Stop making room for lack in your life. In part 14 of How to Attack Lack, Ashley and Carlie share about how when we have an attitude to meet God’s needs and the needs of others, God is able to bless us beyond what we would have even asked for.
Transcription
Announcer: Why live a normal life when you could be living the abundant life? Welcome to the Abundant Life program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.
Ashley: Hello and welcome to Abundant Life. Thank you for joining us. We’re so excited. We’ve got a great program for you today. We’re talking about God’s abundance and we’re talking about how you can attack lack in your life. Praise God, God doesn’t want you to have any lack in any area. And we’re talking about finances here. We’re talking about having a lack in your finances, how you can get rid of that lack, In Romans 12, I believe it’s 21. It talks about, “Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” and the way to overcome lack in your life. The way to overcome any type of poverty or any type of lack in your finances is to beat it with prosperity to be an increase.
Carlie: Beat it with prosperity?
Ashley: Beat it with prosperity. But it’s true. If you try and manage the lack or focus on the lack, it’s not going to help.
Carlie: We don’t want to tolerate lack.
Ashley: Don’t tolerate it. You need to get the point where you hate lack in your life, whatever level it’s at, whether it’s the point where you haven’t got money to have to buy food. And we’ve been there when we’ve struggled to buy food, to a point where you just want to be able to give more and help more, but you haven’t got the money to do that. Whatever type of lack you’re dealing with, God’s paid for you to be prosperous. Jesus paid for your prosperity on the cross. 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 8-9. He became poor that we might become rich through his poverty. So he’s already paid for it. Jesus paid for it. So now we want to see it evident in your life. And in Terradez ministries here, our passion is to empower believers in the promises of God.
So we want you to walk in the promises of God. We want you to receive the abundance God has for you. We want you to walk in everything God has for you. Amen.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: So it’s a good deal. So we’re looking at… We’re writing in a series at the moment. So if you haven’t been part of this program before, then I’d really urge you to get the previous programs in this series, because we’ve been talking a lot about different things, about how to attack lack, and how you can attack lack in your life from the fact that you need to believe it. You need to understand it’s the truth. You need to put your hands to something and give God something to work with. You know, God wants to put his super to your natural, but we have to do something in the natural.
We have to do a natural obedience. We’ve all got to bring the increase and there’s so many examples of that. The feeding the 5,000, that the water into wine, lots of times we’ve got asked to do something natural, put our hands to something and he’ll increase it. Be faithful in the small and you’ll be given much. Be faithful in another man’s and you’ll be given your own. We’ve also been looking at your stewardship, how you steward and what comes into whatever income you have, wherever that comes from, how we steward in that income. And some people say, actually, I’m experiencing lack in my life, but one of the problems is the money is coming to you, but you’re spending it wrongly. And we’ve been there. We’ve spent money on things we shouldn’t have. And what happens is then you have nothing left over.
So you don’t consume everything. You know, in Proverbs 11:24, Proverbs 11:24 says “There’s one withholds more than his right and it leads to poverty.” So if you just spend everything on yourself and don’t save, then it’s going to lead poverty. Same with the prodigal son. He just spent everything and it led to poverty. So if you just spend everything, it will lead to poverty. Proverbs talks about being diligent. If you’re not diligent in the work of your hands, you’re not diligent in the things you have, then it can lead to poverty as well. Lots of stories there, but our principles there about being lazy and not having a plan and just not getting on with things. And what happens is it can lead to lack and it can lead to poverty. So God wants good things for you. He wants you to walk in prosperity.
2 Corinthians 9:8, 2 Corinthians 9:8 talks about how he wants to supply your needs and he wants to give you an abundance for every good work. So he’s going to give you grace. He’s going to give you the ability to have all your needs met, all sufficiency for all your needs, and then also have an abundance for every good work. So as born-again believers, we want to have an abundance for every good work. Examples “Ashley, it’s selfish believing for extra.” Now it’s selfish not to believe for extra.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: Why would you not want it? But if you believe for extra, you can give it away. You can help more people and you can do more with it, praise God. And as a friend of mine says, the money comes through. As the money comes through you, there’s always plenty for you. So God won’t be out-given, God’s the biggest giver. So we looked at the work of your hand, we looked at stewardship and now we’re looking at giving. And how important giving is your prosperity? When you give, again, this same verse, Proverbs 11:24 says, “There’s one who gives yet increases more.” And as you give, you’re going to increase more. And giving is really more to do with the giver than the recipient, because when you give, it does something to your heart.
