Leon Fontaine - More Than Enough
2.000 years ago, Christians were hung on crosses, fed to lions, babies, children, moms, dads, everybody. But then something remarkable happened. The head of the Roman Empire decided from influence from his mother and others who had given their life to Christ, to make Christianity the religion for the Romans. And so, church or not church but, so the government became the church and they made a couple of rules that have really lasted a long time because he became the leader of the church even though he was the Roman Emperor. And he would have this people back then called priest and you have to confess your sins to them. And that was his way of controlling the population, knowing what you are up to, and that was how they controlled them.
Then he started another teaching which was vows of poverty. That where the wealth of the country wouldn't go to people but they felt good about giving it to the church which back then was the government. Anyway, it gets complex. But it's why today, we have so many Christians who think that you can't have money and be a Christian. And so, that's why I'm teaching on this topic. Because if you start to prosper as a Christian, people who don't like Christians will knock you for your money and so are the Christians. And so, you kind of nailed coming in here, nailed going out. If you start to prosper, and you know, it's interesting is though Jesus teaches that in the Gospels in Mark 10:29-31. You should read this verse.
Jesus, the disciples are talking to Jesus about how much they gave up to follow Him and Jesus says this. He says, none of you who've left houses, lands, businesses, wives, kids, etcetera, for me and the Gospel's sake. He said will receive a hundred-fold return in this lifetime. Which freaks out all the people who think prosperity is only in heaven. Streets of gold in heaven, down here potholes and just pizza three times a day. If you can afford it. But that's not what's in God's will but that's what religion brought in. So success is an evil word to most religious people. So when you get married, sorry you can't have a successful marriage. It's just not what Christians wanna believe. Oh, go to school for seven years, get your degree but don't expect to succeed at your career. That's a sin to succeed. Like, it's just stupid. Like, hello. Where in the world do these doctrines come from? But we pass them on to our kids. Churches or religion teaches them and then people struggled with finances.
So today, I wanna set you free. Now, some may not like it but I think most of you will. I wanna show you Jesus way to succeed in life, succeed in health, marriage, family, home, generations, prosperity, money, career, everything. Jesus says, I came to give you life, and life more abundantly. And it doesn't have any brackets except for. There are no asterisks. There's no except here. So, let me dive into this. The Bible's very clear that success comes from God. When you go back into the Old Testament, every person that followed God was hugely successful in finances. If you weren't successful in finances in the Old Testament, they thought they knew there was something wrong with you. There'll be something wrong with you because prosperity should flow at you. The Old Testament was all about the Jewish nation. Okay? They have no problem believing in prosperity. No problem. But then Jesus dies on the cross and now, God is opened to the masses, Gentiles, every nation in the world. And in through this 2.000 years vows of poverty began to come into the church.
Now, every major denomination today on the planet is impacted by some form of these vows of poverty and people feel like, to be poverty-minded is mean you're more, you are more godly. That if you're poor, you're closer to God. I don't know why 'cause God's in heaven wants streets of gold, gates made of pearls, and all the foundation was made of beautiful stones and there is no lack or need in heaven. But if you're on earth, if you're poor. Have you read that old hymn? "I've got a mansion just over the hilltops. But down here I sure got a cabin". Religion is just stupid. That's why I hate religion. Religion is a man-made bunch of rules. And Jesus came to give you a life, to know you, to spend time with you, to let you know God the Father and He designed this world to be beautiful. If you want to know what God's will on the earth is, look at Jesus prayer. He taught us to pray and this one line is, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven". I don't ask Him for anything more than what I need. I looked at him and say, "Woo, you're the most selfish person I've ever met".
Did you know the disciples were upset when they found out that He didn't come to set up a kingdom, that was an earthly kingdom with boundaries but His kingdom is within us. And so, there is, the kingdom of God is within you when you give your life to Christ, and you are to walk in a completely new way as compared to the others around you. You are what we, the Bible calls blessed. The word "blessed" means "happy, fortunate, and to be envied". God literally through His goodness wants to show the world, give your life to me. But now, religion says the opposite. If you go to some churches or you watch evangelist on TV, its centers on the hands of an angry God. The earthquake hit because God is judging that nation. God's judging America and that's what this is and that's what that is. And oh, they're just experts I just, whenever kind of going. The Bible doesn't even say that actually. The Bible says it's the goodness of God that causes a man to give his life to Christ and repent. It's His goodness. Where is His goodness? Well, it's not on his life because he hasn't chosen God yet. But he's to see God's goodness on our lives, your lives which means the peace, the joy.
