SID: James, as he began to study the Bible, found out that man was originally wired for success. Explain.
JIM: Yeah. You know, the very first thing that God said to man was, “be fruitful and multiply”. We’re created in the likeness and image of God and we are designed to rule and reign in life as kings. And we’re not supposed to be like the paupers. We’re supposed to be like the kings. And so one of the things I discovered is that the first place we have to start is, is it really God’s will? Is this really what God wants for us? I began to see that the Bible says, “God takes pleasure in the prosperity of his servants.” I began to see all of these promises.
SID: So why is it today if someone is in ministry or a strong Christian they’re not supposed to get prosperous? They’re not supposed to have a big home. Why is that mentality there if, from originally we were supposed to be blessed?
JIM: You know, there’s been a deception in the world from the father of all lies that has gotten woven into Christianity throughout history. And when these lies appear they appear in many forms to try to steal from us what God has given us through his word and through the finished work of Jesus. And so you see this lie manifest in two different ways. You see it manifest in this extreme concept of greed and get rich quick schemes, and all this kind of stuff. But then there’s the other side of it where there’s something spiritual about being poor, something, some blessed aspect of it.
SID: Is it that the devil tries to get us coming and going?
JIM: Yes it is. It is like he’s going to give us every lie that could possibly fill us. But you know, the Bible says that poverty is the destruction of the poor. Man, when you’re poor, you don’t have time for God. You can’t take care of your family. You’re struggling, you’re under pressure. And that’s actually a form of temptation. Anything, according to the meaning of the Greek word for temptation, anything that causes me to strive is something that’s trying to seduce me into compromising my life.
SID: Is poverty a curse?
JIM: Yes it is. The Bible is very clear that poverty is the curse of the Law. And that really brings us to the next phase, and on my journey, I was realizing that Jesus delivered me from the curse of the Law. And you look at that and you go, and I remember saying, now God, I know this is true. I know this is your truth, but I’m not experiencing your truth.
SID: Is that what, in other words, we were wired for success with Adam and Eve.
JIM: That’s right.
SID: Then came the Fall.
JIM: Yup.
SID: What happened? Did we get rewired the wrong way?
JIM: We didn’t get rewired. We got programmed. We got conditioned. You know, the oldest lie that Lucifer brought to Planet Earth was that God is not good. He is not the one that’s going, that you can trust. He’s not the one that’s going to do good things for you. You need enlightenment and you can do it for yourself independent of God. Oldest lie in the world.
SID: You talk about boundaries, imaginary boundaries that limit us. Explain that.
JIM: Well the Bible says in the Book of Proverbs, fourth chapter, 23rd verse, it says, “Guard your heart above all else ,that you guard because out of it flows the issues of life.” That word, “issues” could have just as well been translated as boundaries. And what that is telling us, it’s telling us that all the limitations in our life, we may think they’re out here. We may think they’re because of the economy, we may think they’re because of the circumstances, we may think it’s because of the people that oppose us. But the real truth is all boundaries are determined by what we believe about ourselves. And I realized that I accepted a definition of myself that was based on what my life had been. And I had to look at the Word of God and say, who does God say that I am. And I started connecting to me resurrected with Jesus, me being a new creation. When you connect with the resurrected Jesus and you realize that all the promises of God, every promise that God has ever made to anyone is yes for you, when you’re in Jesus, that boundary is going to expand. Those limitations are going to start going away.
SID: Do you feel you have any limitation? I mean, coming from the background that he came from, I mean, you could not have been economically lower than you were. How in the world did you turn it around for yourself?
JIM: You know, this is God working in your heart. You know, and I’ll tell you something. When my wife and I began to see these biblical principles, we realized that we had done the same thing with poverty that we had done with sickness. Yeah, I had good excuse to be sick. I was born with this. I didn’t do anything to make this happen. I didn’t, you know, this was a genetic. You know, when you got an excuse for something then you justify it and you live with the excuse. And I’ve done that with sickness. Well you know what? I realized that I was looking at my life saying, you know, I had these doctor bills. I didn’t do this. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t mismanage any money. I wasn’t dishonest. But you know what? That was an excuse because I was allowing my circumstances to define how big God could be. I want to tell you something, Sid. We got on our knees at the foot of our bed one night and we apologized to God, literally. We just said, Father, we know you love us. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead that he conquered all the curse of the Law and we have no right to live this way. We have no right to be destitute. And we repented. That means changed our mind. We changed our mind and we made a determination. We said, God from this day forward, we will never be here again unless we’re here because we’ve given it all away or unless we’re suffering for righteousness sake. But we will never be desperate again because we have failed to trust you and operate by your word in our lives.
SID: Do you, most people though, there’s going to be economic [trouble], throughout the world, in the last days.
JIM: Right.
SID: Do we have to go through that? Do we, is there anything we can do to prosper in these last days or is it just inevitable?
JIM: Well you know, Isaac sowed in the time of famine and the Bible says he reaped incredibly. And all the Bible shows us, you know, Joseph, Daniel, all of these people, they prospered in situations where that they should have suffered in.
SID: You know what I believe? I believe when times are tough, God is going to make believers shine.
JIM: Oh yeah.
SID: And it’s going to be, there’s going to be such a contrast everyone is going to want to be a believer. When we come back I want to find out more about this.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth