THE SPIRITUALITY OF YOUR MONEY (Part 2 of 2)

5.  The Voice of Your Gift

If gifts or monies were just the paper or coins in the hand, or the amount in the account; if there was no spirituality about money and gifts; if the character of the giver has nothing to do with the spirit of the gift, a passage like Deuteronomy 23:18 would be meaningless.  There, God strictly warns, for example, that “the wages of a harlot” and the proceeds from selling a dog – an unclean animal, must not be brought into His house, because “these are an abomination to the Lord your God” (NKJV).  “Abomination” is very strong language.

In Micah 1:7, divine judgment came upon a land and a people for “the wages of prostitutes” found among them.  In other words, money carries the character of the giver or sender (Matthew 10:40) as well as the character of the transaction from which it was earned (Matthew 27:6; Acts 1:18), and the wrong or right money in one’s possession can attract commensurate divine visitation.

Mind your monies.  Mind how you make your money and to what you give it.  Gifts call names, and your gifts can keep calling your name long after you are gone.  For example, thousands of years after Abel had been dead, it is reported in Hebrews 11:4 that a gift he had made upon the blessed altar of God was still speaking, calling his name; that the gift still had an active voice in the realms of the spirit.  That suggests a spirituality not only about money but also about gifts; it speaks about the eternalness of certain sacrifices.

6.  Money and Spiritual Transactions

Money is transactional not only in the markets of men but also in the markets of the spirit realm.  Spiritual men know this, which is how a sorcerer once offered Peter money so that Peter would impart to him the spiritual ability for a showy, theatrical addition to his trade.  He offered money so that whoever he laid his hands upon would begin to speak in a strange language, as he had seen with the disciples.  He liked the show.

Peter was very careful.  He was not unfamiliar with the fearful lessons from the recent history of Judas. He could tell that the money being offered carried a spirit intended to cause the receiver to perish, just as Naaman’s gift to Gehazi had transmitted leprosy from giver to receiver – which was probably why the elder Prophet Elisha had refused the package (2 Kings 5:27).  Peter fired back at the seductive sorcerer: “Thy money perish WITH THEE,” as if to say, “If you are looking for whom your money will cause to perish, not me.  Back to sender. May your bait follow you home.  My head is no altar for your potent sacrifice that is looking for whom to carry ‘with’ it!”

The giver’s motive was impure.  Peter could see his “thought,” and he said to him, “thy heart is not right”; especially, “not right in the sight of God.”  The heart and the act might have been right in the sight of men, and excused by the sorcerer’s creed and the common greed, but what mattered to Peter was not the doctrines of men but how it appeared “in the sight of God.”  According to Peter, that ‘giver’ needed first to “repent,” then “pray,” and be “forgiven” (Acts 8:19-22).  His priorities had been wrong.  We may say that that man ‘missed’ his way to Peter’s church.  Had he been in one of our blinded and greedy churches today, he might have won a front seat, with headline ovations and a prompt title among the ‘Elders.’

It says in Matthew 27:40-42 that if one gives to (or respectfully ‘receives’) a prophet or a righteous man because of whom that person is, rather than because he is their brother or father or husband or friend, the giver would partake of the equal blessings of the receiver’s spiritual status and character; that their gift or gestures of hospitality would be a means by which they could key into the equivalent rewards of the hallowed receiver.  The opposite is also possible, that those who give to a wrong cause become accomplices, and could become partakers of the equivalent judgment of the actual wrongdoers (2 John 1:10-11).

Some of us would give only to titled (and entitled) “prophets.” Good as that may be, the passage does not cite prophets only, prominent as they are.  It gives two other profitable categories worth investing in: righteous men and disciples – both without a title.  It is not so hard to know righteous men and true disciples; and even when a prophet does not carry the title, sensitive souls may still be able to tell (2 Kings 4:9).

7.  Cautions

Abimelech was a ‘revolutionary’ politician whose ambitious campaign was sponsored with money from the altar of Baal-berith.  That politician became a great disaster to his people. (I dare not name any politician or country here.)  The money from that altar neither prospered his land nor blessed his reign.  That money promptly attracted thugs, whom the Bible described as “worthless and reckless” followers (NKJV); it hired “reckless troublemakers” (New Living Translation) who caused great bloodshed and destruction in the land; it attracted terrible situations and terrible individuals according to its terrible nature (Judges 9:4-5).  Like natures usually attract.

I know friends who rejected millions at a time they needed money critically.  It was bad money.  They listened to the Holy Spirit.  They were later to learn how mercifully God had delivered them from a great snare.  People have gone to jail or suffered other troubles for unchecked ‘kindness,’ for ‘inclusive’ stupidity (the kind that Peter avoided with the Samaritan sorcerer), and sometimes for heedless greed, like Apostle Judas and Prophet Balaam.

Talking about careless ‘kindness,’ I have my story to tell.  It was April of that year.  I had just returned to the country from an Easter mission abroad and stopped over with a family in my connecting city, before flying to my city.  Traditionally, you ‘buy bread’ to take to the house on return from a trip.  I gave the matron of the house $300 as my ‘bread’ from the trip.  She declined.  I pressed.  She declined, but her daughter later took it to her.  Whatever happened, from that time, my heavens felt shut. Finances fled – from me and from the ministry. It took months of continuous collective and personal repentance and prayers with my ministry staff, until September, before we broke through.  Good money, wrong altar.

Welcome to a year of opportunities.  Mind your monies this year, both as giver and receiver.  Mind the following details about your money: mind

1) what you give – whether it is the price of a dog, the earnings of a harlot, or money from honest sweat;

2) what you give for, or give to – to kill or to bless;

3) whom you give to – whether to a prophet of God (Genesis 14:20) or to the altar of devils (Jeremiah 7:18);

4) how you give – whether cheerfully or grudgingly (1 Corinthians 9:7);

5) where you give – whether an unusual distant altar advised by God (Genesis 22:1-2), one dictated by inherited traditions (John 4:20-23), or one induced by devils;

6) why you give – whether for accolades (Acts 5:1-4), to transact spiritual power and popularity (Acts 8:18-20), or as an obedient sacrifice (Hebrews 11:17-19);

7) what you receive – whether a widow’s blessed sacrificial mites or Judas’ glinting but cursed silver coins;

8) whom you receive from – whether from an eager Samaritan sorcerer at church or some true worshipper of God (1 Samuel 10:3-4);

9) what you receive it for – as the price of blood, the reward of iniquity, or as meat for your priesthood (Matthew 10:40-42).

Be sensitive to the scanners in your soul, and safely differentiate between shiny but dangerous Judas coins and probably dull but hallowed copper mites from cheerful widows’ coffers.  Beware of the wages of a harlot, the price of a dog, the price of blood, and transactions with sorcerers.  Be careful what you give or receive.  Some gifts, like the charities of Cornelius, have a strong voice in transcendental realms, capable of eloquent memorials for or against giver or receiver (Acts 10:3).  Some gifts, like that of Abel, carry an undying transgenerational voice (Hebrews 7:9-10).  And some gifts, like Judas’ coins and Abimelech’s political funds, attract corpses and reckless followers inspired to kill and destroy, according to the nature of the spirit of the funding altar. Welcome to a year of multiple possibilities.  Amen.

From The Preacher’s diary,

January 2, 2026.