Carlie: Yeah. I think when we give, we understand that it’s God… We are free to give because God has our needs taken care of.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: And when we get this mindset that we’re not looking after it, we’re not trying to fulfill our own needs, but we’re looking after the needs of others because God’s already taken care of our needs. Man, we gave room for God to bless us. I remember when we were in the process of moving across country to go Bible college. And we did the budget, we looked at everything that we could afford and we just determined, we’re going to go move to Bible college. So how he’s going to quit his job. I quit my job. We’re going to move up here. We’re going to have, two sets of tuition and then school tuition for the children to pay. Then I have all of these expenses and because we’re going to Bible college, you’re going to have less time to be able to earn a regular job. And so people were like, “You’re going to go there and die. You’re going to starve to death.”
Ashley: We had the prophets of doom-
Carlie: The prophets of doom came out.
Ashley: Some of them actually pointed and laughed and said, “You’re going to give up your business and you’re going to have five full-time tuition.” Me and my wife at Bible college and our three kids went to a Christian school, so we had to pay tuition there.
Carlie: Yeah. And we were following the lady of the load and we knew because we were following God, that meant that God had our needs taken care of, but still, there’s a little part of us that like if we could just rationalize this, we’re going to look at the budget and we’re going to obviously you’re going to have like no income. And so let’s just go with the tiniest house. Our kids are small. We could shove them all into one shoe box right? And, and we can scrape by on like next to nothing. And we started looking for houses to rent up where the Bible college was and we couldn’t find anything.
Ashley: Those looking at terraced houses. If you’re from England, you’ll understand this. But if you’re not from England terraced houses in that part of the country, and this is in Warsaw, England, we’re talking about the front door, opens out into the sidewalk.
Carlie: So two rooms on the ground floor and two rooms upstairs.
Ashley: And literally they’re narrow. They’re like 10 foot wide and they’re attached to either side and they have two rooms downstairs, one at the front, one at the back and two rooms upstairs and they call it a terrace house. And that is it. The smallest, tiniest house you could get in that area.
Carlie: So trying to squeeze three children in one of those.
Ashley: In one bedroom. And we tried to find one, it didn’t work out, did it?
Carlie: Nope, and then eventually the Lord just challenged us and said, “You know, the reason you can’t find a house is because you’re only looking for your own needs.” And we were like, “What? I mean, we got to Bible college, we’re following you, right? We’re not being selfish here.”He says, “No, you’ve only, you haven’t considered my needs. You’ve only considered your own needs as a family. And that’s why you’re not seeing any provision.” And we started talking about this and we’re like, “Well, what do you mean, Lord? We were really meditating on this. Like praying about… Lord show us what you mean.” And he said, “You need to have a bigger house, but you need to have a spare room so that you can have other… I’m going to use you to host other families that come into town or that take care of other families that have need.”
And he started to unravel because we’d actually taken the time to ask him how he wanted to supply our needs and how he wanted to supply the needs of others through us. And when we did that, it was a whole supernatural chain of events, but almost right away, we found a house that was a much bigger house than we would have looked at, but it was still within our budget because we hadn’t even been looking for houses with five bedrooms. We’d never had a five bedroom house in our life. And, and during that time at Bible college, God gave us a massive house, way bigger than we would need because he wanted to supply the needs of others. And during that time, indeed, we had other families that came to live with us. We were able to be a blessing to missionaries and different people that were coming in and all the same time, God was blessing us and blessing other people. And it was just a good deal.
