Have you noticed how the line between inspirational self-help writings and Christian books and articles has become progressively blurrier by the year? We often see titles like How to Achieve Your Dreams, Be Successful in Business, or Discover Your Inner Power.

More often than not, the only thing that differentiates Christian authors from others is the addition of a selection of verses from the Bible to add to their instruction regarding the questions of purpose that are common to man.

So many believers feel that God’s dream for them has been out of reach, and they are looking for any key that will reveal the secret that will open up God’s purpose. This is why so many keys are offered by Christian authors, suggesting that the wisdom of God can be unlocked if only they will apply the scriptures (principles) to their particular journey, giving assurances that God is with them in their quest.

But God does not speak as the world speaks.

I want to zero in on this point, that God does not speak as the world speaks, to get into how God defines prosperity, as the prosperity message is again being offered to the church as an avenue to walk in God’s abundance.

Many preachers quote 3 John 1:2 to begin a sermon about prosperity. So, let’s look at the verse.

3 John 1:2
Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

Jim Bakker says that he has God’s nod of approval on his definition of prosperity. He wrote, “As Christians, we’re not chasing after dollars, we’re seeking God. Prosperity is a byproduct of seeking God… I want to challenge you to redefine normal Christianity as ‘prosperity with a purpose’… You can serve God with your money. It’s called being a steward.”

This is a prime example of an author searching the scriptures to align selected verses to a philosophy, which, in effect, replaces the lens of truth with the lens of one’s aspiration. We’re going to break open Bakker’s teaching on prosperity a bit more.

Seeking God inside of His covenant is, first of all, vastly different from seeking God outside of His new covenant in Christ. Think of Jesus’ covenant as God’s treasure chest, which contains everything you need to work with Him as He fulfills His purpose for you as a fruit bearer in His kingdom family.

The treasure chest (covenant) contains the provisions He placed in Jesus’ foundation of truth to serve Him with His own spiritual tools in a new spiritual priesthood.

Let’s be clear: We cannot serve God with our money. We can only serve God with the spiritual tools He sprinkled for us with Jesus’ blood to glorify Him with the increase of His fruit in our souls. This is how Apostle John describes a prosperous soul. Everything radiates from Jesus’ covenant and His daily work to create in you His nature.

God’s fruit that is born in your soul is the true treasure He’s coming to collect and is, therefore, the true value of your soul and the true byproduct of laboring with the tools God sanctified for you and entrusted to your care to steward as you build His kingdom.

To deny Jesus’ tools is to deny His power, which denies God His expected fruit.

Inside Jesus’ covenant, we begin with who Jesus is and how God defines the stewardship of His grace and truth to prosper and increase the body of Christ as He mobilizes each saint to fulfill His divine purpose as a fruit bearer in His kingdom.

The power of the anointing works within us and is seen outwardly in our stewardship of grace toward those in the body and those outside the body.

God’s hand is seen in the calling of the apostle to shape our understanding of how true stewardship has nothing to do with dispensing money and everything to do with sharing the substance of God’s grace to increase His kingdom exponentially.

What you steward has everything to do with how you steward.

God’s inflow of truth and outflow of charity is pressed upon the mind by Apostle Peter, who instructed the saints, saying, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” (1 Peter 4:10)

What we steward is the grace of God and how we steward it is in our priesthood. Apostle Peter is not talking about financial prosperity, nor is he talking about the principles of prosperity in the natural realm. He’s talking about God’s kingdom and His plan for us to abound in His kingdom. God entrusts us with the knowledge of Jesus Christ and trusts that we will labor with His daily provision of grace that we receive from Him.

These gifts of grace are given to us with a designed purpose: to allow Jesus to mediate the terms of the covenant on our behalf and to allow God to increase our souls with His treasure.

