4 Laws of Poverty: How to Become & STAY Poor
The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. (Proverbs 10:15, NIV-84)
Just as there are spiritual laws that set prosperity in motion, there are also laws that set poverty in motion.
And we need to be familiar with both. We need to know what the laws that govern prosperity are so we can abide by them. We need to know what the laws that govern poverty are so we can stay away from them.
The Bible minces no words about the importance of staying away from poverty. It says plainly that poverty brings ruin. In Hebrew, the word for poverty means “to be destitute, needy, poor, insufficient, deficient; to live in a state of lack and extreme want.” Unlike prosperity, which is a BLESSING that increases and elevates our status in life, poverty does the opposite. It diminishes and lowers our status in life and is a curse.
As believers, we’ve been redeemed from the curse, therefore we’ve been redeemed from poverty. Yet we can fall prey to it if we continue to activate its laws. Remember how Deuteronomy 28 says that if you hearken to the voice of The LORD to do His commandments, THE BLESSING will come upon you and overtake you? The same principle works in reverse. If you don’t listen to and obey God, the curse will come upon and overtake you.
“You have to spend time in The WORD in order to get your thinking straight, your speaking straight and your actions straight,” Brother Copeland said when he was teaching on the laws of prosperity. “As long as you are thinking, talking and acting poverty, you are going to get more of it than you can stand.”
You don’t want more poverty than you can stand! You don’t want any poverty at all! If you did though, the Bible tells you how to get it. All you have to do is follow poverty laws like these:
Law 1: Don’t Acknowledge God or His WORD
This is what The LORD says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from The LORD. That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives” (Jeremiah 17:5-6, NIV).
If you want to live in poverty, do not put God and His WORD first place in your life. Instead, do things your own way. If you get so desperate that for a while you do start seeking God first, once He puts you back on your feet again, go back to your old ways again. Leave your Bible closed and gathering dust on your nightstand and go back to handling things yourself. That will put you right back on the road to poverty.
I say this tongue-in-cheek, of course. I know you’d never intentionally ignore God. But if you don’t stay in The WORD, it’s an easy trap to fall into. That’s why Deuteronomy 8 specifically warns us: “Beware that thou forget not The LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes…. If thou do at all forget The LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them…ye shall surely perish” (verses 11, 19).
In her teaching from the audio series, The Kingdom of God—Days of Heaven on Earth, Gloria says, “Prosperity is the result of doing God’s ways. Some pass the poverty test but fail the prosperity test. You get your needs met and receive great abundance. But if you don’t keep God’s WORD first place in your life, your heart will begin to grow cold. You’ll be taken with the material things that have been added to you.
“You have to walk circumspectly to walk in prosperity. You have to keep putting God first. When all your needs are met, remember how you got it. Remember that it was God who gave you the power to get wealth. One thing about wealth—it can come quickly and it can go quickly.”[1]
You can see an example of what to do and what not to do in 2 Chronicles 26, in the story of the Old Testament King Uzziah. In the early years of his life “he set himself to seek God…and as long as he sought (inquired of, yearned for) The LORD, God made him prosper” (verse 5, AMPC). Later in life, however, he got full of himself and stopped acknowledging God. He “became proud to his destruction” (verse 16, AMPC) and lost everything he had.
King Uzziah had access to God’s WORD. He undoubtedly knew the law of prosperity in Proverbs 3:6: “In all thy ways acknowledge [God], and he shall direct thy paths.” But he forgot that law, activated the No. 1 law of poverty instead, and it ruined him.
Law 2: Don’t Exercise Self-Control
He who loves pleasure will become poor; whoever loves wine and oil will never be rich…. Listen, my son, and be wise, and keep your heart on the right path. Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags (Proverbs 21:17, 23:19-21, NIV-84).
As a believer, your spirit has been born again, but your flesh has not. So, if you want more poverty in your life just let your flesh do whatever it wants. Once you let it take charge, it will push you into overspending, overeating, overdrinking and overindulging in carnal pleasures that will deplete you not only financially but also spiritually and physically. It will seduce you into loving fleshly pleasures more than you love God, and rob you of a truly prosperous life.
The Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 6: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life” (verses 7-8, NKJV).
