next language of the country where we will be doing Greater Works.
Because there are just over 18,000 pages of material on a Greater Works Tablet, that means we can have a full page from a book, a sermon or article translated into the language we need for only $5 per page. Think about it… A full page from Oral Roberts’ message, “The Fourth Man,” translated into a language of the Pastors, lay leaders and the other people for less than the price of a Combo Meal at your favorite fast food drive through. Ten pages for less than movie tickets and dinner for two… And the entire 50 pages of this powerful message translated for only $250.
Because we are blessed to be a blessing, I look forward to hearing from you and standing with you as the Power of Agreement is being released in and through your life in exciting new ways. If you need a healing in your body, please use the Prayer and Praise Sheet to let me know about it… If there is a financial need in your life, let me know about it. As your partner in Ministry, I want to come into agreement with you that the Greater Works of our Heavenly Father are released to work in and through your life.
Blessed to Be a Blessing,
