SID: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. Whenever I turn on television, I hear things like, seed faith, prosperity, God wants you to become a millionaire. I want to, how about you? Would you like to know the truth about prosperity teaching? Is it of God, is seed faith God? Is there a wrong version? Is there a right version? What is the truth? How many of you are interested in knowing? I am. Well I’m here with Dr. Jim Richards and I don’t know a better person to ask the question, is there anything wrong with the popular message today, which is all lumped together called prosperity teaching?
JIM: You know, it’s so sad to have it today that the truth of God has been twisted, that it’s become something that feeds greed and self-centeredness, and makes it almost impossible for people to grasp God’s realities for us prospering, for us living in abundance.
SID: Well that begs the question, does God want all of us rich?
JIM: You know something? God wants all of us living prosperous lives. He wants us living our lives where our needs are met. He wants us living our lives where we’re comfortable. But more than anything else, he wants us to live that God kind of abundance where we have resources to invest in the world, change the world, change people’s lives. You know, the truth is the reason the world is in the shape that it’s in today is because the church has taught that there is something spiritual about being poor and the wicked have control of the resources. And God made it really clear many times in the scripture that when the wicked have the wealth, the wicked will rule and the righteous will moan.
SID: You know if I was God and I was a casting director, I would pick you to be a specialist in this area. Let me tell you why. James was raised in extreme poverty. His dad was an alcoholic. His dad not only didn’t contribute to the finances of the family, he actually took money away. His mother made $19 a week. There were three kids. You really had a tough time as a kid.
JIM: Poverty was the norm for us. I mean, we were one of those families that you pass all of your clothes, and you know, you might, you would have one pair of shoes. I can remember taking tape and taping around my shoes so the soles would stay on the bottom of my shoes. And you know, you might have one pair of pants. That’s it. You’d just wear them until you couldn’t stand to wear them anymore, and then you’d strip down and wash them, and let them dry. And that’s all we had. And you know like you said, my dad would come back many times and break into the house, steal all the food that we had, steal the heating oil that we had in the winter. And so growing up in that kind of situation, that becomes the norm for you, and really, your beliefs start being molded.
SID: So you had what many people had, a poverty mindset.
JIM: That’s right.
SID: Now explain to me with this poverty mindset ,there’s actually been studies, that after a few generations. Explain that.
JIM: Yeah. You know, and the Bible tells us, the Bible tells us that if something happens for several generations that it will continue on in our children, and that’s not because God is cursing us. It’s what the study reveals, it says that if three or four generations of children grow up in welfare, grow up in destitution, that by the fourth generation they come into the world hardwired for that kind of life. And it will be very unlikely that they will ever get out of poverty by time several generations have gone through this.
SID: But there is there light at the end…
JIM: Oh yes there is.
SID: … of the tunnel. As a matter of fact, at 28, he really, you thought he hit rock bottom before. He gets sick and he owes so much money to the doctors and the hospitals. You’d never paid that back.
JIM: No.
SID: And one day, you’re saying a prayer in your own house and all of a sudden, you hear, and it’s his wife, oh, I broke it. Seriously, she didn’t say that to you.
JIM: It’s the truth. You know, I had gone from desperate poverty to just the getting by mentality. You live just getting by, just barely getting by. And I was thanking God for our food one day and I was just saying, “Father, I thank you for what you give us. I thank you that our needs are met.” My wife said, “Jim, I am just sick and tired of just having our needs met.” She said, “I don’t think this is God’s plan for us. I don’t think this is how we’re supposed to live.” Now at that time, I’d just walked through getting healed and it took about three and half years from this genetic disease that I was born with, and should not have survived, should have died. And at the end of it, I get healed, and I look around and I’m so deep in debt that it looks impossible that I would ever get out of debt. And we were just barely living from hand to mouth.
SID: So you started studying the Bible. What did God show you about the principle of sowing and reaping?
JIM: You know, the first thing that I understood about sowing and reaping is sowing and reaping is not an external thing. It’s not like I’m going to give and God is going to owe me something back. And that’s kind of, that’s part of this get rich scheme that’s been presented to us, you know, improperly, if you will, from the Christian community. It’s not like I’m going to force God. Sowing and reaping is about something that happens in my heart so that as I invest from the heart of generosity, so as I develop myself where love is motivating me. And I’m investing in the world and investing in other people, it changes something inside me that gives the capacity to receive, not just to receive, the capacity to even perceive the opportunities for wealth.
SID: Jim, by his own experience pulled himself out, with biblical principles, out of debt. But God doesn’t want you just pulled out of debt. He wants you to prosper, to meet all of your needs, your family’s needs and then take care. Can you imagine being able to take care of the community, take care of the needs of other people. It’s available. And when we come back, I want him to teach a little on that.