God Differentiates the flow of His covenant: Many ministers quote 3 John 1:2 and get caught up in the wrong flow. In one of his video teachings, Joseph Mattera quoted the verse and began to teach about how to flow in the church (rather than how to flow with God and all the things of Christ that God placed in His new covenant. There’s a difference there that needs to be observed).

Mattera did not mention Jesus’ covenant or any of the terms of contact God established for us to flow with Jesus. Instead, Mattera said, “If you’re flowing in the church, you can receive all of these blessings… outside the church, you’re not gonna have the strength…you’re not gonna have the covering that you need to walk an abundant life.”

The problem is that the false church is made up of thousands of different ideas and philosophies that flow in the same current as the god of this world. This is a false covering.

God gave a word of knowledge for this teaching that will help to differentiate being in His new covenant from being in the current Christian culture that is not Jesus’ church. The word of knowledge the Lord gave was “eviscerate”.

The meaning: “To eviscerate a person or animal means to remove their internal organs, such as their heart, lungs, and stomach; deprive of vital or essential parts.” (Collins Dictionary; dictionary.com)

We have a very clear picture here: You cannot eviscerate the covenant of all the vital things that God placed in Christ for you to function in His body. When you take out all of the essential parts of Christ, the body is no longer living; it’s an empty shell.

This describes the false church – the modern Christian culture. And if you are in that church, that’s not the body of Christ, is it? Believers gain much needful Godly insight here about why they have felt like an empty vessel.

Sadly, being an empty vessel has been a lifelong experience for so many believers. And what do empty vessels do? Let’s take a moment to look at that to see how emptiness aligns with the type of preaching coming from ministry leaders.

Empty vessels are sent on many spiritual quests, looking for these things:

– keys to reverse setbacks

– keys to get a prophetic compass

– keys to discern a prophetic compass

– keys to breaking bonds

– keys to tap into God’s power for deliverance

– keys to know how to hit the restart button (fasting, repenting, singing, laughing)

From this short list, we can understand why God is challenging the false church to rethink what she calls the normal Christian experience. Her corrupt stewardship developed a prison system from diverse teachings to hold captive a generation of Christians behind the bars of false knowledge and false hope.

Apostolic stewardship is God’s true covering, whereas all believers are brought into one covenant house and operate with all the things God placed in Christ’s covenant for us to receive His life. Being in Christ (in His covenant), our vessels remain full. Our accountability to God is measured on this one scale.

Our tethering to God happens inside of His covenant, where God placed the name of Jesus and everything that is vital for our faith to reflect Him. There is no life outside of Him.

In a time when ministry leaders are challenging God to redefine normal Christianity to accommodate their norms, God challenges them to accept His apostolic stewards of grace who redefine normal Christianity according to His new covenant in Jesus.

Here’s some welcome news—prosperity begins with who Jesus is and the abundance of grace He gives you on a daily basis. Our deep dive with God into true prosperity takes us directly into the new covenant priesthood which all covenant believers share and have a living part in.

Of course, many believers have by now come to see the lure of the prosperity message that dominated the Christian landscape for decades for its true colors. It had a disappointing run of deception. Thousands of Christians were personally touched as the embers of hope turned into the ashes of shame. Even a number of celebrity ministers, over recent years, have admitted that their prosperity teaching had been in error.

Recanting past errors, however, does not mean a minister has now yielded to God’s truth to stand worthy of instructing believers in it. Nor can the error of that message be swept away by hitting a reset button.

The “keys” offered in such (and other) false teachings never unlock the mysteries of Christ in the covenant of redemption but misappropriate the scriptures to put God’s stamp of approval upon the pursuit of earthly treasures to shackle your faith to the kingdom of the flesh. Jesus’ apostles warned of this.

Galatians 6:7-8
⁷ Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

⁸ For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

Apostle Paul warns of a deception, to believe that sowing to the flesh can somehow be spiritualized and accepted as if we are sowing spiritually into God’s kingdom. God is not mocked, meaning that we cannot take the things of man to create the image of Jesus Christ.

