Jesus had two very simple instructions when He sent the disciples on the mission—preach the Kingdom and heal the sick. I wonder if you consider that to be your life’s work as well?

When I began a serious pursuit of discipleship over twenty-three years ago, the first scripture God seared into my heart was Matthew 6:33, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” In context, Jesus was teaching His disciples how and how not to walk out the life of a disciple.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow or reap or gather into barns—and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? Consider how the lilies of the field grow: They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was adorned like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles strive after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:25-34

In a nutshell, Jesus was saying that sparrows don’t have to farm to be fed and lilies don’t give a thought to what they look like. Yet the sparrow is always fed and the lily more beautifully adorned than the richest man that ever lived. Sparrows and lilies don’t give a single thought to how they will provide for themselves.

The only way to live as a disciple is to spend no unnecessary time giving thought to how we will feed or clothe ourselves. Can you even imagine living like that? How is that even possible?

It gets even harder to imagine when we read Luke 9:1-6:

“When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told them: “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere.” Luke 9:1-6

There is no way around it: when God gives you an assignment, don’t start panicking about how you’re going to get there, what you will need to make the journey, and what will be available to you when you get there. The only way to achieve this is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. I used to think that seeking first the kingdom meant seeking to get people saved.

Turns out that spreading the gospel, healing the sick, and getting people saved is the byproduct of seeking the kingdom first and walking in righteousness.

The what was to proclaim the kingdom of God and heal the sick.

The how was to seek the kingdom of God for provision versus the world’s system for provision and to function in His righteousness instead of their own righteousness.

To seek the kingdom of God and walk in His righteousness to preach the gospel and heal the sick, it stands to reason the disciples had to have a clear understanding of what the kingdom of God is and how to walk in righteousness.

Not to totally switch gears but I have some news. I re-upped the podcast! Finally! I love podcasting because, not only is it a creative outlet for me, but it is part of how I fulfill the requirements of discipleship. It is how I spread the Gospel of Peace and heal the sick.

This week’s podcast is pretty strong. And by strong I mean no holds barred. It will make super religious people mad and some church-going people really mad. I hope you will listen in as I talk about the massive pain I’ve experienced in the last eighteen months, how I walked through it, and what God did before the pain so I could have victory.

And keep tuning in! Because we are starting a series breaking down exactly what the kingdom of God is and how to walk in righteousness, peace, and joy!

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WATCH

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You’ve probably heard me mention Prosperity to Providence if you’ve been following along for some time now. It is my first book so that’s kind of a big deal! I heard an accomplished author once say, “If you say you’re going to write a book someday, you’re not doing to write a book someday.” He was addressing the fact that those who say they will, don’t.

I started writing by blogging forever ago. I wasn’t consistent but it got my feet wet. It turns out that my obsession with reading since I was a kid helped my brain understand that writing is a conversation and that if you write at a comprehension level above fifth grade you won’t last long in the book sales space.

And that’s good for me because I may speak well addressing a crowd or in a board meeting full of angry teachers trying to “rush the border”* to get what they want, but writing seems to just flow from everyday conversations I’m already having with you in my head. (Rest assured this hasn’t happened recently, but believe me, you can’t work in education for long without it happening at some point. Sadly, the education a teacher receives to become a teacher is more like entitlement indoctrination 😤. Add that to the twenty-somethings that become teachers and, well, you know. 🤦)

So I LOVE writing to you. I feel like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail (my favorite movie by the way). She loved books first, and after losing her bookstore she learned she loved writing too. Writing is a passion for me. And especially the research before the writing.

You may have thought it strange I would include a Christian trigger word like prosperity in my title. When God put Prosperity to Providence on my heart, the title came before I even understood what the message was about. I initially thought I was writing about how the Prosperity Gospel spun so far out of control that the church threw the baby out with the bathwater. And it’s understandable! The way infamous prosperity preachers present the message today is nothing more than greed combined with offering people false hope.

