Introduction
You likely work hard to manage your finances, yet stress over money remains a constant burden in your daily life. Modern economic advice focuses entirely on practical budgeting while ignoring the spiritual dimension of wealth. You try to get ahead using human effort alone, but financial peace always seems just out of reach.
Derek Prince argues that money is a direct representation of your life investment, and God's revealed will encompasses total prosperity across your soul, body, and finances.
The book guides you through a clear spiritual progression. You will learn to break the deceptive power of mammon, honor God through the ancient practice of tithing, and release the grace of giving. You will discover how financial generosity operates on agricultural laws of sowing and reaping, leading you into God's level of complete abundance.
- How can you break free from the spiritual power of mammon?
- What does it mean to put God first in your personal finances?
- How do tithing and Old Testament principles apply to New Testament believers?
- What laws govern financial sowing and reaping?
1. God's All-Inclusive Plan
Money is a direct representation of your life investment, and God's revealed will for you encompasses total prosperity across soul, body, and finances.
Money Represents You
You might try to solve financial problems by becoming overly spiritual while ignoring practical principles. Derek Prince explains that money is not an unspiritual or sordid commodity. You often view cash as filthy lucre while missing its true nature.
Money represents forty hours a week of invested time, educational investment, and practical talents. When you spend or invest money, you are directly investing a major part of yourself for good or bad.
The Scope of Prosperity
Poverty, failure, and frustration are not the will of God for you. The whole will of God encompasses total provision and well-being.
Based on 3 John 2, true biblical prosperity is balanced across three distinct areas:
- spiritual soul prosperity;
- physical health;
- material or financial abundance.
2. God or Mammon?
Mammon is an evil spiritual power demanding absolute priority, requiring you to make a definitive choice between serving God and serving money.
Money itself is not inherently evil. Mammon is an evil spiritual power that enslaves people through their attitudes toward money. It demands absolute priority and competes directly with the creator for your allegiance.
According to Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, humans cannot maintain neutrality between God and mammon. Loving mammon constitutes hating God. Committing to God involves detesting the satanic force of mammon and refusing its domination.
The Bible treats this choice with total gravity. Covetousness is explicitly categorized as idolatry. You must recognize this unseen force behind financial greed before you can handle wealth according to divine principles.
3. Offering Is Part of Worship
Bringing a financial or material offering is an indispensable, God-appointed component of true worship that measures what you give against what you retain.
Old Testament regulations specified that no Israelite was to appear before God empty-handed during festivals. The New Testament similarly portrays Jesus observing the temple treasury. Bringing an offering gives glory to God, completes worship, and serves as a metric where God gauges what is given against what you retain.
Jesus sat opposite the temple treasury and watched rich people throw in large amounts, while a poor widow gave two very small copper coins worth a fraction of a penny, giving everything she had to live on.
This act echoes historical patterns found throughout Scripture. The twelve princes of the tribes of Israel offered identical items over twelve days. You approach God through tangible sacrifice rather than mere words.
4. How to Put God First
Tithing the first tenth of your income pre-dates the Mosaic law and serves as the fundamental way to honor God and acknowledge Jesus as High Priest.
Tithing acts as the baseline foundation, distinct from voluntary offerings and alms. You set aside firstfruits for God as an essential act of priority. Tithing originated with Abraham giving a tenth of his plunder to Melchizedek four hundred years older than the law, and was practiced by Jacob. In the New Testament, Jesus continues as a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, receiving tithes.
Jacob left his father's house with only a staff, made a vow to give God a tenth of everything provided, and returned twenty years later with tremendous wealth and two groups.
- Consistently set aside the first tenth of your total income for God
5. God Challenges Us
Withholding the tithe brings a curse, whereas bringing the full tithe invites an uncontainable floodgate of blessing and divine protection.
In the book of Malachi, God explicitly challenges believers to test Him by bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse. Withholding the tithe is categorized by God as robbery bringing a curse. In return, God promises to prevent pests and devourer from destroying crops and personal assets, causing other nations to recognize you as blessed. God kept a record of Israel's giving for more than one thousand years.
Oswald J. Smith, pastor of the People's Church in Toronto, reported during the Great Depression that not a single man who came asking the church for financial help had ever been faithful in tithing.
- Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse
- Test God in your finances by acting in faith
6. The Grace of Giving
New Testament giving operates under the internal spiritual power of grace, released through Christ's cross and activated by faith working through love.
Unlike external legal commandments, grace works internally via the Holy Spirit. Jesus exhausted the poverty curse through His sacrifice so you could inherit kingdom wealth. The word grace occurs seven times in 2 Corinthians chapter 8. The spiritual mechanism requires giving first in faith before receiving, determining the return proportion by the measure of your own generosity.
Financial giving is unacceptable to God unless you have first unreservedly surrendered your own body and life as a living sacrifice. Paul notes that the Macedonian churches gave beyond their ability because they first gave themselves entirely to the Lord and His will. Presenting yourself as a living sacrifice renews your mind and allows you to establish enduring righteousness through acts of generosity to the poor.
The Macedonian churches experienced severe trials and extreme poverty, yet their joy welled up in rich generosity, pleading for the privilege of sharing in ministry service.