Prosperity teachings, such as the one by Bakker, present themselves as God’s dream for you, turning a believer’s focus, hope and expectations to the things of this world, as they are encouraged to sow financially or learn financial principles to gain God’s favor and abundance and purpose.

In this regard, the Lord gave me another word of knowledge for this teaching: “the banal things of this world”.

To understand why the Lord calls the pursuit of earthly provision, favor and abundance “the banal things of this world”, let’s take a moment to consider the meaning of the word banal. Banal means “boring, ordinary, and not original; repeated too often; overfamiliar through overuse.” (Cambridge Dictionary; vocabulary.com).

To be clear: The temporal things of this world, such as the pursuit of health, wealth and prosperity, though appealing to the natural man, are not God’s original purpose for us, nor the focus of His work in us. They are as insignificant (boring, ordinary) as the dust of the earth, which all things of this temporal world shall ultimately return to.

The gospel of prosperity, health, and wealth plays the same familiar tune over and over again. Satan has pulled upon these same strings since the dawn of time to cheapen the true grace of God.

In His compassion, God is not unfamiliar with our needs and hears every prayer, but He did not design the gospel of Jesus Christ to carry earthly tokens because they are powerless to reciprocate to God what He is. The multiplication God sanctified in Jesus’ covenant is that of spiritual contact for divine increase, of the gaining of His fruit within and nurturing that fruit unto virtue, for the conscience to perfectly reflect Him.

The true gospel is the image of God; therefore, the true treasure is that which He places in the heart. (2 Cor. 4:6)

God’s original plan for salvation, sealed to Jesus Christ, looks far beyond the temporal and, therefore, centres on His Intelligent Design for Christ-Centered Spiritual Transformation. God’s original plan speaks of our origin and destiny in Him, of the eternal inheritance that awaits the righteous. It speaks of the gospel of regeneration and the renewing of mind – the greater works by which we truly know God and are known of Him.

When Jesus said to the woman at the well, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,” He was pointing her to the new covenant He had come to establish in Himself, shifting the eye away from the traditions and needs of the flesh, unto our spiritual transformation in preparation of the eternal inheritance. (John 4:24)

Quoting from Apostle Eric vonAnderseck’s article, Dream Big – Dream with God:

“In this season of change and transition, God is teaching the church to dream BIG – to dream with Him. This is a shift away from the current Christian culture where it has been popular to lead believers to list their career goals, relationship goals, financial goals, and then imagine how God can help them make these dreams come true.

It’s time to shift your focus. Even though the true size of your soul is as the size of a universe, in comparison to God, it is like a drop of water to the ocean. What I’m saying is that if your dream is ‘about you’, your dream will stay locked up inside of ‘you’ – the drop of water –and will never be poured into the ocean of God’s soul.

What I’m saying is that you can spend your whole life realizing the dream of your signature and miss completely how small this dream really is. God is not the husbandman of this garden that grows up and fades away in a lifetime of achievements.”

When false ministers distort the scriptures into a kind of “karma / give to others to get from God” doctrine (sowing to the flesh to seek increase in the same), they rob believers of God’s greater dream or purpose, which does not reflect man, but Christ in the mystery of spiritual contact for increase (serving God by Jesus’ sanctified priesthood, to consent to inner transformation unto His likeness).

Misdirecting scripture to add weight to false teaching offends God’s holiness, even as Satan did when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, using scripture to back his proposals. Such ministers follow in the way of the Pharisees, putting on a show of piety (as if being true to scripture is proof that they are true to God).

But neglecting the weightier matters of God’s due order for salvation in the terms of His spiritual covenant – they strain at the truth while swallowing false doctrine. Jesus laid this out for us.

Matthew 23:23-24
²³ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

²⁴ Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

As the weightier matters of that first covenant had to do with the law God gave Israel through His steward, Moses, so today, the weightier matters have to do with the transition of the church to the new covenant law of grace and truth; God’s plan of redemption in Jesus Christ.