Ashley: It was awesome and even better than that, I didn’t know. God knows the beginning from the end or knows the end from the beginning. I should say. He knows the future. He knows how to get stuff to us. He wants to get stuff to us. And one of the reasons why he wanted us to have this big house, we went to this big house, was because I started running a business from the house. And I wouldn’t have been able to run this business from a regular house. This house had acres and acres of land. It was an old farm house. It was a beautiful, it was like… If you’ve ever seen like English postcards or English cookie tins, it was like one of those houses, a beautiful farmhouse in the middle of the country.
Totally not like any other house in that area. And I remember it was so beautiful, I took a pastor back there once and he said on the drive there, he said, “Now you’re in Bible school, aren’t you?” I was like, “Yeah.” He said, “Oh, I remember my days in Bible school-”
Carlie: The poverty days.
Ashley: …”The poverty days, we had to eat rice and beans. It was so bad. We had no money,” and I’m driving, like thinking. He said, “yeah, we had to squash into a small apartment and everything else”. And as I got to the driveway, I pulled my remote out and pressed the… we had electric gates and the electric gates opened. And he went, “You live here?” And I said “I’m only renting it.” He said, “yeah, but even so.” We drove up the like half a mile, long driveway to this big farm house.
Carlie: We were embarrassed at the abundance that God had shown us because we’d been obedient.
Ashley: I said the best bit was because I was able to run a business from that house while I was at Bible school, we actually made more than when I was in full-time business before. And we actually gave more while I was at Bible college.
Carlie: We did.
Ashley: Then we’d given before when I was in full time business. And we’d always been givers. We was always tithers. We always gave, but because while I was at college, we did things God’s way and we put God first. Now it sounds like a Bible verse, don’t it? Matthew 6:33, “Seek first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things. And those things mean our natural needs, what we need, where we’ll live, what we’ll wear things are he’ll take care of.” And God is El Shaddai, not El Cheapo. God can look after you better than you can look after you.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: So when we put God first and say “God, we’re going to do this for you. We’re going to put you first.” He actually looked after our needs better than we could have looked after our needs. We lived in a better house, had more money to give, lived a better lifestyle. That was awesome.
Carlie: But before God could do that, we had to get our eyes off of our own situation of just taking care of our needs and looking at how we can make the best of it, considering the lack. We had to stop making room for lack in our life.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: That was really important. And the way we stopped making room for lack in the way we were thinking, it wasn’t that suddenly we had money that came in from strange sources. The real life situation of trying to pay the bills was still there. But we had started to look beyond that situation. We’d started to look beyond the mountain that was in front of us and invite God in to use us to take care of the needs of others. And when we did that, it’s kind of like the cheerful giver, right? And God is able. Our attitude change enabled God to move in our life and use us to supply the needs of others when we stop looking only at our lack.
Ashley: Amen, whatever you focus on is going to get magnified. You focus on the lack. If you keep focusing on you haven’t got enough. That’s going to seem to be bigger in your life. That’s going to get magnified. So focus on God’s provision, focus on how God can bless you, focus on how you can give to others. You know, great example of this. We haven’t got time to go into it, but the great example is the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus just had a few loaves and a few fish. And rather than focusing on the lack, this isn’t enough. In fact, one of the disciples said, “Lord, what are so few among so many with 5,000 men here, we can’t feed them with just a few loaves and a few fish. And what is so few among so many?” Jesus, “Give them to me,” he gave thanks to God.
And he says, “Looking out,” Which means he looked into the spirit realm. He looked into God’s provision. And even though it seemingly what he had wasn’t enough, by looking into the spirit realm and by giving thanks to God, those things were multiplied. And whatever you give to God, he’s going to increase. So he gave them to God and they increased. And you know the rest of the story, everyone in the end had plenty. But the point being is his focus wasn’t on the need. His focus was on the ability for God to increase what he had. And he was looking to God’s ability. So we need to focus on God’s abundance. One of the things we did, we just didn’t speak lack. We didn’t say we can’t afford it. We’re not like one of these rich people. Money doesn’t grow on trees, Well, what’s money made of? Paper. Money does grow on trees. You don’t speak lack, don’t speak deaf and lack of your finances and things like that.