So I started diving into research on the history of the Prosperity Gospel. I read Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel by Kate Bowler. (Kate Bowler is best known for her book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved.) Blessed is Kate’s in-depth look at how the Prosperity Gospel became popular. She evaluates the ministries of positive thinkers like Norman Vincent Peale, and revivalists like Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin, along with today’s hugely successful prosperity preachers, namely Kenneth Copeland. And she looks at other contemporary religious leaders such as Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes, and Joyce Meyer.

And speaking of Kenneth Copeland, I read his foundation book, The Laws of Prosperity. While Kenneth Hagin was really one of the founders of the Faith Movement in America (now known as Word of Faith), Copeland is known for spreading the Prosperity Gospel in America. What started with Hagin as an effective approach to living the abundant Christian life was twisted and distorted by Copeland. Regardless of the distortion, it took off like wildfire because of Copeland’s charismatic ability to mesmerize and convince a crowd—common attributes of those we now call “Prosperity Preachers”.

Interestingly enough, I had already done my own research on successful healing ministries from times past as well. I read Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Four-Square Church, and her biography, The Story of My Life.

And then there was John G. Lake, E.W. Kenyon, Smith Wigglesworth, Kathryn Kulman, T.L. Osborn, and F.F. Bosworth. I studied them all.

Y’all. I did my homework. And I didn’t stop there!

I studied science and miracles. I delved into books based on scientific research such as The Biology of Belief by Bruce Tipton and Healing Body and Soul: The Meaning of Illness in the New Testament and Psychotherapy by John A. Sanford. and The Anatomy of a Miracle: Cutting-Edge Science Has Finally Advanced to a State That Puts the Miraculous Within the Grasp of Modern Man by Dr. James B. Richards.

Dr. Richard’s book is most notable because he led crusades all over the world in the 70s and saw every healing miracle in the New Testament. He has a doctorate in Theology, a doctorate in Ancient Chinese Medicine, and a doctorate in Human Behavior. He not only teaches, but he proved what he teaches in his own life, long before writing and building his Bible schools that are now worldwide. Dr. Richards has used faith and wisdom from the Bible to not only heal others by the millions but to heal himself of a terminal illness. He shouldn’t be alive today.

Yeah.

Dr. Richard shows how the study of quantum physics proves that miracles are not really as miraculous as one might think.

Pretty crazy stuff.

One day I pray we can see healing by the masses here in America. But there is a very real reason we don’t see it here.

The reason is we live by one of two gospels. The Prosperity Gospel and the Providential God Gospel. Just like the Prosperity Gospel, there is some truth to it, but much is extrapolated from scripture to fit our human experience.

I didn’t know anything of the Providential God Gospel when God put the phrase Prosperity to Providence in my heart through a dream. In fact, I thought I was supposed to take you on a journey from prosperity teaching to discovering the all-providential God of the Bible!

Turns out, I was wrong. In my research, I stumbled on John Piper’s 700-page dissertation on a “providential” God called Providence, his book on Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, and his widely popular website Desiring God. John Piper is known as an American theologian and a New Testament scholar.

And as it turns out, Providence is the most widely-accepted theory in America about God’s activity in creation and His intentions toward us. For the Assemblies of God and most non-denominational Spirit-filled churches to the Southern Baptist Convention, Lutherans, Catholicism, and Mormonism, the Providential God Gospel is irrefutable.

All I can say is, wow.

If I can summarize the Providential God Gospel it would be this: God is the firefighter who starts the fires in our lives so He can put them out.

Or this: Stop blaming Satan for anything because God created him, don’t take any responsibility for anything because God controls everything, and blame God for whatever happens in life. (It’s mostly Calvinism without all the predestination stuff if you want to know the truth.)

Or maybe like this: Don’t think about it all too hard, you’ll hurt yourself. God can’t be understood anyway. Just trust that if you find yourself starving or homeless or sold into the sex trade, it’s so God gets the glory so don’t hate on God. Just ignore scriptures like, “I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken or His seed out begging for bread.” (Psalm 25:35). Or Psalms 23. Or Romans 1:18-20 which says, “…For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been CLEARLY SEEN, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” (Emphasis mine).

