Financial Responsibilities of the Father, Pt. 2 (07/02/2023)

The Importance of Fathers in the Home

My dad, Fred Mitchell, who's in heaven now, designed these stained glass windows and the beautiful trim all around this and these trim around here. He designed this pulpit, this. And this was supposed to be a fellowship hall.

We were supposed to have another building for a sanctuary and the people that had promised to build that said, no, we're only gonna build one building. So my dad said, well, let's just put a temporary wall back there and make this the auditorium for a while.

Well, it has been ever since. But he designed all this stuff and I was just thinking about him. And I don't agree with the Catholics that we can pray to our loved ones in heaven, but I can pray to Jesus and ask him to tell him hello and I love him and I think of him every day and tell my dad thanks for these stained glass windows and all this beautiful trim.

And nothing wrong with that, right? And so I was thinking about my dad as I think about this study on fathers. He was a wonderful father and he was a man's man. I mean, one of the biggest dudes in Mahea came in his office one day and said, he's gonna whip him.

And my dad was in the FBI, 17 years, special agent. So the guy apparently didn't know that. My dad gets up out of the chair and walks around, walks right up to his face and said, okay, you take the first punch.

Guy walked out. But at the same time, when I was pretty much a big old grown boy in college, I remember the first time I brought all my roommate and some of my buddies home from college for the weekend to meet my parents and stuff and hang out.

And there are all these big old dudes are sitting around and my dad said, David, come here. So I got up and walked over, said, sit on my lap. So I sat on his lap and he reached over and gave me a big kiss and then pushed me out of his lap.

And well, kind of freaked me out a little, although he did it all the time, but not in front of my friends from college, you know what I mean? But one of them told me later how cool they thought that was.

You know, he was just like that. But it makes us think of our fathers. Well, let me read you something interesting. Ben's Sunday school lesson gets me thinking about a lot of things. But I wanna read you this just to sort of kick off today's message.

We'll still be talking about fathers, but I thought this was pretty interesting. There's a verse in Luke chapter one, verse 17, chapter one, verse 17, where, well, let me just read it. And what's interesting is it's quoting Malachi chapter four, verse six, where Ben was teaching this morning from Sunday school.

It's quoting the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament version says this, and he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias. And that's a reference to John the Baptist. And he will, listen to this, he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

So that was a quotation of Malachi, but it was applied to the first coming. Malachi certainly talks about the first coming some, but it also goes forward to the second coming of Christ. Let me read the Malachi version.

It says, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers. Now, what I'm pointing out is the importance of the fathers being a spiritual leaders in the home, treating the wife correctly and the children correctly so that the hearts of the children are to the fathers.

But look what the prophet says would happen if that didn't happen, all right? It says, and this was written like 2 ,400 or five, 600 years ago, four to 600 years before Jesus Christ came into the world, born in the manger.

It says, and turn the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. Okay, so think about what happens in a world where the hearts of the father are not to the children and the hearts of the children are not to the father.

The world just goes awry. It looks very much like our world does today, where the fathers are not even teaching their kids what a boy is and what a girl is, for example. Now, you can't blame that on the government.

I mean, I do, yes, I do blame it on our idiots in Washington and in the universities, even in the seminaries, but I blame the homes first and beyond all that, the past. Why are pastors not getting up in the pulpits in all these mega churches saying like, here's a boy, here's a girl, here's what they are, and make a joke out of the stupid thing?

I mean, they won't mention it because they don't want to run anybody off, right? So they'll put their little rainbow thing outside so they can have more people sitting in their church. So, and all the while, the nation is being destroyed and they don't care.

So why are they preaching? For their belly, the Bible says, for their belly, money. Well, we can't control what's happening in the whole world and in our country and all of that, but we can certainly have something to do with what's happening in our homes, can't we?

And that will reflect upon this local church as well, which will have an effect on the nation. It does, I mean, this church, we have hundreds of thousands of people, and we had somebody this weekend from Taiwan, flew from Taiwan just to meet me because they've been listening to me online, and Myron, Myron Golden and me, and you guys also, I think that's how you found us.

And we had people from California, we had people from Montana, we had people from all over, lots of Texans, you know? And so this little church here is like the foundation of a big, big ministry, a vast ministry.

And God just put all that together little by little. And thanks to Katie who runs Tradeway, Katie Huber, she didn't do, I've told people forever, you are replaceable, but there's one person that's not, and that's Katie.