Today, God unfolds these things of His kingdom to our understanding by again providing the oversight of the stewardship of His election. The stewards of grace that God selects, He also equips, and they bear the key of knowledge to instruct in the way of Jesus’ new covenant and priesthood.

God’s key is first of all about who, then about what He unlocks.

God’s sanctified apostolic stewards of grace are the who. God uses a man to whom He gives His blueprint and key of knowledge that unlocks the mystery of Christ. The restored government of God bears the true key of Jesus’ knowledge by which believers’ eyes are opened to the due order of His covenant.

In Him – in Jesus is the true riches of His divine spiritual increase, which the apostles unlock. This is why Jesus spoke to Apostle Peter, saying: “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven…” (Mat 16:19a)

This speaks of the apostle’s doctrine by which believers would be transitioned from the physical things of the covenant of Moses (temple, animal sacrifices, tithing, washings, etc.) into Jesus’ new and better covenant of redemption, with His spiritual tools of worship (beginning with the baptism of the Holy Spirit, evidenced by the accompanying sign of tongues).

We have to get into how God views the apostolic calling and how it differs from man’s view. Just as pastors and ministry leaders have taken the wrong path with increase and abundance, placing it in the wrong kingdom, so do they take the wrong path to misrepresent the apostles’ calling today. They refer to the calling as a title of man, and of course, that’s the wrong kingdom.

It’s worth repeating here that God does not speak as the world speaks, and add to that that God does not think as the world thinks. (Is. 55:8-9)

Titles have to do with building a man-made concept of a hierarchy where one person is above another, but God’s kingdom is built by the Spirit according to God’s due order. The apostles are foundation builders. They lay the foundation of truth to disciple the saints in the knowledge and function God sanctified for their increase in His kingdom.

God says that each calling in His government represents Jesus and carries His name in His covenant knowledge. The calling is placed first, before our name, in honor of the One who gave it so that you may know that we don’t come in our own name. (Jn. 17:6; Jn. 5:43)

Jesus passed the baton of His stewardship on to His apostles as master builders, placing in the calling a measure of grace to lay His original and complete foundation of truth within a believer’s heart. Everyone knows that without a foundation, you cannot build. (1 Cor. 3:10-11; Eph. 2:20)

Although many in the counterfeit church now claim the apostolic calling, they believe apostles are immaterial to truth and absorb the calling into their own system, making their function worthless to God. The counterfeit church believes the Bible is the source of truth, but Jesus said that He is the source of truth. (Jn. 1:1-3; Jn. 14:6)

In God’s mind, the apostles are the jugular veins of the church. Just as in our natural bodies, blood flows from the head to the heart through the jugular veins, so does God use the apostles to circulate His truth from the headship of Christ to express Him in the heart through our priesthood. God is making a connection there between the stewardship and the priesthood.

Jesus will only oversee, empower, and mediate the knowledge that represents Him perfectly because that’s the knowledge that binds us to God and prepares us to build with Him in the pure conscience. God’s kingdom standard has to be built into the foundation of truth you receive from living apostles for God to see a reflection of His Son in your soul.

Apostle Paul differentiates his calling by the power and name of Jesus Christ. He does not hide the calling in his flesh, but places the calling where it belongs – in Christ.

2 Corinthians 2:20
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.

To understand why the Lord refers to Apostle Paul as His ambassador, let’s take a moment to consider the role of an ambassador. An ambassador is “an important official who works in a foreign country representing his or her own country there; a person who represents, speaks for, or advertises a particular organization, group of people, activity…” (Cambridge Dictionary).

When the Apostle Paul says that he and all the callings God placed in His spiritual government are ambassadors for Christ, he is saying that God had a plan to care for His church in Jesus’ absence. Jesus is in heaven, but the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers of His government represent Him here on earth.

As God differentiates the flow of His covenant from the flow of man’s natural design, He sets order to the church and reveals what comes first.