You want life and prosperity, not poverty and corruption. So, choose to exercise self-control as well as all the fruit of the spirit—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness—and steer clear of the second law of poverty.
“Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16, NKJV)!
Gloria-ism
“Both poverty and sickness are cured by more of God because they’re a curse and He’s THE BLESSING.”
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man. (Proverbs 6:6-11, NIV)
Poverty is something I have personally experienced. Ken and I were poor in the early years of our marriage. And you know what? I DID NOT like it.
If you’ve ever been there, I’m sure you can relate. When you’re living in poverty, you’re always focused on what you don’t have. You continually think about what you need and how impossible it is for you to get it. “I’ll never be able to afford that,” you say to yourself. “I don’t have enough money.”
Once you switch over and start operating in the laws of prosperity, however, you start thinking in terms of abundance. When you see something you need or desire, you can go to God with confidence and ask Him for it. You can believe you receive when you pray, take by faith what you asked for, and rejoice knowing you will have it (Mark 11:24).
The prosperity mindset is entirely different from the poverty mindset and produces entirely different results! So, let’s continue today looking at what Pastor George calls the laws of poverty so that we can be sure to avoid them.
Law 3: Don’t Work
Just be a sluggard and a slacker. If you’re unemployed, stay that way. If you have a job, be late to arrive in the morning, leave early and waste a lot of time lazing around in between. Such things are guaranteed to leave you lacking. For as the Bible says:
“The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied” (Proverbs 13:4, ESV).
“Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth” (Proverbs 10:4, TLV).
“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man” (Proverbs 24:33-34, NIV-84).
“Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare” (Proverbs 20:13, NIV).
“You lazy fool, look at an ant. Watch it closely; let it teach you a thing or two. Nobody has to tell it what to do. All summer it stores up food; at harvest it stockpiles provisions. So how long are you going to laze around doing nothing? How long before you get out of bed? A nap here, a nap there, a day off here, a day off there, sit back, take it easy—do you know what comes next? Just this: You can look forward to a dirt-poor life, poverty your permanent houseguest!” (Proverbs 6:6-11, MSG).
I have no ambition to be poor, so I’m going to keep getting out of bed in the morning and doing what I’m supposed to do.
Law 4: Don’t Tithe and Give
Instead, spend all your income on yourself, including the 10% that belongs to God. Be stingy and quit helping other people. In other words, do not be like Kenneth Copeland!
I learned about giving from him. He’s the most extravagant giver I’ve ever met. I think he enjoys giving more than anything else—even more than preaching or flying airplanes, which is saying a lot. He truly would rather give than receive. That’s why our ministry has prospered. It’s why our Partners are prospering. We keep tithing and giving.
Proverbs 11 says, “One man gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed” (verses 24-25, NIV-84). Other versions of the Bible put it this way: “It is possible to give freely and become more wealthy, but those who are stingy will lose everything…. The world of the generous gets larger and larger; the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller” (verse 24, NLT-96, MSG).
If that’s not warning enough, Proverbs also says, “A stingy man is eager to get rich and is unaware that poverty awaits him,” yet “a generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor” (Proverbs 28:22, 22:9, NIV-84).
The fifth law of poverty, while simple, covers a lot of territory. It is this: Don’t obey God. Obedience to Him produces prosperity and BLESSING. Disobedience produces the conditions of the curse. Every time. Really, it’s that black and white, and the choice is up to you: “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it” (Isaiah 1:19-20).
Here again, I speak from experience. Although Ken and I started out poor, as soon as we began acting on what the Bible says, even when it didn’t look like it would be to our advantage, we started increasing financially and have been increasing ever since. And you know what? I found out I like it. As the old saying goes, I’ve been poor, and I’ve been rich, and rich is better!
I’m sure you agree, and the Scriptures confirm that God does too. Life is simply better when you shun the laws of poverty. Even though living according to the laws of prosperity requires more effort, I’ve found the results are well worth it, haven’t you?
Gloria-ism:
“I have no ambition to be poor, so I’m going to keep getting out of bed in the morning and doing what I’m supposed to do.”
Notes
The Kingdom of God—Days of Heaven on Earth, “Your Heavenly Account,” Message 4, Part 1, Gloria Copeland © 1996.