And she'd probably say Dave's not either, so I'll include him. Dave and I were together at this big meeting this weekend, we had a blast. In fact, we didn't wanna leave, so we went to dinner, just the two of us, and didn't get home till midnight.

And then night before that, we stayed up till midnight, talking with a few of the students, so it was a great meeting. But we do have an effect, but if we don't keep this church right, then it'll affect all that too.

So the place to fix everything is in the home first. So let's go back to our, oh, let me say this though, that prophecy, predominantly the Malachi was to the Jews first, everything's to the Jew first, and then the Gentile, right?

But it was predominantly for the nation of Israel, wasn't it, Ben? All right, so think of what happened. Think about this. Think what happened when Jesus came, and he had his three-year ministry, and he's falsely accused, and he comes before Pilate, Pilate wants to wash his hands of it because he thinks he's innocent, right?

Pilate says, I'll wash my hands of this. And he put it before the Jews, one more time, a huge crowd of angry Jews, because they were saying, crucify him, crucify him. You remember that? The Jews were.

All right, and Pilate said, look, I'll wash my hands of this, it's on you. And they said, you know what they yelled at that time? Can you remember? Crucify him, may his blood be upon our heads and the heads of our what?

Our children. Right there, the father's hearts were not turned to the sons nor the sons to the father. And you know what happened? 8 million of them died in World War II because of it. 8 million Jews were killed, slaughtered in World War II, and the Jews have been persecuted since that day.

They already were before that, but not like they were after that day. They have been run into every nation of the world running and escaping persecution as best they can, and they're scattered everywhere.

And that's the fulfillment of that prophecy. Now, the same prophecy was then given to us again and to the Jews again in Luke, in their time, and they still disobeyed it. So they disobeyed it twice, and now we have to think about it.

What will we do with it? So that's kind of what we're talking about. Last time, we talked about how the father must understand spiritual warfare in the family and put on the spiritual armor. It's his responsibility, first of all, to watch over the wife and the children because they are more susceptible to demonic activity and attacks and so forth.

And the father has a huge responsibility there, so we talked about that. Then last time, we started on the second point, and we're gonna talk about the father and go through some points like this, and then we're gonna talk about the mom and wife and so forth, and then we'll talk about the children.

So that's what we're gonna, and then marriage also, then marriage as a whole, things scripture says to make our marriages better. We'll do all that. This time, we're still talking about the second point that had to do with fathers, and it was this.

We started last time, the father must understand his financial responsibilities under God. We started talking about that last time, and you know, in fact, I mentioned this at the Dallas event yesterday.

First Timothy 5 .8 says that if the father does not, it says, but if any provide not for his own, especially his house financially, he's worse than an infidel, he's denied the faith. Predominantly aimed at the father, but if you don't have a father in the home, then the mother takes that role, but still predominantly aimed at the father.

And then in 2 Corinthians 12 .14 and Proverbs 13 .22, it says that the father is commanded by God to lay aside money for his children, and not just money, but assets, for his children and his children's children.

That's grandchildren. Now, you cannot do that without creating wealth, but then we've talked about the actual real definition of wealth, and I want to review that. It comes from the old, well, the Greek means wealth, but the English comes from the Old English word wheel, which means this, a sound, healthy, and prosperous state.

It gets the word well-being comes from it. So when you want to think about wealth, this will really help, because the whole world's Christians to think, if you're thinking about wealth, you're evil, if you're a Christian, if you're satanic, it's okay.

Like if you're pagan, it's okay. But if you're a Christian and you talk about, well, I'm trying to create wealth, then they'll immediately treat you as if you're evil and point that out to everyone else, that you're evil because you're after money.

It's all about money to you Christians, and it's not supposed to be, you're supposed to be poor. And so there is that spirit in the world that will persecute a Christian who talks about wealth, creating wealth for my family.

And yet the Bible says we have to, so we're commanded to. But when you think about the real meaning of wealth, the root meaning of the ancient word in English means well-being. It means a sound, prosperous, wellness is part of it, being in a good state in your family.

Now, who would say that's wrong? I mean, I would think any Christian father who didn't want that, there's something wrong with him. If he did not want his wife and kids and grand babies and other kids that came and married their kids that are now his kids, if he didn't want them to have well-being in a prosperous state, he's number one, a fool, and number two, he's evil.

So we think of it that way, if it feels better. You don't have to think about money. Money is just a tool. Money can be used to bring prosperity and assets and health and happiness and all that, but it's just a tool and that's all it is.