You know, the marriages, the home, the family. The things that you and I enjoy. The Bible says the presence of God grows on us and the world should be able to see His blessing, His favor. Now, in the Old Testament, any place where you didn't have favor, they would automatically suspect because they knew that favor on your life meant that you can do a little bit of work and have a phenomenal return. God didn't design you to barely get by and this is hard for some people to handle. Now, Jesus actually taught us that in this lifetime, going back to the verse I've told you in Mark, He says if you give up lands, if you give up time with your family, time with your kids. You actually give things that you could use. You give up lands, businesses. Anything that you give up time from or give to God. Jesus, Himself said, you will receive a hundred-fold return in this lifetime. It shocks people. Because you really in this life, not in heaven? No, in this lifetime.
It is impossible to out give God. It is impossible to focus on God and begin to tithe and give to His church, to care about His things. There is no way you can out give God. He is literally, just fervently making sure. He is looking for people. The Bible says, God's eyes roam to and pro just looking for somebody He can get all over His favor, His blessing on your life. So, I had a friend that worked for me for years and years and years, an older gentleman. And he heard me, we're talking one day about this and I'm sharing what I see in the Bible when I was younger. And he looked at me a little bit of passion. You know, when people are passionate, it doesn't mean they're right. They're just passionately wrong. He looks at me and he goes, "I would never ask God for anything more than what I need". I say, "Excuse me"? "I don't ask Him for anything more than what I need". I looked at him and say, "Woo, you're the most selfish person I've ever meet". His jaw hit his chest, 'cause he thought he was being the most humble man. He was being the most lowly man. I don't believe for anything but what I need.
I said, "The Bible says that you are to give to the poor, give to the hungry, give to the clothe, give to the needy. You are to give to churches. You are to give to all the causes that are out there. Every need that's around you should inspire you to give. Giving should be some, how do you give if all you've got is your needs. How do you give if all you've got is enough for that bill, this bill, that bill, food, no money left. "Oh, yeah. Could you give something"? No. So when church teach poverty, okay? How do you think of an offering after that? It doesn't make sense. You gotta have a big sale to pay the hydro bill. So, in our church people walked in and asked me. Is this a prosperity, healing church? And I like to tease them and I just gonna, "Oh, no. We teach poverty and sickness here". Because it's just a dumb concept. You and I, the Bible says should ride upon the high places of the earth. We should be the head and not the tail. God's designed for the planet was that His people who loved Him, who put His kingdom first, should be the wealthiest, the riches, and the most in control.
It's a new thought for some people. We're just lowly Christians just give us little dinky building and little bit of money and we're barely get by and we're gonna tell them, "Come and live like us". No. Because they think that to serve God means that you'd gotta stay poor, sick, unhappy, depressed. Ah, you know, shop at Sally Hansen. Where we get these concepts from? Okay, look at the Old Testament. Everyone that followed God was not just a little bit. It was, they were phenomenally blessed. Abraham, Solomon, David. I mean, when you look at how much David gave to God's house. It was in the billions all the time. So we need to get, until you get new epiphany in your head that you my friend are called to walk in the blessing. And it doesn't mean that you have to earn it because you don't own the money that you have or the career that you have or the skill that you have. The Bible says you're a manager. And when you begin to recognize you manage your career and your wealth that it's God's business. Then as you work at it, you're gonna find that it releases the stress as you go, "Okay. Well, this is the business that I started but really God gave me the desire, the wisdom, the timing, and the people. This is God's business".
Now, I wanna read you a story that Jesus taught and it's got the craziest principles in it. In fact, I couldn't even understand it when I first read it. So let's go through it and I think you'll gonna have fun seeing a principle here that will blow your mind. Jesus says to the disciples, "There was a certain rich man who had a manager of his estate, and accusations came against this man and he was squandering his master's possessions". Okay, he's the manager, not the owner and he's using the money that is the owner's and his squandering it. Squandering it means using it in places that have no benefit. All right, it's not for the future. "And he called to him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management of my affairs, for you can be my manager no more.' And the manager of the estate said to himself, 'What am I gonna do, seeing that my master is taking the management away from me? He says, 'I am not able to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.' I have come to know what I will do, so that my master's debtors may accept and welcome me into their houses when I am put out of the management.'"
