John K. Jenkins Sr - Financial Freedom Series: God's Keys to Prosperity

Hallelujah, Father! We honor You today; we love You and bless Your name, glorifying You for Your loving kindness and Your tender mercies. We come before You today to pause and intercede for our loved ones, our friends, neighbors, and co-workers who don’t know You. We are praying and placing their names on the altar for You, and we are interceding for those who do not have a relationship with You. We pray that You would draw them into Your kingdom, Almighty God. Cleanse them, wash them, and open their eyes to their need for You. We pray, Father, that You would redeem them, cleanse them, forgive them, and fill them with Your Spirit. Change their lives in the name of the Lord. Father, we pray that You bless our time in Your Word, challenge us, convict us, and convert us. We pray not only for the people in this building but also for those outside of this building, wherever they might be. Put a hedge of protection around them, so they might receive the Word and apply it to their lives in the name of the Lord. We thank You in advance for what You shall do and continue to do, in Jesus' name, amen and amen.

All right, you can be seated. This is part eight of the series on Financial Freedom. Today, I want to talk to you about something very important. I am titling this message «God’s Keys to Prosperity .» Somebody say, «God’s Keys to Prosperity.» How many of you could use some prosperity in your life? One, two… Okay, all right, you all are a little slow. I didn’t know if you would. Yes, I want to. In order for you to have prosperity, there are some things that need to be in place in your life, and that’s what I want to spend some time talking about today. I’m going to discuss something I haven’t talked about in five years. I should have been talking about this message every year, but I missed the last five years, so I’m coming back to it. Some of you have heard me talk about this before, but I want to address it again. I want to challenge you to evaluate your own life as it pertains to the application of what I’m going to discuss today. I’m going to talk about tithing. Yeah, I knew you would be excited about that. I knew you would just jump up and down with excitement. But it’s important; it’s critical. It’s very important.

When I first became the pastor of this church, our church was a fundraising church. We provided for the resources of the church through fundraising. We sold caterpillars; we did fundraisers; they sponsored barbecues. They had Men 's Day and Women 's Day to raise money. They took trips to Atlantic City. Y’all know what they were doing, right? They were leaving on Saturday morning, parking in the church parking lot for the weekend, and coming back Sunday night. Oh, they missed church! Oh, y’all know someone got upset with that; that would be me! Yeah, they would park in the church parking lot with their cars all weekend, and on Sunday, people couldn’t park in the lot because the Atlantic City folks had taken it over. Y 'all don’t see a problem with that? Oh, Lord, rebuke this gambling congregation!

Anyway, we ended all of that, and I taught the church about tithes and offerings. Thanks be to God, we are where we are today because we are a tithing and offering church. As a kid, we used to have a patrons ' list. Y’all know what a patrons' list is? You go around asking people for money as donations. Even the kids-I, as a kid in this church, participated in the patrons' list. They had a king and queen contest, so whichever boy raised the most money became the king, and whoever raised the most money as a girl became the queen. I was the king; Gracie Claxton, who is still a member of this church 50 years later, was the queen. I don’t know if she’s here today or not, but she was the queen, and she’s still a member of our church. We were a fundraising church, but we changed all of that. Deacon Trustee John Terry, who was a trustee at the time, since our church had not been a tithing and offering church, once I taught it-and he applied it to his life-he told me, «Pastor, you know I work for the Department of Transportation. I’m at the top of my job; I can 't receive any more raises. I’ve been here for, I don’t know, 20 or 30 years, and I cannot get any more raises .» The Sunday he started tithing, after his first tithe check, he went to work the next day, and his boss called him and said, «You know you’ve been here a long time. Even though you’re not qualified for a raise, we’re going to reclassify your job, and you are going to get a raise the day after today.»