Derek Prince - If God Touches Your Heart, He Will Also Touch Your Bank Account
In this talk, I want to lay out five important principles of right giving, all of them based on Scripture. The first one is that what we as Christians do with our money is not a matter of law. It's not based on commandment. But, it is by grace through faith. It's very, very important to understand this. There's a lot of teaching in the church about money that's very legalistic. But we have passed out from the law and into a new dispensation of grace. And grace doesn't operate the way that law operates. Let's look at a few Scriptures that just outline this principle first. In John 1:17: For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
You see, there's a distinction there. Moses was the channel through whom law came, but grace and with it truth came to us through Jesus Christ. Israel had had the Law of Moses for something like 14 centuries when Jesus came. He did not come to bring another legal system. He came to bring something totally different which the Bible calls grace. There are certain principles about grace: grace is free, grace cannot be earned, grace operates only through faith. There's no other way to receive grace but through faith. In Ephesians 2:8, a very familiar passage to many of us. We'll turn to it and read it. Paul says: For by grace you have been saved through faith. Now, salvation is the all inclusive word in the Bible for all the benefits that come to us through Jesus Christ. It includes not merely the salvation of our souls, but includes the healing of our bodies. It includes God's material provision - it's the total all embracing word. But all of it comes on that principle: by grace through faith.
So when I go on speaking to you now about how to deal with your money, I am not giving you a series of commandments. I'm not bringing you back under a law, but I'm trusting the Holy Spirit to work through my words to impart grace to your hearts. That you may be able to obey, not because of commandments, but because your heart prompts you. It's very, very different. Commandments are something external in front of our eyes. Do this, don't do that. But grace operates in our hearts. And grace operates only through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the only one who can impart God's grace to our heart. It's all very well to have the commandments in front of us. We say, All right, I'll do this, I won't do that. But something in our hearts doesn't agree. So we end up by doing what we said we wouldn't do and not doing what we said we would do. Or am I the only one that every happened to? We cannot achieve righteousness through keeping laws. God offers us another way, which is grace that operates in our hearts through the Holy Spirit and is received only by faith.
And this applies very, very much to our dealings with money. It is all based on faith. We've already looked in 2 Corinthians 8, but I pointed out that 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 are two chapters that deal exclusively with the subject of money. That's the only subject in those two chapters. And there are 39 verses in the two chapters put together. But chapter 8, which is the longer chapter contains the word grace 7 times.
Grace is the key word of 2 Corinthians 8. If you go to your English Bible and read it, you'll come up with a different conclusion. You'll say, Brother Prince, you're wrong. The truth of the matter is, you know the Greek word for grace is charis and it occurs 7 times in the Greek. But in English it's once translated 'gift' and another time it's translated 'generosity'. So you wouldn't find it, but let me just say I tell you I checked it again before I came here this evening. Charis or grace occurs 7 times. It's the key word in the teaching of the New Testament about money.
So, don't sit there nervous and say, What's he going to tell me to do? Because I'm not going to tell you to do anything. If the Holy Spirit tells you to do something, that's different. I cannot impart God's grace to you, only the Holy Spirit can do that. You see, this is exactly what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3. Verse 3. Speaking to the Corinthian Christians, he says: You are manifestly an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh - that is, of the heart. So, the commandment was written on tablets of stone, was external, you looked at it with your eyes. But grace is written on the hearts of people by the Holy Spirit. And that's what motivates us. It's what in our heart that motivates us.
Solomon said many, many years earlier in Proverbs 4:23: Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Everything in your life proceeds out of what is in your heart. And when God's grace comes to your heart it will direct you to handle your money the way God wants it handled. Bearing in mind that it's the Holy Spirit who imparts God's grace, there's one important fact we need to remember about the Holy Spirit which David brings out in Psalm 51. This is his great psalm of penitence, which is so familiar to many of us. I'm reading from the New King James, which is very close to the Old King James but it changes some words. In verse 12 of Psalm 51 David says to the Lord: Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and uphold me with Your generous Spirit. The Old King James said, with your free spirit. But 'generous' rightly brings out the meaning. So, we need to know something very important that the Holy Spirit is a generous spirit. He's never stingy in anything. And when the Holy Spirit moves our hearts through the grace of God, we will never be stingy. It's a spirit of generosity.
If you're having a struggle in this matter of handling your money aright let me suggest to you that you stop trying to follow a set of rules. And let God's grace operate in your hearts. I remember vividly, I got saved in the British Army in July, 1941. I was at that time a local acting, unpaid lance corporal, which I tell people is as near to being a worm as you can be without being one! My pay was two shillings a day in the day when there were twenty shillings in one pound. And after I got saved Sunday morning, I was in the local Assembly of God Church, and they passed the offering. Nobody preached a sermon to me but I pulled out my wallet and I put in one pound, which was more than one and a half week's earnings. You could say that was impetuous or foolish, but I want to tell you I've never regretted it.
I have got that one pound back more times than I can ever calculate. But what I want to point out was it wasn't law, it was grace. I didn't even have time to think what I was going to do. Something moved me. And you've probably heard it said: if God touches your heart, He will also touch your pocketbook, your wallet, your bank account. There is a very close connection between them.