It's neutral. It's not evil or good. It's what you do with it. And the Bible is so clear. The wealthiest people in the world in the Old Testament were God's people. Abraham was called the friend of God.

He's the wealthiest man alive in his day. Job was the wealthiest man, probably prior to Abraham, longer ago than that. King David had so much money, and Solomon, his son, was the wealthiest man ever lived, probably, ever will live, probably.

And he did seminars. You remember Myron pointed that out. Myron said that the queen of Sheba came and paid him a ship full of gold. Imagine what the wealth of that was back then, even now, to learn from him how to run her kingdom.

So he had the first seminary on how to be successful with Solomon. And Brother Myron kind of patterns his ministry after that because he talks a lot about business. By the way, I just found, I got a text.

He's going to be in town next Sunday, and I asked him to preach. So Myron Golden will be preaching here next Sunday morning. So that's a blessing to all of us. So now, are we okay on what wealth is? It's just a tool.

If it's money, it's a tool to bring prosperity and healthy and a prosperous state of wellbeing to your family. That's really what we're supposed to be doing. So focus on that, not the money. The money's just a tool.

Money comes and goes. I mean, everybody knows that. I loved it. Somebody at the meeting said, well, I believe in multiple streams. I think it was Sean said this. He said, I believe in multiple streams of income.

He said, because I got multiple streams of bills. Isn't that true? So anyway, then we talked a little bit last time about the Hebrew concept of being blessed. Remember that the Jewish gentleman who says he's more blessed than the others is because he's got more cattle and sheep and camels and money, silver and gold than the other one.

So they felt that blessings were spiritual and physical, not just spiritual. And that's still true in the New Testament too. So God can bless you with physical things. Now, it's interesting how he does it.

He tends to do it over long periods of time as you obey the certain conditions in the Bible for how wealth is created. The Bible teaches exactly how to do it. I think one of the questions that I asked last time was, okay, if it's true that God commands us to create wealth for our kids and our grandkids and lay it aside for them, then wouldn't it also be true that the same God who commands us to do something would equip us to do it and teach us in this book exactly how to create wealth.

And it's all through this book. And the Jews understand the Christians are ignorant about it because preachers don't think it applies. They think it's in heaven. It's not. And at the meeting yesterday, I talked about why I think preachers, like in the 1800s, 1716, 15, 1400s, felt that way.

It's because some of them were poor. So they felt, well, if I'm a preacher and I'm righteous and walk with God and I'm poor, then this can't be literally for me. The truth is, if they were following these principles, I don't care what century they lived in, they would have created wealth because there've been wealthy people in every century.

And if you look at their lives, they followed these principles of how it's created. The principle of leverage being the most important one that's found in the parable of the talents. But anyway, I just want to stick this in your mind is that if God does command us to do it, he does show us how to do it.

So that's kind of where we left off last time. Now, last time we started and I said, I'm going to show you some passages of scripture. And there are four questions that I want to answer for each passage.

And I made this statement that the promise of wealth in the Bible is not an unconditional promise, it's conditional. And actually the promise of wealth of God, promising wealth to his children is number one, personal.

It is a promise to each individual family, not just some general statement that God might do that. That's not a promise at all, by the way. It's individual. So it's personal. Number two, it is individual.

And number three, it is conditional. Those three things, personal, individual, conditional. And it is a promise to the leader of each and every home of God or every Christian home. So what I want you to do then is I want you to ask these four questions to each of these passages.

Number one, here's the first question that I'm going to ask you and get you to answer. Number one, is what we read, does it have a promise in it or promises? What is the promise? That's number one. So if it has one, what is it?

Two, is the promise to you individually or is it just some general promise that might happen to somebody out there in the world, but probably not you? So is it individual and specific to you, is it not?

And number three, what are the conditions that must be met in order for God to fulfill the promise that he just gave you in this passage? And number four, can God lie? Those are the four questions, everybody got it?

So I'm gonna ask these to you for each one. Now, last time we looked at Psalm 128 verses one through four and let me ask you this, did we do two of them last time before we ran out of time? Did we also do Proverbs 3 .13, where it said, happy is the man that findeth wisdom?

Okay, let's start there then. So turn to Proverbs 3 .13. Last time, just for your notes, if you weren't here, jot down Psalm 128 verses one through four, and you'll find there are promises in that and also conditions, and you will also find it is written to individuals.

It says, blessed is every one that feareth the Lord. How many people is one? It's not like a general thing to the population, it's one person, right? And then it says, for thou shalt eat, right? Thou shalt eat, thou shalt, the fruit of your hands, some other people won't come to take your stuff away, that's asset protection.

It says, happy will thou be, well will you be, thy wife will be a blessing, thy children will be a blessing, the man shall be blessed. It's about an individual person, so we found that last time. So it is to you individually.

Now let's start with Proverbs 3 .13 this morning. Let me pray right quick. Father, thank you for the service so far, the beautiful music, for our friends that are visiting, for our church family online and here, and bless us today with your word, we know you will, amen.

All right, let's look at it. Think about the four questions while I read it. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it, that means that wisdom and understanding brings good things to you, the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain, that means profit in Hebrew, the word gain means the profit, like in business where you make a profit, the gain thereof is better than if you had fine gold.

There you see the word profit in verse 14, there's so much business terminology and principles in the Bible, it's everywhere, but people don't see it because most preachers are not business people. But I mean, if they were, they should, the Jewish teachers did see it even though they weren't, but you know what's interesting about Jews?

They will not allow a person study to be a priest until he has a skillset and knows how to work with his hands and make money, then they'll let him study, they'll let him study theology, isn't that interesting?

That's why they see the business principle, they're all businessmen before they're preachers. Why didn't we do that in the church? We should have done that. But anyway, some of us did, right? You got businessmen preacher, Myron's that way too, and there's some of them out there, but so it talks about profit there in verse 14.

Verse 15 says, she, that means wisdom and knowledge, is more precious than rubies, and all the things that you can desire are not to be compared to wisdom and knowledge. Now, look at this, length of days is in her right hand, in her left hand, riches and honor.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. All right, so let's ask the first question, are there any promises in this passage? And if so, what are they? So who can see one? Length of days, that is correct, that's the first that I see, long life, you live to be old, okay, you're healthier, you live to be old, anybody else?

Happy, happiness, right, okay, very good, you'd be happy. All right, another one, peace, right, that's the last one. You'll have peace in your family. Another one, okay, riches is the next one, and then honor is the next one, and there's one more, verse 17, a pleasant life, pleasantness.

So here's where I saw them, in happiness, good job, because, no, I didn't have that one down, it's obvious, it's the first one, happy, I left it out, wait, I got a pen, hold on, I'm gonna fix it, put Noah's name beside that, my assistant, my assistant pastor Noah says, happiness is one of these, I defer to him on this, I believe it is, so it's 13a, okay, oh, so one, two, three, four, five, oh, I don't like that, so now there's six, we had to have seven, can anyone find another one?

Brother Bill used to tease me about that, he said, you can make anything come out to seven, can't you? I said, pretty much, I'll just combine a couple if I need to, if it's eight and it makes it seven, you know, whatever, okay, so God's perfect number, so we have happiness, we have long life, all right, we have riches, now see, if riches are evil, why is he promising this to God's children?

It contradicts, if you think that, it contradicts this, and the Bible cannot contradict itself, riches, honor, now think about that, why is it that if you have wisdom and skill sets, and by the way, one of the conditions of business success is that you have the skill set you need in that type of business, you know how to run that business, you learn how to do it, sometimes through trial and error and losing money first, right, but you learn how to do it, and then that brings money, the whole idea of any business is to create wealth, I mean, you don't start a business if you don't think it's gonna be successful and create wealth, that's what businesses are for, and if you, let me give you a clue, if you have already created a small business, it's kind of successful, but it's not making you wealthy, all you need to do is understand the principle of leverage, so what you do is you begin to duplicate yourself into other people, make them just like little yous, and then delegate it to him, and then you go start another one just like that one, and then you duplicate, delegate, and leave smart people in control of those, and then go start another one, and before you know it, you'll be a billionaire, or at least a millionaire, millionaire's okay with the time we got left before Jesus comes back, you don't need a billion, we're not gonna have time to spend that, actually, I could spend it, I think, all right, Dave?

Yeah, profit, also the word for gain is profit, so you got it twice, so you got it twice, so there's, oh, there's number seven, okay, thank you, my other assistant, so now we have number seven, oh, that would be G is profit, wow, this is great, profit or gain, so it's mentioned twice, actually, and that is another promise, so now we do have seven, see, I knew there were seven, I just didn't find them all, so we have seven things promised, now why honor, why would it say honor, if you have riches, why do you have honor, you do understand the world, the way that the world thinks, both Christians and lost people, is if you're wealthy, you're smarter, you wouldn't have the money, now, outwardly, they'll say you're lucky, he's lucky he's born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but inwardly, they respect you, they wanna ride in your car, they wanna hang out with you, get their picture taken with you, and they honor you, even if they say behind your back, oh, they're just lucky, because I'd be rich too, but I'm not lucky, you know that sort of thing, but deep down inside, they honor it, the whole world does, the Bible says it happens, the Bible says if you get skillset, that's the modern term for wisdom and understanding and knowledge, and you work at that and you don't quit, and you just keep doing it, God will bless you with these things, and there's other conditions here, we'll talk about it in this very passage, but when you get these things, you will have honor, people will listen to you, now let me ask you what the number one thing you think Christians need to have in this world?

Influence, would you agree with that? How are you gonna witness to somebody if they don't respect you enough to listen to you? Honor brings influence, which brings more people listening to the gospel that you give them, does that make sense to you?

I mean, it's absolutely the truth, and why do you think the church is losing the battle on America? Okay, because we gave all our influence away in colleges, so now the lost people, because they got the money, because the Christians have been taught you need to be poor to be spiritual, so the lost people have the money, so they now control the college, the universities on the East Coast, the West Coast, and all across America, the seminaries, they control the music industry, they control Hollywood, which has been teaching our kids for 12 years, something they don't need to know, and I'm not gonna mention what it is, but what else, they're controlling everything because of the money they have, and they now have the honor, and so that's who the kids are listening to.

The church has messed up and lost out there, now I know that's fulfilled prophecy, there's supposed to be a great falling away, we're just part of that, and there you go, I mean, God not only foresaw it, he predestined it, so that's okay, it's gonna all work out great, we're gonna win in the end, Jesus is gonna come back and get us, we're gonna rule and reign with him the next 1 ,000 years, and I'll promise you who'll be in control there, you and him, not the world, Jesus and you'll be in control, because you'll be ruling and reigning with him over something, I don't want Corsicana, does anybody want it?

You don't want it? Okay, I might take Mahea, but you want it Sharon? Sharon will take it, she knows everybody here, I vote for Sharon actually, she knows everyone here, you can have Mahea too, like she told me that a kid that was in our Christian school the first two or three years died, she's the one that told me, I didn't know he had died, did you know Jack Bullen passed away?

I didn't know, thank you for that, I checked into it by the way, you were right, so all right, so we have these promises, honor, pleasant life, peace, who doesn't want that for their kids and grandkids?

All right, so now second question is this, is this promise individually or just a general promise out there that's kind of meaningless, because it's probably not gonna ever be you? So let's see if we can answer that, well my answer to that is that it says the man, look at verse 13, happy is the man, it's not the men, grammatically it's to an individual, do you see that?

That's how you interpret scripture, it's not difficult if you studied a little bit of grammar, and you did 12 times in high school, junior high and elementary school, 12 years, you've got it, so you understand that, so it's talking to an individual, so my third question is this, what are the conditions that must be met in order for God to fulfill the promise?

They're found in the same passage, can anyone see what the conditions are? Someone give me a condition, in other words, you gotta do this or God's not gonna promise you wealth, but if you do do it, he is, okay?

Okay, find wisdom, that's the first one, yes, find wisdom, now how might we do that? Well, how about from the Bible? The book of Proverbs is called the book of wisdom, the book of James is the New Testament book of wisdom, and the whole of the Bible, I still remember, Charlotte was refreshing my memory about it, but I remember a time when Charlotte told Matt, when he was, he was our baby boy, right?

The littlest in our family, now he's the tallest, or not really, I don't know, he might be the tallest, but, because he's still growing, but anyway, she told him, Matt, when he was a little boy, or maybe junior high, when was it?

High school, teenager, he said, if you will get in the Bible and stay in the Bible and read and study the Bible, you'll have more wisdom than your peers, you remember that? Something like that, okay, so that's where it comes from, so that's the condition.

Now, I want you to think about the American Christian, how much time do they spend, other than on Sunday morning being spoon fed, and that's not bad, I'm glad you're here, because you're supposed to get that too, you're supposed to let, of course, mine's more like a fire hydrant, I think, but anyway, anyway, you're supposed to be in this book throughout the week, yourself studying it.

