Prosperity and The Pursuit of Money !!!

The Bible has given us the key to life in all its ramifications including the Role and Spirit of Money: The just shall live by his faith. —Habakkuk 2:4, KJV

1. Financial stress comes to everyone at one stage or the other in life, recession or not. For many, life is a trend of feast and famine, with the feasts being short lived and not too extraordinary and the famine lasting for years at a time for many. Money (or the False god) is in the center of life or God (The True God) is the center of life. There is no other alternative or middle ground.

2. Sometimes prayer cannot cut through the issues of money. One can pray every day during the week and yet may never experience God's blessing or see Him answer their prayers concerning certain needs or things driving one to desperation. What then? In such circumstance, is it time to play lottery, try one's chances of making money at Casinos or at Las Vegas, gamble or resort to all the gimmicks of making money? Or is it time to heed to the very Word of God, "It is required in stewards [that is, those who have been given a trust], that a man [or woman] be found faithful" (1 Cor. 4:2, KJV).

3. Anybody can be faithful when prayer is being answered, when the wind is at one's back, and everything is going well. But what is one to do when God suddenly hides His face? What are we to do when the center can no longer hold as things are falling apart? Until you have experienced the hiding of His face and come out on the other side, you won't really come to know God as a friend.

This was Habakkuk's experience. Habakkuk 2:4 is a famous verse that is quoted three times in the New Testament.

4. There is an intentional ambiguity here. The faithfulness can be God's faithfulness to us or our faithfulness to God: the verse can be read either way, and it means both. But it can equally describe the faithfulness of the individual himself, who doesn't give up hope. The person who trusts God and lives by His promise to bless is declared righteous in the sight of God. It applies to the future—to the fact that God will accept us in heaven—but it also applies to the present that our God is meeting us at the points of our need. God is saying that we are declared righteous now - complete in Him with nothing lacking, broken or missing.

5. If we could only see and understand this, it would set us afire. If, in the moment when we don't see answered prayer, we could just look up to heaven and say, "God, I love You anyway," God would declare us righteous just because our faith pleases Him. That kind of faith has a cleansing result. We feel clean. We don't understand why God lets things happen, but we trust Him anyway. Guess what? He will cause ALL things to work together for our own good even the ugly, the very ugly. (Romans 8:28)

7. By Dictionary definition: Gambling is the act of playing for stakes in the hope of winning (including the payment of a price for a chance to win a prize); then I want to succinctly point out again that the god of Money is Mammon and the Spirit that controls or give money the controlling power it has over humans makes money and the desire (love) for money a very deep spiritual issue. Therefore money is a Spirit, an Influence and Captivating Force. Once it is loved or becomes the center of one's life, it takes over the one's life - deforming the character, contributes to life's shapelessness (out of order in godliness) and
communicates the wrong message of prosperity and godly establishment.

8. Lottery Visa for immigration purposes and School Admission Lottery or such are the Government's systematic ways of giving opportunities to everyone to attain a position which can only be available to a very few people. In these type of government program, one may only pay to procure the application form and nothing else apart from meeting certain qualifications for that position. Such a lottery is a means of elimination of the many unlike Money Lottery promoted by States and various Agencies/Institutions including Casinos which sells lottery tickets based on calculated actuarial Law of Large Numbers. They designed to make a Profit - to help them raise and acquire money for their own ends. While doing so, they pass on the spirit of gambling and greed to the masses and never reckoning on the consequences of their actions on the poor. Of course the rich, most educated people and wise folks are never caught on this vicious circular trap that feeds on the greed and desperation of the poor.

9. But here are few words of Wisdom on the pursuit of Lottery and such like that shows that it way it comes is the way it goes. Watch out for the lives of the many who won Money Lottery even in the Millions - see how they ended up in Seven Years (the number of life cycle for regeneration) - very wretched, divorced, broken, misery, full of regrets and many other woes in diverse degrees. All of them and none spared. Listen to the Word of God:

Proverbs 13:11 - Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labor shall increase.

Proverbs 23:5 - Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.

Ecclesiastes 5:10 - He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity. 11 When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes? 12 The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.

1 Timothy 6:10 - For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 11 But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.

Hebrews 13:5 - Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

Luke 16:1 - And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. 2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.

Philippians 2:3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. 4 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

10. Gambling including Lottery for monetary gains, by its nature, is selfish and self-seeking. The gambler seeks personal gain and profit by taking other people's possessions without requiting them. Such is completely contrary to love and the law of sowing and reaping which assures us that God's way is surely to multiply what we sow - no guess work or leaving it up to Luck, namely to Satan, the god of Luck. While Chance can happen to all, Luck does not happen to all because it is rooted in evil for those it targets to destroy.

Matthew 7:16 - Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

If gambling produces many forms of evil, which it does, this confirms the conclusion that gambling is evil of itself.

Fruits of gambling: Poverty, neglect of families, quarreling, and divorce because gamblers often gamble with money the family needs.

Drinking and drugs, alcoholism and addiction. Lying because gamblers seek to hide their habit and their losses.

One out of every five homeless people admit that gambling contributed to their poverty. Among the fifty states Nevada, long known for gambling, has the highest rate of divorce and the highest rate of high school dropouts.

Proverbs 14:21 He that despiseth his neighbor sinneth: but he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he.

CONCLUSION: Gambling preys on the desperation of the poor. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission found that those with incomes less than $10,000 spend more on lottery tickets than any other income group. High school dropouts spend four times as much as college graduates. Scripture exhorts us to look out for the poor and disadvantaged, and issues strong warnings against taking advantage of their plight.

Some have argued that lottery like gambling can be played responsibly and that a good strategy is to give yourself an upper bound and a lower bound for when to quit. As we have seen, these types of human indulgence can quickly become an addiction or obsession. When it becomes either, it starts to seriously hurt you financially, then you've got a problem you need to fix. Love of money should never dictate your life.

In all, Romans 14:5b should be your final guide.