Financial Freedom

FINANCIAL FREEDOM

OTHER BOOKS BY AYOMIDE ABRAHAM

The Covenant Child

The Covenant Calendar

The Covenant Chemistry

The Covenant Conquest

Man of Honour

Turnaround Prayers

Covenant Capsules

Access to Covenant Wealth

The Sure Refuge

40 Days Breakthrough Prayers with Fasting

Success At Last

Kingdom Dominion

Start Empty, Finish Full

Think Right, Live Right!

The Altar of Fire

FINANCIAL FREEDOM

Rev. Ayomide Abraham

Copyright © 2009, 2013 by Rev. Ayomide Abraham.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used without the written permission of the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts in magazine articles, reviews, etc.

For prayer and counseling, please contact:

Rev. Ayomide Abraham, ayomideabraham@yahoo.com

+234 802 312 1583, +234 703 351 9772, +234 802 341 5875

www.ayomideabraham.com

Printed in the United States of America.

Published Date 01/15/2013

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013900610

ISBN 13:

Softcover 978-1-61856-181-7

Pdf 978-1-61856-182-4

ePub 978-1-61856-183-1

Kindle 978-1-61856-184-8

BookWhirl.com Publishing

PO Box 9031, Green Bay

WI 54308-9031, USA

www.BookWhirl.com

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

APPRECIATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: THE COVENANT ROOT OF MONEY

CHAPTER TWO: TITHING

CHAPTER THREE: THE MISSION OF MONEY

CHAPTER FOUR: GOD CONTROLS WEALTH

CHAPTER SIX: COVENANT GATEWAY OF WORK

CHAPTER SEVEN: COVENANT GATEWAY OF LOVE

CHAPTER EIGHT: COVENANT GATEWAY OF LIBERALITY

CHAPTER NINE: THE GATEWAY OF PRAISE

CHAPTER TEN: POSITIVE FINANCIAL ATTITUDES

CHAPTER ELEVEN: PRAYER POINTS

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the great men of God that I have drawn valuable spiritual blessings from over the years  and whose thoughts I reflect in this book. 

APPRECIATION

I must appreciate the Almighty God for His endless inspiration. He is the author of every book that comes from the Bible, His inerrant word.

I wish to thank Sis. Ugochi Nnaji for such a heavy work she did in editing the book. God will surely reward her abundantly in Jesus name. The original manuscript was produced by Adewale Akiniyi. God will lift him up in Jesus name.

All my family members including my precious wife, the Rev. (Mrs.) Tolulope Abraham and our children, Oluwaseyi, Oluwaseun and Oluwanisola contributed to the production of this book. They all worked tirelessly to ensure the reality of the project. I also appreciate Pastor & Pastor (Mrs.) A. G. Adewale and Prof. I. F. Adu for their invaluable contributions.

Thanks to my great family friends, Deacon Yomi and Deaconess Lizzy Akande, Pastor & Pastor (Mrs.) Femi Okuniyi. Their encouragement and support are invaluable.

Many thanks to my wonderful friends such as Pastor & Pastor (Mrs.) Rotimi Andu, Dr. Femi and Deaconess Yinka Ogbonmide, Bro. & Sis. Lanre Fashakin; Bro. Abiodun Orekoya, Bro. Seyi Adebayo, Bro. Ade Aladeyelu and Bro. Sam Salau. They are great investors in the kingdom.

I cannot express enough appreciation to Rev. & Pastor (Mrs.) Dave Onyibia and all the brethren of Foursquare Gospel Church Egbeda (the Overtakers) and our great people of Foursquare Gospel Church, Sango-Ota District. The Lord will reward you all in Jesus name.

My profound appreciation also goes to our General Overseer Rev. Dr. Wilson and Rev. (Mrs.) Yinka Badejo for their constant support.

May the Lord bless you all.

INTRODUCTION

In my book titled Altar of Fire, which is an exposition on the Lord’s Prayer according to Mathew 6:9-13, I took time in chapter 6 to give attention to the issue of supernatural prosperity. A few laws of financial abundance were shared. This book will go further to examine the biblical root of financial sufficiency. It will dwell extensively on attitudes that command financial freedom. It will help the reader to turn away from looking unto man in his quest to secure financial comfort. It will instigate a return to God who is the SOURCE and SUSTAINER of human existence. The book will provoke a shift of your perception on wealth transfer and how same can become a reality in your life. The book will also launch you into the plane of faith which is the strongest factor in divine connectivity. Faith connects the mortal to the Immortal and helps the ardent seeker of God to take God by His word.

God has never resisted the faith of His people. He always responds to it. Faith is essential because what you don’t believe, you don’t become. I assure you dear reader, if you will open every page with an open mind, read the content without bias, receive the ideas without prejudice and proceed to practice the truth you encounter therein without considering your past, you will lay hold on a brilliant financial future and break the yoke of poverty on your life. It will positively impact your life such that generations unborn will thank God for your life. Let this book spark a revolution in your mind as you uncover the treasures embedded in the greatest book God has passed on to man i.e. the Bible.

I advise that you pray according to the prayer points in the last chapter after you have finished reading each chapter. It is your turn to board the flight of financial fortune. I cannot wait to hear your testimony.

CHAPTER ONE

THE COVENANT ROOT OF MONEY

But he said ‘Peace be with you, do not be afraid. Your God and the God of your father has given you treasure in your sacks… Genesis

43:23.

Whenever you find the expression the God of your father in the bible, God is linking you with a covenant root. That root is the covenant which God entered into with Abraham, which God Himself proclaimed to be an everlasting covenant that will speak from generation to generation. In Genesis 17:7 God told Abraham, as soon as he changed his name from Abram to Abraham (i.e. from Exalted Father to Father of a Multitude):

And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you.

God does nothing in vain, and He speaks no word without a purpose. God gave the promise of inheritance of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants, when Abraham was only a ‘Father’ at that time. That was in Genesis 13:12-15.

Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom. But the men of Sodom were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the LORD. And the LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him: Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are-northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever."

Bible scholars have found out that when a name changes, it usually corresponds to either a character change or a major call from God. God can alter a man’s nature to empower him to fulfill destiny. The change of name in Genesis 17:5 was a reinforcement of God’s expressed intention to make Abraham a blessing (Genesis 12:2). The blessings of Abraham are supernaturally contagious to every covenant child. For good measure, every born again believer is a covenant child. Acts 3:25 says:

You are sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

When you are born again, you are born of the Sprit and of heaven. Regeneration or salvation gives you a spiritual root in Christ who is the seed of Abraham. Galatians 3:15-16 explain that the seed refers to Jesus Christ.

Brethren, I speak in the manner of men: Though it is only a man’s covenant, yet if it is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it. Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, And to your Seed, which is Christ.

Every believer has a measure of faith because, by faith, we are saved. Once you are saved, you become an heir to the promise of blessing which the Lord made to Abraham. Galatians 3:9 emphasizes this:

So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

Jesus Christ died so that He would redeem us from the curse of the law which made us an enemy of God and disentitles us from partaking in the blessings of Abraham. Galatians 3:13-14 clearly explain this.

God confirmed His blessings to Abraham when Abraham offered the blood of Isaac on the altar of sacrifice, figuratively, because every covenant is facilitated by sacrifice and every sacrifice leaves the ‘blood’ of the animal on the altar to make the covenant effectual. In Psalm 50:5 God said:

Gather My saints together to Me, those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.

When the Lord ‘saw’ the blood of Isaac, He sealed the covenant of blessing with Abraham and swore from heaven, according to Genesis 22:15-17:

Then the Angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time out of heaven and said: By myself I have Sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, in blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the Stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the sea shore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies."

That was how the old covenant of blessing was cut. The new covenant was cut upon the shedding of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 9:12 says:

Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

Both the old testament and the new are founded on the blood. Hebrew 9:18 affirms:

Therefore not even the first covenant was dedicated without blood.

