Before proceeding, I would like to address one more little stumbling block that hinders some Christians from sound financial planning. Because the Law of Moses forbade God's people from charging interest to a fellow Israelite, many feel that it is not right to do so today. If this is something you wrestle with, please consider this: The Lord's own teaching in the Parable of the Talents condemns those who do not at least get interest for what they have been entrusted with, and that does not conflict with the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses against usury was so that Israelites would not use this principle of compound interest to take the wealth of their brethren. It, did not, however, forbid them from doing it to the heathen or the nations around them. Likewise, I do not think we should use this against our fellow believers in the kingdom, but rather use it for them. We will go into a bit more detail as we continue this study.

We do need to base everything that we believe and do on sound biblical teaching. This means that we must also "rightly divide" the Word or apply it correctly. We never want to just rationalize away or ignore something we do not understand. If there are just one or two verses that seem to conflict with the entire weight of Scripture, we should base our doctrine on the entire weight of Scripture. As we are told in Psalm 119:160, "The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting." We need to see the sum of the whole Word of God, and when we do, we will see how every one of His ordinances fit in.

As we gain a broader knowledge of the Scriptures, we can often begin to see how these seemingly opposing teachings of Scripture actually fit. This sometimes takes time. After more than thirty-five years of studying the Bible, reading it through from Genesis to Revelation dozens of times (I try to do this every year), I have become convinced that there are actually no contradictions in the Bible. Every time I read it I am more convinced than ever that the Bible is far beyond the greatest human genius. As Napoleon reportedly said after reading the Gospel of John, "Either Jesus is the Son of God, or the one who wrote this gospel is! I know men, and no man could have made up a story like this."

We should always keep in mind that the very first strategy of Satan against mankind was to get Eve to doubt what God had said. There may be some things in the Bible that are hard for us to understand, but one thing we can count on is that this is not a problem with the Bible, rather with our understanding. Keep going and keep seeking—we have the best Teacher in the universe, the Holy Spirit who created it, so we can trust that in due time He will show us.

It is also my custom in all of my writings to try to balance the practical with the inspirational. As we are told in Romans 10:10, it is by believing in our hearts, not just our minds, that results in righteousness. If we become very wealthy but are still selfish, we are still failures as stewards. Do you want to be a total success, without even the possibility of failing? Think about this—"love never fails" (see I Corinthians 13:8).

Now let's divide this Word rightly—if the love of money grips your heart, you will end up being a most tragic failure. The love that never fails is the love of God, the love of people, and the love of His gifts. I say the love of His gifts because we should love every good gift that He gives us, such as this incredible planet we live on. If we love something, we will take care of it. To again rightly divide the Word of God, the exhortation to not love this world is not talking about the terra firma, but rather the present systems of this world. If we read this literally in the original language, it is speaking more about not loving this age.

This is not the place to go into an in-depth word study of such things, but I am trying to help those who have a great gift for detail and devotion to truth. If the enemy cannot stop you in something, he will usually then get behind you and push you too far. Those with a devotion to detail can become overly legalistic, and miss the forest for the trees. Because many visionaries tend to be more concept than detail-oriented, they miss the trees for the forest. Our goal should be to see the big picture and the details. This is no small skill, but to be a truly effective steward in these times we will need it.

Many Christians, seeking to obey the warning about the love of money being the root of all evil (see I Timothy 6:10), have swung to the other extreme and do not want to have any more to do with money than they have to in order to survive. This causes them to bury their talents and fall into the trap of being the "wicked, lazy slave" (see Matthew 25:26) that we are warned about in the Parable of the Talents. The love of money Paul warns about in I Timothy 6 does not have anything to do with how much you have. Poor people can be as gripped by the love of money as any wealthy person. A wealthy person can likewise be free from this trap. Again, the key is to continually keep in mind that we are slaves of Christ, and we do not own anything we are entrusted with, but are just stewards. Our goal is to serve the Lord, obey Him, and abide in Him in all things.

Now consider this—it should be our goal to be like Christ and to do the works that He did. This is the highest mountain of all to climb. Any believer can climb it, and this should be our primary goal in life, although it is a big one. You climb a mountain step by step. You may have a vision of living like Jesus without a cent in your pocket, and that is a noble goal, but He came down from heaven and we are going up. What I mean is that He could walk like this because He knew very well the power and resources of heaven and that at any time He could multiply whatever resources were put in His hand, even if He needed to feed 5,000 people with one little boy's lunch. I have a vision for walking there too, but I am not there yet, so until I get there I am going to pack my lunch.

Jesus came from heaven first of all to be our Redeemer, but also to show us how to live in the kingdom. We need to get there. It is a process of having our minds renewed so that we think very differently, from the perspective of heaven instead of the earth. We need to have the "eyes of our hearts," or our spiritual eyes, opened so that we can see into the heavenly realm and from the heavenly perspective. This too is a process of growing in spiritual vision.

I am sharing this here because we are going to cover some very down to earth, practical matters, while trying to grow in spiritual vision and having our minds renewed so that we have a very different perspective than those who are of this world. This is one reason why I try to combine the practical with the inspirational in these studies. It is also why I use a lot of redundancies, which are required for the actual renewing of our minds.

There is unprecedented wealth coming to the righteous, but we must keep in mind that we will stumble over if we are not abiding in the Lord. I have a personal vision for being entrusted with billions of dollars and even being able to pay off the debt of some nations in order to see the biblical prophecies fulfilled, and as a testimony of how the Lord paid the debt of the entire world. However, I also have a personal goal of dying penniless. Of course, I want to see my family provided for, but in moderation, with them also being good stewards, and having a life built on faith in the Lord. For myself, I want to see all that has been entrusted to me expended for the purposes of the kingdom. I cannot carry it to heaven, so I want it spent on earth and spent well.

Again, this is not about accumulating personal wealth but about being trusted with wealth. This is not about increasing our own standard of living, but rather increasing our standard of giving. If you think that I am harping on this too much, just remember that angels also harp! You are about to be entrusted with knowledge that can make you wealthy, very wealthy. We need to determine now what we are going to do with it, or rather what we are going to be with it. We prepare the way for the Lord by building a highway, which means a higher way. The church and the world are in desperate need of seeing a higher way for handling wealth. For those who demonstrate this, it will be brought to them.