We all know that God is in the business of connecting people to success and wealth; we also know that He connects and gives wisdom to acquire wealth to people with the right kind of heart towards money and are willing to do Gods will with the money. But how many of us realize the part the church holds in the wealth business?

I look around and find that the greater percentage of successful Christians tend to concentrate in some particular churches while so many have marginally or hardly successful people alone for members. It is tempting to think that this can be explained as class connection but I do not think class and click would explain it all.

A close look at the attitude of God towards prosperity shows 2 things;

a) He works all things out for His will; He provides resources for His purposes and programs.

b) His provision may be given to a man, but He always has the church as a cooperate body in mind.

Apart from these, poverty and mediocrity are two curses that are usually cooperate in nature; they usually exist at family level, ancestry level or group level.

I then conclude that one of the reasons God would not take some of us far from the poverty level is because of cooperate unsuitability for entrustment with spiritual resources. Jeremiah 8: 8 – 13 elaborates this, verse 13;

“…’I will take away their harvest’, declares the LORD. ‘There will be no grapes on the vine. There will be no figs on the tree, and there leaves will wither. What I have given them will be taken from them’”.

One reason for this suitability is corporate rebellion: this is when as a group we are refusing to grow in our knowledge of God and of His will. The temptation in any crowd is to play to the gallery of social opinion of what our gathering in the church should be all about. This is a trap the devil sets for people or groups who lack a vision of what to do and how to do it. It also serves to distract us away from following God to following the wind of fashion.

Another cause is self–interest. As individuals, we have an idea of what we would rather the church to be doing and we might even be tempted to clothe such as God’s will this was the sin of Jezebel).

Another cause can be instituted religion. The temptation (especially in older churches) is to trust in the visions of yesteryears for direction in the church today.

All these are forms of idolatry; they replace God and His will in the church, and the way to avoid such traps is to seek God’s face to know what He wants us to do. This should not be a problem if we truly have personal relationships with Him. It is only when we are engaged in God’s will in the ever present sense of it will He open to us His spiritual resources of wealth. Haggai 1: (2 – 11) 9b –10;

“Because of my house which remains a ruin while each of you is busy with his own house. Therefore, because of you the heavens have withheld their dew and the earth its crops”

Haggai 2: (17 –19) 19;

“Is there yet any seed left in the barn? Until now, the vine and the fig-tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit. From this day on I will bless you”