Stepping into the covenant

We step into the covenant by sacrifice. The blood of Jesus facilitated the covenant, but it can only become efficacious by the sacrifice of ourselves in the order of Psalm 50:5. How is this effected? Every believer must be crucified with Christ just as Paul was. He declared in Galatians 2:20:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Paul also beckoned on us to lay down our lives on the altar of sacrifice. In Romans 12:1 he pleaded with us:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

When your sins are forgiven, the blood of Jesus obtains the pardon. However, God requires a commitment to the covenant from His redeemed people. The life of the redeemed of God must be crucified and left on the altar of sacrifice. When the believer lays down his life for God, it is no longer his own and he cannot use it as he pleases any more. The life (blood) of the saved is abandoned unto God just as any animal offered for a sacrifice never returns with the person who made the sacrifice. It is this offering or surrendering ourselves that facilitates brokenness which is a strong factor in the foundation of Christian growth and empowerment both in the spiritual and financial realms. Inability to live a surrendered life makes the Christian journey burdensome. An unbroken Christian struggles virtually with everything. He struggles to forgive those who offend him, he struggles to bring the tithe (ten percent of his income which is God’s) to the Lord. He is at pain to give his offerings to God. He cannot expend the grace of giving and sowing seeds in order to provoke a harvest. An unbroken Christian is selfish and narrow-minded. He has only a human, rather than God’s perspective of life. He does not see far with the eyes of the spirit. He cannot discern spiritual things because he is carnal. Carnality does not imply that he is not born again. It simply connotes that he is ruled by the flesh. He goes to Church, but the Church does not go through him because he struggles to run his life by the word of God. You cannot run your life with the word which you have not received. The word of God captures the limitations of the carnal, natural and unspiritual fellow. Thus, in 1Corinthians 2:14, we read:

But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,

At the root of carnality is un-brokenness. An un-yielded life does not allow God to have total control. Therefore, the unbroken Christian is limited. God will only go as far as you allow Him to, in your life. As early as Genesis 6:3 God made this clear to man. He said:

My Spirit shall not strive with man forever….

The journey into the covenant of blessings begins with a surrendered life on the altar of sacrifice. Tapping into the heavenly financial treasures does not begin with giving money in any form, it begins with giving of oneself as a living sacrifice unto God. A perpetual sacrifice is the force behind the perpetual covenant. Jeremiah 50:5 confirms this:

They shall ask the way to Zion, With their faces toward it, saying, ‘Come and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual covenant that will not be forgotten’.

If you have been planting seeds in vain, check to see whether they are planted in the soil of a surrendered life. If your Christian life is stunted, find out whether or not it was laid down as a sacrifice in the first place. Every seed that will grow must first die in the soil, otherwise, it will not grow. John 12:24 says:

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.

Money in your sack

The pronouncement which Joseph’s servant made in Genesis 43:23 was a revelation. A revelation is a declaration inspired by the Holy Spirit. It lays bare the mind of God on a particular issue. They proceed from human vessels at the influence of the Spirit of God. Wait a minute. Joseph had commanded the steward of his house to fill his brothers’ sack with food, as much as they could carry, and put each man’s money in the mouth of his sack (Genesis 42:25). It was enough for Joseph to say so, without adding more. In Genesis 43:23, however, Joseph’s servant was prompted to say this:

…Your God, and the God of your father has given you treasure in your sacks,…

There is a spiritual link between you and the wealth that God permits to come into your hands after you have entered into the covenant and become a giver and a sower, you enter into the realm of supernatural wealth. Such wealth always demands supernatural explanation. The wealth of Abraham demanded a supernatural explanation in its dimensions. Abraham did not live in a mansion. He lived in a sprawling estate. His company of servants lived with him. He had generations of servants. When Abraham went to fight against the raiders that plundered Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 14, he went with his 318 trained servants who were born in his own house. It may be an excusable exaggeration to say that Abraham presided over a mini estate, with government permission to have a trained army, to protect his investments. Only God knows the number of people who fed daily and received succour from Abraham. Supernatural wealth made Abraham a man of influence and affluence. He would not touch the spoil of war which he brought back from the military campaign he launched to rescue Lot and the other captives because he enjoyed divine sufficiency. Abraham opened up in Genesis 14:23 on the secret of his unprecedented wealth. He said:

I will take nothing, from thread to a sandal strap, and that I will not take anything that is yours, lest you should say ‘I have made Abram rich’…

At the height of Abraham’s enlargement and unexplainable riches the people of Hebron expressed their belief that it was God who prospered Abraham when they told him:

You are a mighty prince among us… Genesis 23:6

Abraham was a prince, but to which King? The Most High. Now, when you become a prince to the Most High you have access to His ‘sea-never-dry’ flow of blessings. You can sustain that flow by covenant practices and the requisite financial attitudes that we shall consider in subsequent chapters. God Himself confirmed that He was behind the financial breakthrough of Abraham. In Isaiah 51:2 God said:

Look to Abraham your father, And to Sarah who bore you; for I called him alone, and blessed him and increased him.