Carlie: We actually did change our vocabulary, especially with three young children and they’ll see commercials and they want stuff, and they don’t necessarily understand that you literally don’t have the money for that right now, but rather than say, “We can’t afford it.” We’d say, “It’s not in the budget right now.”
Ashley: Or, “How can we afford it? How could we afford that? What could you do to afford that?”
Carlie: Or “We’re to spend our money on that right now,” but it was never, “We can’t afford it,” because it was really about priorities as well and how we spend our money. “I’m not going to spend $50 on the latest toy for you right now, because I’m going to choose to spend my money on something else.”
Ashley: If you want to, how could you get the money for that? And we’ve told our kids is, “how could you get the money for that?” And they get creative. They sell some of their old stuff. They go and walk dogs or wherever they have to do. They do stuff to raise the money, rather than saying, “We just can’t afford it.” When you say, “I can’t afford it,” you shut your natural mind down and that’s it. It’s, “Okay, we can’t afford it. Game over.”
Carlie: You turn off all kinds of creativity at that point.
Ashley: Yeah, when you say, “How can we get it?” Or, “How can we get the resources for that?” then it turns on your brain to things like, “Where’s the opportunities? How can we find this?”
Carlie: So our daughter when she was 11 years old, decided that she wanted to start a dog walking business, and she’d been on the internet and she figured out that she wanted one of these multiple dog walking leashes, that she could hook up several dogs to at once. And so she came to us and she said, “I need $11 to start my business.” And she wanted us to just give her the money, but we’d been through some stuff by this point and we realized that when you give people opportunity to problem solve themselves, rather than just looking at the lack and say, “Well, you don’t have $11. And here’s a loan or Houston charity, or let me be the solution to your problem.” We let them figure out a solution to their own problems. And through that people grow more, right? And so what did [Hannah] say?
Ashley: She was… I said to her, “Basically, you’re going to have to find a way of raising this money.”
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: So anyway, she found an organic dog treat recipe online. She found some flour and stuff, and she cooked some dog treats, baked them in the oven. There was a flour over the house. And when we came home, she gave me $11 and said ” Here Dad, here’s $11 to buy those dog leashes.” This was just like 10 hours later. I said, “Where’d you get $11 from?” And she said, “Well, I made some dog treats.” And then she said, “I put them in Ziploc bags and I took them around the neighbors who have dogs, and I sold them for a dollar a bag and here’s the $11.” So she got creative and raised $11 for herself because we gave her that challenge. So creativity is amazing.
You can make money in all different types of ways. And part of the series is talking about the work of your hand and about putting your hand to something. A hundred folded zero is zero. So give God something to work with. Don’t despise small beginnings. God loves to take the seemingly small things, the natural things, and add his super to him and give you supernatural results. So don’t miss out by not putting your hand to something. And that’s very important in prospering. That’s very important in attacking lack. It’s putting your hand to something and being creative and making sure that you’re giving God an opportunity to bless you.
Carlie: Yep.
Ashley: Amen. So we’re in the middle of talking about giving different types of giving. We talked about the tithe, we talked about benevolence, we talked about the first fruits. We talked about offerings and about how to give offerings and things like that. Today, we’re going to look at attitudes you’re giving, so some of our attitudes in giving, and here’s a great story Carlie’s going to read when Jesus was in the temple. And he was watching people give, and I love this story. This is in-
Carlie: This is the widow’s in Mark 12:41. It says, “Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many of who were rich put in much. Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans. And so he said to the disciples to Himself, he said, “Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put more in than all of those who have given to the treasury; for they put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that, she had, her whole livelihood.”
Ashley: Wow, that awesome. Jesus was watching how people gave. Said he watched how people gave him to the offering. This shows you as well, that our attitude is very important when it comes to giving, Jesus said, “Where your treasure is there, your heart will be also.” And ultimately God wants our hearts in these things. And it’s how you give is very important. Now he wasn’t condemning the people for giving the large amounts of money, but they were giving these large amounts of money. This widow came and she gave everything she had. And that’s why Jesus stopped and said to the disciples, “Here’s a teaching moment. I’m going to teach you something about this. This woman gave in all she had, and this is a generous gift. She’s given more than these other people who’ve given.”
