Joseph Prince - A Message For The Famine Ahead
This is an excerpt from: Prosperity With A Purpose
Hello, church. Once again, it's my privilege to share with all of you what I believe God is saying to us during this time. And I'm sure that for the past weeks you've been hearing the word preached along these lines, but I believe that God has so much more for us, and He wants us to receive this word in season for all of us during this time. As you know, the whole world is right now in a global recession, and it's gonna get worse as time goes on. But remember that we are people who are in the world, but we are not of the world. We have a Father who cares for us, and if He cares for the sparrows and not a single one of them falls without His knowledge, how much more will He care for you? Amen.
So, we rest in our Father's love, and we learned from Him how to prosper, even during times of famine. If you look in the Scriptures, you will find that every time there's a famine, that's a time that God's person, whoever He asked for that hour, whether it's Abraham, whether it's Isaac, whether it's Joseph, they come into prominence. God's people will come into prominence during this time, whether it's in their workplace, whether it's in their companies or wherever, in their ministries, they will come forth during times of famine. It's not during prosperous times. When I say times of famine, or prosperity times, I'm talking about the times out there in the world, okay? But it's during times of famine out there in the world that God's people begin to shine because we demonstrate God's light, not in the midst of light, but in the midst of darkness.
We demonstrate God's ability and power to supply, to provide during times of famine, during times of lack. Something very interesting about famine, you find that God's people, always during famine, God gives them wisdom for that famine. In different cases, different famines, you find that God gives wisdom to Joseph to know how to operate during that time. He will recommend to Pharaoh to appoint a man with wisdom to handle the coming famine. And, of course, he didn't recommend himself, but in a way, indirectly, he did, because Pharaoh says, "How can we find anyone else that has that kind of wisdom like you have"? And he appointed Joseph to be his right hand man.
And that's when Joseph got promoted. But that's the wisdom that God gave Joseph during that time of famine. During the time of Abraham, God told Abraham to be honest and own up, and when he lied about his wife, all right, he came to a place where he had to come clean, and he own up, and the Bible says that the first thing he did was that when he came out of Egypt, he built an altar to the Lord. In other words, he prioritised his relationship with the Lord. God is saying, "Get back to where you lost. You went down to Egypt, now get back to the place where you first built the altar," and the Bible says he built the altar between Ai and Bethel, and that's where he came back to. Okay, so always remembering where you fell, from where you fell because of your unbelief or lack of faith. So, you see that with Abraham it was a coming back to where he was, where he fell from. In the case of, Isaac, the Bible says there was a famine in the days of Isaac like the first famine of the days of Abraham.
Now, many years have transpired. Isaac's now an adult. When Abraham went down to Egypt during that famine, there was no Isaac. But many years have come and gone, and now Isaac is facing a famine. But, again, there's wisdom, a specific wisdom that God gave to Isaac. And that wisdom was to sow, was to sow during the time of famine. If you look at the ground at that time, and the Bible says it's like the famine of Abraham. If you look at Abraham's famine, it says that the famine was severe. And severe famine looks like this. The ground looks like this. Now, imagine that kind of ground, and you are told, "Sow into that ground". Now, you know that you gotta do it by faith. You cannot do it by sight. By sight, everything is dry, arid. In the natural you would think that nothing would grow out of this, and that's the very challenge that is before God's people today.
When God tells them to sow into the gospel, it is not like an investment in something that they can see in the future, the returns on, they can see the dividends, they will have a share, and they will partake of the profits. But it is something, seemingly, like, in the natural, it's dry, and that's the very area where God says, "Sow into that area". You see, the Bible doesn't say that where your heart is, there will your money be, there will your treasure be. It's the opposite. The Bible says, "Where your money is, where your treasure is, there will your heart be". In other words, where will you put your seed, your money in, your heart will follow. If you sow into the gospel ground, your heart will be into the gospel, amen. That's how you, you change the direction of your heart.
People try to, you know, turn the whole thing around and say that, you know, no, people will always put their money where their heart is. No, it's the opposite. Their heart will follow where their money goes, and if you put your money into gospel ground, even if you don't have a vision about the importance of the gospel and how the gospel can transform lives, and but you start by faith looking at the gospel like it's dry, and you just sow into it, you will find that you will yield dividends, amen, like Isaac did. And exactly that's what happened to Isaac. The Bible says, "And Isaac sowed in that land," that land of famine, "in the same year," not another year, in the same year of famine, he reaped a hundredfold. So, the Bible says, "The man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous".
So, there's this thirtyfold, sixtyfold, hundredfold growth, even in prosperity. He began to prosper first, began, that's a beginning. All in the same year he continued prospering until he became very prosperous - thirtyfold, sixtyfold, hundredfold. And, of course, that caused the, Philistines to envy him. The Bible says, "He had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants". And the Bible says, "The Philistines envied him". So, don't think for one moment that the world will not criticize you or say things about you if you prosper God's way. They will even come against that teaching of prosperity as if, you know, the Bible doesn't have these teachings. It's okay for the New Age to teach it, it's okay for the world to promote it, and it's okay for their people to prosper, but not God's people, right? They have a saying, right, that "As poor as a church mouse". Why a church mouse? No, my friend, if you study the Bible, look at all these verses. "Isaac sowed in the land, he reaped in the same year a hundredfold. He began to prosper, continued prospering, became very prosperous".
Why do you think the Holy Spirit put all these verses there? For us to be discouraged from sowing, from giving, from believing God for a harvest? You know, there are people who say things like, "Well, you are giving to receive. You are sowing because you want a harvest". Yes, that's the very thing the Bible encourages to believe for, that's why these verses are there. God says that Isaac sowed in the year of famine, in that land that's dry and arid, and he reaped, and God told us about it. You know, if God doesn't want to encourage us, why did He tell us what happened to Isaac after he sowed? And God went into detail telling us that he began prospering, continued prospering, and became very prosperous. Why did Jesus say, "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will men give into your bosom".
Notice the expression, it's very specific. It's in detail, even the process. How is it going to come back to you? Why did Jesus say, if Jesus didn't want us to expect a return, He didn't expect us to believe for a harvest, why did He encourage us with the result of our giving? With the harvest of our giving? Amen, He could just have said, "Give in the name of the Lord. Give with a motive to bless others". He could have said that. No, He wants us to be encouraged, He wants us to believe that when we give, we will reap, amen. It'll be given back to us, "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, men will give to our bosom".