Yikes.

Apparently, according to the Bible, God isn’t a mystery after all. Who knew? Apparently, He doesn’t work in mysterious ways. And Paul says it’s wicked to keep this information from people. 😲

You can know for sure when a “gospel” isn’t true. I’m told there is an old saying among seminaries and it’s this: “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” For what John Piper can’t explain he blames the mystery of God’s character and His “complex emotions”.

Lord Jesus, help us.

I have studied the Bible in its original languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) for over twenty years. And I mean really studied. I have never been a “read the Bible in a year” Christian. If you truly meditate on scripture and study the language, context, and history behind the stories, you can’t read the Bible in a year unless you live full-time in a monastery. I was raising kids. But the study of scripture has been the passionate pursuit and motivator of my life for decades.

As a student of the Bible and a disciple of Jesus (not simply a convert), to simply read other authors, theologians, and healers is not enough for me to land on a position and try to convince you to believe something else about God than what tradition handed down to you. So I took the bottom-line opinions from each authority I studied and held them up to the full council of scripture. I took nothing out of context. If there was a contradiction in the English translations (as there often is) I researched it out until a cohesive message consistent with the life, teachings, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus could be found.

So, I GET THIS. You might even call me an expert on the subject of the Prosperity Gospel, the Providential God Gospel, and healing ministries by now.

But wait, there’s more! 😉 Not only do have intellectual knowledge, but I’ve put these principles into practice in my own life as well. This is what the Bible calls having experiential knowledge of scripture. I’ve experienced firsthand the limitations and devastation each gospel has on the Christian experience. When it comes to healing ministry, I have been healed multiple times and have prayed for others and they have received healing.

I don’t say this to impress you but to impress upon you that I take rightly diving the Word of God seriously.

The truth behind the cover-up is that the Providential God Gospel leaves you on your own to solve your most life-controlling issues. It’s sold by making you think you are making peace with suffering as something from the hand of God when in reality, it’s forcing you to make peace with the devil.

The truth behind the cover-up in the Prosperity Gospel is that it makes it all about what you gain from God. It puts destiny and calling before the relationship. And it convinces those who can’t get a miracle they don’t have enough faith, despite the fact that even non-believers operate faith every single day, and it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain of a problem! (When it comes to miracles, by the way, the answer is never to get more faith.)

You can understand how damaging both gospels are. I call them “gospels” because that is our culture’s way of describing the two but in reality, they are not gospels at all.

It cannot be gospel if isn’t one hundred percent true and one hundred percent Good News.

Neither of the two fit the bill.

Okay, so what is my point here? My point here is that I want to really open up this conversation with you—the why behind writing Prosperity to Providence and why it is so essential, IMPERATIVE in fact, that you read it. As the days get darker you’re going to need to know how to operate in the miraculous and why Jesus said you could and would do greater things than He did.

If you can’t do those greater things you’re gonna be in big trouble. When the markets permanently collapse, housing is overtaken by the government, and America falls, it won’t matter a lick what you scrimped and saved for all your life.

What will matter is how you see God and how the full expression of Christ in you works in real life.

Every theologian and Bible commentator uses a lens through which they interpret scripture, whether they would admit it or not. They either see God as the prosperity God or the providential God. And the lens they use determines the God they get.

Here is the bottom line: we become like the god we believe in.

What is the solution? The Gospel of Peace and the Gospel of the Kingdom. You must know what it truly means to have “your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15) and to be discipled in the Gospel of the Kingdom (Matthew 24:14).

I don’t want you to be in fear. Miracles and provision happen for those who believe, even during the end times.

But just know this: neither the Prosperity Gospel nor the Providential God Gospel will prepare you for it. Both will leave you impotent.  

Okay! That was heavy! But as future blog posts roll out, I will dive into each gospel to help you put it all into perspective. Stay tuned! Because what you read (and what you hear on the podcast) will give you the tools to overcome ANYTHING!