I Pray That You May Prosper!

3 John 2
Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.

Prosperity has gotten a bad name in the realm of televangelism and some pastoral circles. It has been reduced to the prosperity of the pastor with jet planes, jewelry, and Bentleys. Prosperity is more than big homes, and lots of money for the religious elite. Prosperity is the fullness of life that is promised to every believer who prioritizes the success of his soul before the success of material pursuits.

Prosperity in the original Greek means to travel along a good road, to be successful in acquiring profit or gain, to prosper to gain in business, to gain by work, be in a state of full completion of goals or tasks endeavored.

John’s prayer is for the believers to be successful in their business, their personal lives just as their Soul prospers. The priority is on the Soul. We must make it our business to prosper in the Soul before we prosper in the market place. We must reach our spiritual development goals before we reach our ministry goals. In other words God wants us to prosper from the inside out. We have to be a success on the inside before we can become a success on the outside.

In the middle of Soul and Success is good health. A natural result of being successful in developing your soul is good health. We must make sure we spend time seeking God by taking care of our temple and being about our father’s business. Jesus put it this way, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you.”

Many times, we are successful in business and a failure spiritually. We cannot maintain our success with a spiritually malnourished soul or a morally deficient mindset. The bible says, “A fool and his money will soon depart." So many successful people have crashed and burned because they had underdeveloped souls. The beginning of success is when we learn how to love the Lord our God with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
I pray that you prosper, be in good health even as your soul prospers. There is an order to your success:

1. Develop your soul first. Read your bible, pray to God daily and do good works towards others. When you seek God’s righteousness first God begins to develop a solid foundation to build your life’s work on. On Jesus Christ the solid rock I stand all other ground is sinking sand. When we hear the word of God we are like the man who built his house on a solid foundation when we don’t put God’s word into practice we are like the man who built a mansion on sand and when the storms of life came the house immediately fell.

2. Be in Good health. Eat right, exercise at least 3 X a week, and be careful what you put in your temple. People who exercise live longer, eat better, and enjoy life more. The other day I took a fitness test to discover that if I increased my strength, increased my oxygen intake, and my flexibility that I would add seven years to my life. It’s important to exercise.

3. Prosper. Complete your goals, get on the right road, and the money will come to you.

Dear God, I pray that our souls would prosper, become enriched by yielding ourselves fully to you, as a result, I pray that I will be in the best physical shape of my life. Then God I know that you will bless me with riches and material success but not just for my own selfish consumption but I know that I am blessed to be a blessing. Father enlarge the territory of my soul and in turn I know I will be successful in life. In Jesus name I pray for the prosperity of all.

Amen