Now in monetary terms, the other people gave more, but she gave more compared to what she had. She gave everything. Her heart was with the Lord. Now a couple of things here. First of all, when I get to heaven, I’m going to have a little sign like they have in the airports, like Mr. Smith. I’m going to have one of their sides. They’re going to say widow woman with two mites. And I’m going to walk around heaven and find this widow woman, because I want to know what happened after this. I think she prospered after this.
Carlie: Yeah, Amen.
Ashley: Here’s the thing, Jesus never ran and gave her a refund. He never said, “Hey lady, you’re too poor to give.”
Carlie: He didn’t refuse the gift.
Ashley: “Hey lady, you shouldn’t be giving, let me give you your money back. You haven’t got enough money to give.” No, he let her give. And the money stayed there. She didn’t get a refund right then and there because the truth is the best place for your money is in the kingdom of God. In fact, somebody who said to me, “Actually, I can’t afford to give.” And I say, “You can’t afford not to give.” They said, “Actually, I’ve got no money left over.” No, what you’re talking about is priorities. You haven’t prioritized giving. This widow prioritized giving. Giving was her biggest priority. That’s why she came and gave her last two pennies, if you like, her last two mites. She gave them, she had a priority on giving. So that’s huge.
Do you believe that giving is the most important use of your money? It’s important to believe that’s one of the things you need to believe. You need get the point of realizing, giving in the kingdom of God is the most important use of your money. So do you believe giving is an important use of your money? Here’s another att… we’re talking about attitudes and giving and about how to make sure our attitudes are right when it comes to giving. This is a great story. Let me read you this real quick. This is the rich young ruler, and this could be found in Mark 10. This is the rich young ruler. I won’t read the whole story, but basically, this rich young ruler comes to a… First of all, he was rich, he was young and he was a ruler.
Carlie: He had it all going on.
Ashley: I mean, if we look were to look at him and say, “This is excess.” He was a godly man. He was rich. He had money. He had possessions. He had position. He was a ruler and he was young. Most of us when we get rich and in authority, we lose the young part.
Carlie: One of those gets away.
Ashley: One of those gets away, he was young. But, this guy was rich, he was young and he’s a ruler. And it says… I’m just going to break into the story. He comes to Jesus. And that you can read the story yourself in Mark 10, but it starts in verse 17. But let’s just jump down to Mark 10:21. So Mark 10:21, the rich ruler was asked “Jesus, what do I need to be saved?” And Jesus says to him, “You follow these commandments.” He said, “I’ve done those.” And Jesus was testing his heart here. Jesus was testing his heart and in verse 21, this is Mark 10:21.
“Then Jesus, looking at him.” This is really important. “Jesus, looking at him, loved him.” So Jesus looking at him, loved him. Now we know God is the biggest giver. We know God is love, god is good and God is generous. And when God asks us to give it’s because he loves us. Jesus asked this rich young ruler to give because he loved him. Jesus looking at him, loved him. So this was the best thing for this rich young ruler. Jesus was looking out for this rich young ruler’s interests. Sometimes we don’t realize this. God is looking out for your best interest. That’s the reason they asked you to give. Not because it’s good for him, it’s because he’s trying to do the best for you. And the best thing for you is to give a portion of your money away. So right here, “He looked at him and loved him and said to him, “One thing you lack.”
How could he lack? He was rich. He was young. He was a ruler. He loved God. He was a godly man. How comes this guy lacked? Jesus said, “One thing you lack.” Let me tell you, I don’t care how successful you are. I don’t care how much money you have or haven’t got, I don’t care what position you’ve got. I don’t care if you’ve got lots of letters after your name, like a Scrabble board, it doesn’t matter to me. If you don’t give, then you’re still lacking. You have lack in your life. Jesus said it right here, this guy is one thing you lack. You’re lacking because you’re not giving. He said, “Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor.” And I believe Jesus said give to the poor rather than give it to him because he wanted to make sure people knew he wasn’t doing this for his own benefit.