So here's his reasoning. He's been stealing his master's money, blown it on himself and he's a manager, not an owner. And now, he's told he's fired. So get the affairs in order. You're fired. So he says to himself, "How, what I'm gonna do when he fires me? Oh, I know. All the people he does business with, if they like me, they'll look after me". So here's what he did. So he summoned his master's debtors one by one. It means there was a lot of them. And he said to the first one, "How much do you owe my master"? He said, "A hundred measures about 900 gallons of oil". That's a lot of oil. And he said, "Take back your written acknowledgement of obligation, and sit down quickly and write about fifty". So he cuts this guy's debt down to one or to a half. And he said to another one of his master debtors, "How much do you owe"? He said, "About a hundred measures of wheat". That's 900 bushels. He said to him, "Take back your written acknowledgement of obligation, and write down eighty". Now, listen to this. "And his master praised the dishonest unjust manager for acting shrewdly and prudently, for the sons of this age are shrewder and more prudent and wiser in relation to their own generation, to their own age and, than are the sons of light".
Now, okay. Let me get this right. First of all, the guy's ripping the owner's off. Then he says you're fired, put the accounts in to order. And when he goes and put the accounts in order, he founds everybody up and he half's their bill. He drops off a quarter of the debt. He's given his master's money away even more and why? Not because he's trying to help the master, not because he likes all the guys who owe him. Because he wants to be in their good books because when he gets fired, he can go, "Hey, I looked after you. Could you give me a job? Could you look after me here"? He's just looking after himself. And the master says, "Wow, you're dealing shrewdly and wisely".
I read this and read this and read this thing. What in the world is the lesson? And then it hit me. The man was blowing his master's money on things that weren't building the future. It was just temporary pleasures. But as soon as he was about to lose his job, he began to think about his future. And he now used the master's money to look after his future and in the way he was doing it, there would now be a future for him of all of this people. And he says, this is the problem with Christians. They don't do this. So, one of the things I want you to understand is that the money and the finances that you are making in your career that God gave it to you to enjoy and to be blessed. But if you waste what you should be investing for your future. You'll have no future. And the other thing this teaches us, you don't own your home, you don't own your money, you don't own your career.
You are managers. And then, "Oh, come on. What are you talking about? I owned it". No, just a minute. You don't wanna own it. Okay. The owner. How many of you here owned your own business know that for someone who works for you, they get to clock in and then clock out. But if you own it, you gotta find the money to pay their salary. You gotta find the job that are needed for the team for next little while. It's a whole lot more stress when you begin to understand that everything that is ahead of you, God is the owner. And by the way, God's not cheap. God will bless you. You begin to manage money like a manager.
In the garden of Eden in Genesis, Adam was a manager. God said, I want you, I'm giving you the garden. I want you to manage this and I want you to spread it all over the planet. Adam was a manager. All the Hebrew words don't mean owner. They mean manager. It goes on in this verse to say, "He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much, and he who is dishonest and unjust in a very little thing is dishonest and unjust also in much". Now listen to this one, "Therefore, if you have not been faithful in the case of unrighteous mammon, which is money, deceitful riches, who will entrust you to the true riches? And if you have not proved faithful in that which belongs to another whether God or man, who will give you that which is your own that is, the true riches? For no servant is able to serve two masters. He'll either hate the one and love the other, stand by and be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money".
All right, let's talk about this. He is saying here that in your faith life as a Christian. The Bible says in 1 John 5:4 that this is what overcomes everything in the world, your faith. So faith overcomes sickness, danger. If you want protection. It takes believing God. And then it says but the test really is, is a money test because money is a smallest of thing. We always, you know that money is the number one reason why marriages break up today. It's the number one reason for stress in people's lives today. Yet, we live in the most prosperous times that Canada has ever seen and we live in the most prosperous areas on the planet. Do you know that if you're here we've got people right from millionaires to people holding on the streets.
If you're here and you live on streets, by the way. You are on the top 5% of the wealthiest people on the planet. You have all free health care. You got free food, free clothes. They'll look after you. They'll put you on a mission somewhere for sleep. You can find food. You can find clothes. If you get sick or hit by car, you get free hospital. Like, its, where you gonna find that in the rest of this planet? They can't even find food, let alone a surgeon to look after them. They're trying to fly their kids and they're all trying to come to the first world, come over the other countries because it's so good here. Someone living on the streets is on the top 5%. So prosperity wise, if you were born in Canada or you move to Canada. Then you won the lottery just being here. But now he is saying, treat what you have as God's and learn to give. Prosperity is an attitude of heart. It's pursuing Jesus and seeking first His kingdom. It's putting Him before money. Putting your marriage before money. Putting your kids before money. And then, money becomes a tool.