God maintains a special love for cheerful givers, and giving with hilarity acts as a catalyst for divine favor while breaking the slavery of mammon. Giving serves as a two-way relationship that proves the sincerity of your love for God, echoing John's instruction to love in action and truth rather than words alone. Giving cheerfully—derived from a Greek word implying hilarity—releases you from mammon's domination and invokes divine favor like a protective shield.
In East Africa, impoverished church members balanced corn, coffee beans, or live chickens on their heads, brought them to the altar with immense happiness, and ran back for more.
- Take the initiative to give before you receive
- Set the proportion of your return by giving generously
- Offer your body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God before giving money
7. Giving Is Sowing
Financial giving operates on agricultural laws of sowing and reaping, where the scale and quality of your harvest mirror your generosity and precision.
Treat your financial contributions like agricultural investments rather than careless distributions into ungodly channels. Wise sowing requires you to evaluate ministries for spiritual fruit, ethical stewardship, scriptural alignment, and administrative efficiency. You must safeguard against emotional impulse when deciding where to plant your seed.
Wise sowing yields four results of money multiplication, fruitful ministry impact, personal provision, and eternal reward.
- Check if a ministry is anointed, fruitful, and ethical before giving
- Ensure the organization aligns with scriptural principles and efficient leadership
- Make financial investments only after prayer and avoid emotional impulse
- Maintain contact and review reports from supported ministries
- Stay within the current proportion of your faith, gradually increasing your giving steps
Four questions to ask when considering giving to a ministry guide your discernment. Four safeguards for investing protect your resources from misuse.
8. God's Level Is Abundance
God's level of financial provision is abundance, providing an overflowing supply so you have all you need for every good work.
By analyzing 2 Corinthians 9:8, the author points out that the verse uses the word abound twice and all or every five times. God does not provide merely enough or sufficiency, but an overflowing supply so that a person has no unsupplied need.
Understanding Abundance
True abundance means having an overflow, representing more than enough rather than just enough to cover expenses. Deriving from its Latin origin, abundance means a wave that overflows.
Shopping for fifty dollars worth of groceries with sixty dollars illustrates having abundance and overflow. Insufficiency appears as forty dollars for fifty dollars of groceries. Sufficiency means fifty dollars for fifty dollars worth of needs.
The author summarizes six foundational facts:
- grace comes through Jesus and faith;
- we must give ourselves first before our gifts are accepted;
- giving completes righteousness;
- giving proves sincere love for God and believers;
- giving brings God's love and favor to a hilarious giver;
- giving follows agricultural sowing principles to multiply the harvest.
The ultimate purpose of divine abundance is enabling every good work and allowing believers to experience the greater blessing of giving. Abundance is not meant for selfish indulgence. Citing Acts 20:35, the author notes that giving has a greater blessing than receiving, and God makes abundance available so all His children can participate in giving.
The Harvest Process
Mental assent to financial teachings changes nothing unless accompanied by action, specifically giving first by faith. Faith without deeds is dead. To activate God's prosperity and abundance, you must act by faith and give first, following the principle that what is measured out will be measured back.
- Express the teaching in actions by faith
- Give first before expecting to receive
Just like farming, a time interval occurs between sowing and reaping, requiring patience and persistence without giving up. A farmer must let a seed fall into the ground and die before the harvest appears. Similarly, you must wait for God's appointed time for the harvest without losing faith or becoming impatient.
- Do not become weary in doing good with money
- Wait patiently for God's appointed time for the harvest without giving up
Conclusion
The financial principles presented throughout this book fit together into an interconnected spiritual system rather than a set of isolated techniques. Putting God first through tithes and offerings breaks the dominion of mammon and aligns your material life with God's all-inclusive plan. When you sow financial seed in faith, God responds through the grace of abundance, meeting your needs and enabling every good work. Stepping into this divine provision requires you to act decisively on biblical truths rather than relying on natural calculation.
- Make a deliberate choice to serve God rather than mammon by refusing to let money dictate your loyalties.
- Honor God as your ultimate source by returning the first tenth of all your income as a holy tithe.
- Bring regular offerings to God as an act of worship that measures your gratitude and devotion.
- Give cheerfully and generously as an act of faith, operating under the New Testament grace of sowing and reaping.
- Trust God to supply all your needs with abundance, knowing that divine provision always exceeds your expectations.
10 Key Ideas
- Money is a direct representation of your life investment, and God's revealed will for you encompasses total prosperity across soul, body, and finances.
- Mammon is an evil spiritual power demanding absolute priority, requiring you to make a definitive choice between serving God and serving money.
- Bringing a financial or material offering is an indispensable, God-appointed component of true worship that measures what you give against what you retain.
- Tithing the first tenth of your income pre-dates the Mosaic law and serves as the fundamental way to honor God and acknowledge Jesus as High Priest.
- Withholding the tithe brings a curse, whereas bringing the full tithe invites an uncontainable floodgate of blessing and divine protection.
- New Testament giving operates under the internal spiritual power of grace, released through Christ's cross and activated by faith working through love.
- Financial giving operates on agricultural laws of sowing and reaping, where the scale and quality of your harvest mirror your generosity and precision.
- God's level of financial provision is abundance, providing an overflowing supply so you have all you need for every good work.
- To activate God's prosperity and abundance, you must act by faith and give first, following the principle that what is measured out will be measured back.
- A time interval occurs between sowing and reaping, requiring patience and persistence to wait for God's appointed harvest time without giving up.