He was doing this for the rich young ruler’s benefit. “Go your way and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and then come, take up your cross, and follow Me.” But listen to this. The rich young ruler said, “He was sad at this word,” this is verse 22. “And he went away sorrowful because he had great possessions.” The rich young ruler couldn’t do it. He couldn’t give over his possessions. He couldn’t give over his money to Jesus.
Carlie: Do you think his possessions had him?
Ashley: His possessions had him. There’s nothing wrong with having possessions. There’s nothing wrong with having money. In fact, I believe God wants us to have money. He wants us to have possession so we can help more people and because he loves us, but we can’t let possessions have us. We covered this in a previous program, but covetousness and the love of money is dangerous.
It’s the root of all kinds of evil. In fact, one translator says it’s the root of all evil. The love of money made Judas sell Jesus to the priests. The love of money made Ananias and Sapphira in Acts, lie about how much money they made. The love of money will pierce you. Paul talks about it, it pierces you through, and you’ll make many leave the faith. So you can’t let the love of money rule you. In Matthew, 6:24, Jesus says, “You can only serve one master. You can’t serve God and money. You’ll either belove the one and despise the other. Or you will love the one and hate the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” And that word mammon is the old English word for money. You cannot serve God and money. So right here, the rich young ruler wasn’t able to put God first. He put his possessions before God. He put his riches before God, and that’s a bad place to be.
Carlie: That’s why it was so sad when Jesus said, give them all away.
Ashley: When you give it all away. Now this happens, sometimes if you’re putting money before God, now, if you’re putting your trust… If you’re trusting in finances, instead of trusting God, we covered this in Mark 4:19, Jesus says, “There’s three things that choke the word of God and stop the word of God being fruitful in your life. Deceitfulness of riches, the lust for other things and the cares of this world. It’s actually the other way round, cares for this world, deceitful with riches and the lust for other things. But those three things will enter in and choke the word of God in your life, Mark 4:19. And he had a deceit… He had a lust for other things, and maybe even deceitfulness of riches. He believed that he was secure because he had these riches.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: And he put his trust in his riches. And if you put your trust in your riches, that’s a dangerous place to be. And if that happens to you often, the Lord might challenge you and tell you to give everything.
Carlie: For anything that we put before the Lord can become an idol.
Ashley: It’s an idol and God wants our whole attention, so this will happen sometimes. It’s happened to us where one time God asked me to just give everything we had in liquid assets, in money, in the bank at the time. He said, “Give it all.” And in time it got my heart racing, it was a big deal, but we did it. And praise God. Shortly after that, our daughters healed. We wasn’t paying for a healing. We wasn’t bribing God. But what happened was, God had to make sure I was trusting him or basically here to test my own heart to know… He knew my heart, but I didn’t know my own heart. And until I trusted God my finances, it was difficult for me to trust God with other things, like healing.
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: And people say, “You can’t tell me actually, that if I give, it could open the doorway to other areas of God to flow into my life. That’s the word of God says. Again, Mark 4:19. There’s three things, choke the word and make it unfruitful in our life. And all three of those things are directly related to finances. God wants our hearts. God wants our whole hearts. Again, Matthew 6:24, Jesus. “You’re going to serve one master. You can’t serve God and money.” And money and the spirit of mammon, if you like. The idea of money and resources, it’s vying for our attention, it will try and seduce it. There’s there’s Proverbs about this. It talks about money will try to seduce you. Money, will try and take your attention away from God and it’s dangerous. So we wanted to make sure that we’re putting God first, Matthew, 6:33, putting God first.
And we’re not letting the lure of money send us away. Now, it doesn’t matter if you have money or haven’t got money. The love of money can be either way. It doesn’t matter. A lot of people don’t have money, then they want money so much. They have a lust for money.
Carlie: Covetousness.
Ashley: Covetousness. So right here, this is a great example of how Jesus tested this person and say, “You know what? Are you putting me first or not?” So another attitude of giving we’re talking about here is are we putting God first? Do we really believe that we’re putting God first and we’re not letting anything else take the place of God in our life? And you need to ask yourself, “Is it?” I asked myself, sometimes I have to think to myself, “Am I making this decision out of a financial reason?”