Abraham prospered because he answered God’s call. Many people want to get Abraham’s kind of blessing without answering the call of God as Abraham did. Abraham responded to God at a great price. He bade goodbye to his folks and journeyed into the unknown by faith. He suffered for a while until he let go of Lot, whose presence with him was not in fulfilment of God’s will, because God called him alone, not with any other person in his family. There are many believers who allow members of their family to run their lives. I have met Christians who go back to their unbelieving family members to seek their permission to do the clear will of God. They are encumbered with family traditions and they fear the gods of their fathers’ houses more than they fear the Almighty God. When they have a misunderstanding with their wives, they drag themselves before ungodly unbelievers who are bereft of scriptural understanding and do not know what marriage is all about. The ungodly counsel they receive from the ungodly people destroy the fabric of their marriage and the consequences can be traumatic.

God has placed a responsibility on every believer to run his affairs with discretion. (Psalm 112:5).

A good man deals graciously and lends; He will guide his affairs with discretion.

Isaac

It was the God of his father (Abraham) that blessed and put treasure in his sack, just as He did with Abraham. Every man has a ‘sack’. The issue is how each one desires to fill his own sack. There are people who want to fill their sacks with ill-gotten wealth. The bible warns that such wealth will diminish (Proverbs 13:11). There are others who seek to fill their own sacks with ‘blood’ money. Those are the oppressors who make their money through the sweat and skill of other people to whom they are reluctant to pay just wages. Such wealth does not bring its possessor peace of mind. James 5:4 says:

Indeed the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.

When Isaac wanted to go down to Egypt from Gerar, God told him not to do so. He wanted to prove to Isaac that it is the good hand of the Lord upon a man that makes his way to prosper and He did. A man who neglects God neglects favour and subjects himself to limitations and the harassment of devourers. You can only keep the devourers away by staying in the covenant. The psalmist discovered this truth and he cried to the Lord to have regard to the covenant, in Psalm 74:20.

Have respect to the covenant; For the dark places of the earth are full of the haunts of cruelty.

As Isaac obeyed God, he enjoyed supernatural wealth. Just as the people of Hebron hailed his father as a mighty prince, the Philistines bowed to Isaac when it became clear to them that Isaac’s wealth defied human explanation. In Genesis 26:28-29, They Philistines ascribed Isaac’s swelling fortune to the unseen hands of the Almighty:

But they said, We have certainly seen that the LORD is with you. So we said, ‘Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us; and let us make a covenant with you that you will do us no harm, since we have not touched you, and since we have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the LORD."

Jacob

We have piled all manners of accusations on Jacob but we seem to forget the impact of God’s covenant with Abraham upon his life. When Jacob returned to the Lord, having got ten to his wits’ end, God dealt with him on the basis of the generational covenant He entered into with Abraham. God established a direct, primary linkage, as opposed to a secondary linkage, with Jacob, under the Abrahamic covenant. How? God introduced Himself to Jacob in Genesis 28:13 thus:

I am the LORD God of Abraham your Father and the God of Isaac.

God did not say ‘I am the LORD God of Abraham your grandfather and the God of Isaac your father’. Why? It is simple because there is a single fatherhood in the covenant. Every born again child of God has Abraham as his father. Each of us is directly connected to Abraham for the blessings of the covenant, for, according to Galatians 3:9:

So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

The covenant creates a platform for the good hand of the Lord to reach out to the believer. That is why the believer enjoys favour as an integral part of the covenant of blessing. Favour is the good hand of the Lord upon a man that causes him to enjoy or have something to which he is not otherwise entitled. Ezra was a man who enjoyed