Now, if you need the 10 rule Bible interpretation, let me share those with you, and keep them, don't cheat, and you'll find out the truth out of this book, and you will gain wisdom, that is the first condition for wealth, for long life, for riches, for happiness, for pleasant life, for peace, for profit, thank you, David, to be happy, thank you, Noah.

First one is to find wisdom, and you find it in the Bible. So, what about another one, is there another one? Get understanding, understanding, the modern term for that would be skill sets, because understanding is, it's sort of like when you take the knowledge, the little, where is page number nine, okay, so understanding is when you take the little pieces of knowledge that you can gain, and you put them together in a sense that makes sense where you can use it, because you understand how it works, all right, Webster says that understanding is the capacity to apprehend general relations of particulars.

What does that mean? Okay, the particulars means the little bits of knowledge. So, wisdom is the ability to apprehend how they relate, the bits of knowledge that you have about a certain thing, relate to each other, put them together, and use it.

That's what understanding is. Did I say wisdom, I meant to say understanding. And the old English for understanding used to just be knowledge and intelligence. So, it's like when you use your intelligence to take the knowledge and put it together where you can do something with it.

And so, there is the second condition in passage. So, if you have wisdom, and you have skill sets, you will have those things that are listed. Now, my last question is, can God lie? So, that means it's a promise to you that will happen if you keep those two conditions.

How about that? Everywhere where I find a promise of wealth in the Bible, I find conditions in the same sentence or paragraph. They're always included, because it's always conditional. Do you have a thought?

I don't have it, I don't think. Was it, read it. Okay, so let's add, so now we've got nine. Is that a good number? It's not true. Okay, H, tree of life. Now, let me ask you, what is the tree of life in the early books, chapters of Genesis?

What is it, the tree of life? What was the only tree, let me ask you this. What was the only tree that God put swords around to keep Adam and Eve away from it after they fell into sin? The tree, no? No, that's the one they ate that caused them to sin was the knowledge of, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

What was the tree that they put, that God put the flaming swords around to keep them away from? The tree of life. So, this is talking about eternal life. Thank you, Charlotte, my other assistant. No, we thought about putting her name on the sign, like pastors David and Charlotte Mitchell, you know, like the Charismatics and Pentecostals do, but she won't do it, she won't do it, so that's okay.

Of course, then I'd have to put Noah and Dave's names out there, too, so we won't do that. Okay, so, wow, I like that. I'm glad you read a little further. Salvation, now, that doesn't come from wealth, but it does come from understanding and wisdom and knowledge, which comes from the Bible, and that's the best of all these promises.

And then there was one other one, Charlotte, what was it, let's see, right there with tree of life and happiness again, say it again? Okay, I like that, so I'm gonna put, it's already mentioned happiness once, thanks to Noah, so it starts and ends with happiness, is that interesting?

It sandwiches everything between being happy. And I said this yesterday, you remember this, have you ever heard preachers say, well, the Bible teaches Jesus wants you to be happy, he just wants you to be joyful, and there's a difference.

How many of you have heard that? I've heard preachers say that, because they heard a cool old preacher say it, Ben, no matter what you think, there are cool old preachers, and people repeat it, and it's totally not true.

You know, it's not true, right there is twice God wants you to be happy. Now, joy is different, and he wants you to have joy, but that's a fruit of the Holy Spirit. You have that, anytime you're spirit-filled, you're joyful.

But this is happiness, which means, usually, well, it talks about, like, the definition we looked at a minute ago for wealth is weal, which means, you know, that you have the things that you need to have in your family, and that adds to happiness.

And when you start losing those, and you don't have that, sometimes we're grumpy, we're not as happy. My air conditioner went out, or went into my house, and, you know, I'm kind of used to it, so it's 80 degrees in there right now.

So, I could spend the 4th of July in 80 degree weather, in my house, not as happy as I was last week when it worked. So, I mean, wealth can help you buy a new one, though, and put it in, and then be happy again.

So, happiness is important, God says it is, and it is related to wealth, isn't that interesting? And people that say it's not, I mean, why do they, if God says it's this way, why do they want to insist that, oh, that's not how it works?

Why, can anyone give me a guess at that, why? Why do they not want to face this truth and receive it? Why would you think? Well, that's always true of humans, they just want to do what they want to do, but why would they want to be poor and unhappy?

Because they're believing a lie that says that it's not appropriate for Christians to seek wealth, or be happy, really, right? I like that, Dave, anything better than that? Can you add to that, or is that pretty much it, right?

They don't want to keep the conditions as an excuse. They don't want to live by the Bible,.