I don’t want to make decisions just based on finances. I want to make decisions because God’s told me. I want to follow God’s voice and then make finances follow me. I tell finances what to do. God tells me what to do. That’s the way we should be living. We shouldn’t be listening to the voice of finances. If we were asked… We run a teaching ministry. We travel a lot. If we were asked to teach somewhere, I don’t want to make that decision on, “Well, I know this place is going to be good for our finances.” No, I want to go because God’s told us to go. And that’s where we go sometimes to places where they can’t… The offerings and that won’t even cover our expenses, but our partners make that available. We can go and travel and do that. And then what happens is people are set free and healed.
Carlie: Yeah, it’s going to be a blessing.
Ashley: It’s awesome. We’re not making that decision on finances, we’re making that decision on the spirit of God and what God tells us to do.
Carlie: And as you follow God, other opportunities open up and he has ways of getting resources to you that he had never even imagined, things that last forever. Let’s look at this passage in 1 Kings. This is Elijah and the widow woman, so this is 1 Kings 17:12. And it says, “So she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I don’t have any bread, just a handful of flour in a bin, and little oil in a jar. I’m gathering a couple of sticks that I may go prepare myself for myself and my son that we may eat it and die.” She’s making a last meal, but look what Elijah said, because this is unusual. He said, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first and bring it to me; and afterwards then make some for yourself and your son.” That sounds a little selfish, doesn’t it?
Ashley: It’s scandalous.
Carlie: Scandalous!
Ashley: The preacher is telling her to… The man of God is telling her to… she’s dying, she doesn’t hardly got any money. Give your last resource, give your last meal to me.
Carlie: Give it to me first. But then look at the end result, “For thus says the Lord God of Israel, “The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor the jar of oil run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.” And the end of the story is, Man, that woman was supernaturally blessed.
Ashley: So she received supernatural abundance because she put God first, the man of God said give to me first. She put God first, gave to God first. And what happened was that meal and that oil will never run out. So she had a supernatural increase in her life. Anytime we receive supernatural increase in the Bible, you look back in the Old Testament, New Testament, there’s some natural active obedience first, and your natural act of obedience that might be given, maybe not give financially to wherever. Ask the Lord, “Where shall I give?” But give financially and that act of obedience… The rich young ruler missed it. Don’t miss it like the rich young ruler. Make sure you’re putting God first. Take that act of natural obedience, Amen. Give to God first and he will supply your needs, according to his riches.
Carlie: So attack lack by giving.
Ashley: Attack back by giving. Giving is one of the best ways you can attack lack. So we’ll be back again. We’re nearly out of time. We’ll be back again real soon. Thank you for joining us today. We’re going to be praying the green review. That lack of be gone in your life and you’ll experience God’s prosperity as he wants you to experience it. Amen. So we’ll be back again soon and finish up some of this teaching. But until next time don’t just live a normal life. When you could be living the abundant life, we’ll see you soon.
Announcer: To order your copy of this teaching. Visit our website, TerradezMinistries.com. Download your free copy of Ashley and Carlie’s teaching notes at our website, TerradezMinistries.com.
Ashley: Hey, I want to thank the partners of Terradez ministries. Thank you for your support. You know what? By your financial support, we’re able to go out and touch the world for Jesus. We’re seeing people’s lives turned around. We’re seeing people healed. We’re seeing people set free. We’re seeing people born again and your gifts are enabling us to do that. So we want to thank you and thank you on behalf of all the people we’re touching. Praise God, thank you for your partnership. We appreciate you. We’re praying for you. We know you’re going to increase as you sow seed into this ministry. So we’re praying for you regularly. Thank you for your partnership. We love you.
Announcer: Visit our website, TerradezMinistries.com and become partner today! To receive your free copy of Carlie’s confession card as our gift to you, go to TerradezMinistries.com today. Why live a normal life when you could be living the abundant life? Join us next time for the Abundant Life program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.