Breaking The Curse Of poverty

On The Path Of Winners

BY BAYO OGUNMUPE

Breaking The Curse Of poverty

LIKE we have discussed earlier in this column, poverty is a spirit and a curse, we cannot avoid addressing this spiritual dimension to poverty. Events occur in the spirit realm before they happen in the physical. The spirit realm controls the physical realm.

  Most happenings in the physical are being manipulated from the spirit world, which is why poverty is the result of curses emanating from the spirit world. God cursed disobedience in Deuteronomy Chapter 28 from verses 15 to 20.

  ‘‘Why will a man disobey God and invite all those curses into his life?’’ You may ask. The answer is that the spirit of poverty manipulates a person’s life by making him walk contrary to God’s commandments, such that the curse of poverty can be enforced on him.

  The disobedience of Adam to the laws of God brought the curse of poverty, as the consequence of sin. Lack, hardship and poverty never existed in the Garden of Eden until Adam disobeyed Jehovah. It took the sacrificial seed of Noah: Genesis 8: 20-22 to break the curse upon the ground. Noah’s seed broke the curse and established the eternal curse-breaking principle called the principle of sowing and reaping. Disobedience to this law has kept the curse alive.

  It is the spirit of poverty or the curse that makes you to be stingy towards God and your fellowman. It is the curse that makes you disobey God’s economic principles. It is the curse that makes you unfaithful to God. It is the same reason that your pride and arrogance have alienated helpers from you. It is the spirit of poverty that keeps you lazy. It is the curse that keeps you away from the information that can change your story. So it makes you satisfied with ignorance. Which is why poverty is a curse that must be broken.

  ‘‘But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the scriptures, ‘‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’’ Through the work of Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham; and we believers receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith. The law and God’s promises’’ – Gal. 3: 13-14.

  Jesus paid the price for our redemption and as covenant children of God, the curse of poverty is rendered powerless over us except we invite and permit it in our lives – through ignorance, unfaithfulness, laziness, pride, sin, disobedience and bad habits, attitudes and lifestyles. ‘‘Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not alight,’’ Pro 26:2. No curse can prevail without a cause, so refrain from curse – inviting habits.

  Before we examine the last cause of poverty, I wish to emphasize the need for you to re-consider the following truths: if you wish to succeed in life, you must fight ignorance, with passion; resist laziness, avoid unfaithfulness like a plague; avoid pride, then there will be no room for curses in your life. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Priests who are to teach us the investment mindset are ignorant of it. Those who know it want to keep it away from the people so as to keep them in religious bondage. ‘‘The labour of the foolish wearieth everyone of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city;’’ Ecc. 10:15. People labour in vain because they don't know how to develop investment mentality, and apply investment principles to get the best out of their labour.

  If you desire to become rich, you must make a conscious effort to develop the mindset required to make it happen. There are five toxic mentalities, which hinder your growth in life. You must eradicate them. The first toxic mindset is the nomadic mentality. This mentality is a kind of vagabond spirit that controls people. Like nomads, it keeps you roaming the country without any fixed location or vocation. You go from job to job; place to place, business to business without focus and consistency. You lack the staying power and concentration to hone a niche for yourself in one place. It was not until Abraham settled in one place that he became the father of faith.

  Even though Jehovah promised him (Abraham) Canaan, he still had to buy into it by labouring to activate the promise before possessing Canaan. Abraham paid for land, a land that Yahweh promised him – Genesis 23: 1-20. The second hindering mindset is the consumer mentality. To always consume without producing is the hallmark of those harbouring the consumer mindset. ‘‘There is desirable treasure and oil in the dweling of the wise. But a foolish man squanders it,’’ Pro 21:20. Many live a prodigal lifestyle of wasteful spending and end up in shame, poverty and hardship.

  Our champion this week is Angela Merkel, the German stateswoman and chancellor since 2005. Born Angela Dorothea Kasner, better known as Angela Merkel, she was born in Hamburg, West Germany in July 1954. Trained as a physicist, Merkel became Germany’s first female chancellor and a leading figure of the European Union, following the 2005 national elections.

  The daughter of a Lutheran pastor and teacher, Angela grew up in a rural neighbourhood of Berlin in the then German Democratic Republic. She studied physics in the University of Leipzig, earning her doctorate in 1978. Then she worked as a chemist with the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry between 1978 and 1990.

  In 1990 she joined the CDU and soon after was appointed to Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s cabinet as minister for women and youth. Following Kohl’s defeat in 1998, she was named secretary general of the CDU. She was elected party leader in 2000, but lost the CDU candidacy for chancellor in 2002 to Edmund Stoiber. In the 2005 election, she narrowly defeated Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, winning by just three seats and after agreeing to a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), she was declared Germany’s first female chancellor.

  Merkel is also the first former citizen of the German Democratic Republic to lead the reunited Germany. She made headlines in October 2013 when she accused the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) of tapping her cell phone. Merkel chided the U.S. saying, ‘‘spying among friends is never acceptable.’’ Later reports revealed that the NSA may have been snooping on Merkel since 2002.