Poverty is the reverse of wealth. It is a state of life characterized by hardship and profitless conditions. Poverty is manifested when a person has no sufficient food to eat, no necessary clothes to wear or adequate shelter to live in. A person suffering from poverty will not be capable of providing what he needs to live a fulfilling life. Such inability to have the means of getting sufficient food, shelter or clothing for oneself and one’s dependants is a state of poverty. Poverty must be overcome to be able to live a successful life.
Poverty is also a spirit. When the spirit of poverty possesses a life, the necessary resources needed for achieving desired goals will be stolen or hidden from such a life. The spirit of poverty makes people to sow on their land but ensures that they get little from their labour. This spirit makes people not to have the means of earning money for living. In cases where a person is earning a sufficiently good income, the spirit of poverty, if operating in such a life, will instigate devourers to waste the income. It is this spirit that makes a senior officer to borrow money from office messengers. It is the spirit of poverty that is responsible for pushing people out of lucrative jobs through unnecessary misbehaviour. A highly paid secretary in an oil company was sacked for stealing the shoes of a friend in the office. The spirit of poverty has prospered over the life of this former secretary. Because poverty is a spirit, you need the divine power of the Almighty God to overcome it.
Poverty is a curse. The origin of this curse can be traced to the first disobedience of man to God as recorded in Genesis 3:17-18.
Without the incident recorded in this passage, man may not know what we call poverty today. Poverty is therefore a curse issued on man for disobedience. It is a curse that makes one to labour in sorrow and bring forth in hardship.
Read Galatians 3:13-14 from your Bible
Everyone who is a child of God must therefore break the curse of poverty over his life. Poverty must die in the lives of true children of God.
A typical case of poverty is recorded in II Kings 4:1–2. A man died in a state of debt. After his death, his creditors came to demand for the money he owed them from his widow. And because she could not settle the debt, the creditors came to take away the two sons of the man from the widow as bondmen. Worse still, the widow and her two sons had no sufficient food to eat at home. A situation where one is in debt and has no means of settling it is a state of poverty. A situation where one’s life is at the mercy of others is a state of poverty. A situation where one faces a challenge, and has no means of standing against the challenge is a state of poverty. A situation where one is hungry and has no means of getting food is a state of poverty.
Poverty is a force of destruction and it is an instrument of evil. Good things cannot stay where poverty prevails. Indeed, poverty attracts sickness, death, uncertainty, worry, fear and other agents of destruction into people’s lives. Poverty must die for you to live a fulfilling life.
shalom!
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Jesus is Lord
