On the Spirit of Poverty in this season.

It's a deeply rooted spirit. It has little to do with money. It has everything to do with who you are, your heart, your temperament, your personal baggage, the strongholds in your life, the lies you have bought into, the people you surround yourself with, the influences you allow in and your innate stinginess or generosity. You can be a billionaire and have a spirit of poverty. You can be homeless on the street and have a spirit of poverty. BUT the most telling sign of a spirit of poverty is the unwillingness to be generous to others with EVERYTHING you have. Money, Time, Credit, Sunshine, Love, Compassion, Patience and a host of other attributes those who live in abundance of heart have by accident.

Show me a poor person (like Ebeneezer Scrooge or like the person living hand to mouth in a tenement somewhere), it's the same spirit. And at this time of Christmas, it's time to break the back of the spirit of poverty. It's not about the offerings, tithes, seed or giving you give to your church. That's one of the strongholds. It's much much bigger than that. A by product might be that you give to a ministry, but if it comes because you believe there is a big payoff later.. you kid yourself.

To be released from the spirit of poverty takes an encounter with all the Ghosts of your life that haunt you. It is the result of a worldview and mindset that the devil delights in you having. IF you really want freedom from poverty and it's spirit, you start with YOU. IF you have no skin in the game, you can't be set free from poverty.

Read this Bible story and think about it.. Poverty starts with dependance on other peoples money, giving, generosity and free stuff. Rich people are as bad with this as poor, but to get out of the spirit of poverty mindset they must revise thinking:

David Builds an Altar unto the Lord

1 Samuel 24:18-25
On that day Gad went to David and said to him, “Go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” 19So David went up, as the Lord had commanded through Gad. 20When Araunah looked and saw the king and his officials coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.

21Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”

“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.”

22Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. 23Your Majesty, Araunahd gives all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.”

24But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekelse of silver for them. 25David built an altar to the Lord there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the Lord answered his prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.

Here is the question, would the plague have been stopped if David had taken the gift and offered it to the Lord?? I think not.. But you need to think about the plague of the spirit of poverty you face and ask yourself the question. Do I have skin in the game?