1 Corinthians 12:28
And God hath set some in the church, FIRST apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.

Apostle Paul differentiates what belongs to Christ. What belongs to Christ belongs in the church. And although all five callings are established in God’s spiritual government, God set the apostles first to do what comes first, to build the foundation of Jesus’ covenant knowledge in each saint.

Miracles do not come first. Seeking ministry gifts and callings does not come first. Fellowship in the church does not come first. Seeking increase does not come first. Seeking God’s will for your life does not come first.

God’s living blueprint comes first because God gives a system for how faith is to function. Living apostles must first build the living foundation of truth in the heart of a believer to oversee their building with God – this is true discipleship. Everything follows the foundation of truth. Your priesthood follows, your cycles of growth follow, your fruit bearing follows, your increase follows as you learn how to steward God’s grace, and your calling follows.

Bringing the church into one covenant house of Jesus Christ, all of God’s saints receive the same protection against rogue ministry leaders who broke away from the covenant of Jesus Christ. They insist on bringing the church under the shadow of their progressive truths and doctrines that self-reflect and self-reference, thus keeping the church in bondage. (Isaiah 24:5)

Apostolic means the whole government of God acting as one.

As we each labor with the grace that God gives to function in our own calling, we are each building upon the one foundation of truth. To remove yourself from the oversight of the apostles’ calling is to remove yourself from the truth that God uses to build in you and create in you His nature. God’s care is experienced inside His covenant where we are in flow or in rhythm with Him.

As the true apostolic governance is once again accepted as the will and power of God through Jesus Christ, the saints have ceased wandering in the desert looking for wells as they battle against sin, and they have ceased looking for keys to abundance.

Now that true worship is restored in Jesus’ new covenant priesthood, believers can now discern for themselves the ambiguous language and teachings that were designed to keep them in bondage and in flow with the expectations set by ministers of the false gospel.

As God places a difference between the knowledge and tools of His kingdom and the knowledge and tools of the fleshly kingdom, believers are getting a new message as God redirects their faith to the things Jesus intended.

In the true church, believers flow in Jesus’ covenant terms and use His tools as they labor with the anointing. They are free to express Him. Their experience has changed, and what we call treasure has changed, whereas the treasures gathered are heavenly and tasted of and rejoiced in. Our hope is not far off as we walk in God’s daily provisions.

King Solomon said, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10)

The fear of the Lord speaks of reverent obedience to His due order for faith. Solomon obeyed the instructions of his father, David, God’s steward, through whom God revealed a new direction for Israel to leave behind the tabernacle of Moses to build a temple of stone.

1 Chronicles 28:11
Then David gave to Solomon his son the pattern of the porch, and of the houses thereof, and of the treasuries thereof, and of the upper chambers thereof, and of the inner parlours thereof, and of the place of the mercy seat,

1 Chronicles 28:19
All this, said David, the Lord made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern.

God gave the pattern to David, and Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem for the function of Israel’s faith according to the pattern he received.

Jesus, likewise, brought new direction as He fulfilled the covenant of Moses in Himself, sanctified a new spiritual covenant and house by His blood, and delivered the pattern of truth to His apostles to unlock God’s wisdom for the church.

When a believer transitions their faith to His covenant terms, they gain access to the fullness of God’s promises; daily growing in Godly wisdom, knowledge and understanding, and experiencing the true unity that the current Christian culture is sorely lacking.

When teaching about the pattern for faith in Hebrews 11, Apostle Paul used many examples of those who sought out the greater things of God over the lesser of the world, writing of Moses:

Hebrews 11:24-26
²⁴ By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter;

²⁵ Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;

²⁶ Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.

Today, the Lord is setting this challenge before believers again, saying, will you continue to pursue the temporal promises of the counterfeit gospel that mimics this world, or will you choose to seek the Greater by following in the way of Christ’s restored spiritual covenant for your soul to be transformed in His light?