When Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson of St. Mary’s Academy, a Catholic school in New Orleans, Louisiana, made history with finding a new way to solve the 2,000-year-old Pythagorean Theorem using trigonometry, they did more than prove a new way to old math, they proved an old way to Godly wealth—the Proverbian Theorem of riches: generosity pays.
So impressed was NBA legend Charles Barkley of the girl’s math game, he gave the first part of a $1 million donation to St. Mary's Academy after watching a "60 Minutes" report about the two brain-wealthy students solving a problem once deemed impossible. Barkley’s generosity was evidence of the Proverbian Theorem found in Proverb 11:24-25, written thousands of years ago that put forth the equation that generosity equals prosperity. Everybody has the opportunity to be rich if you are a scatterer:
24a. There is one who scatters, yet increases all the more,
24b. And there is one who withholds what is justly due, but it results only in want.
25a. The generous man will be prosperous,
25b. And he who waters will himself be watered.
These four lines of Hebrew poetry answers three important questions:
Who was rich, then, in the Proverb writer’s day?
Who has always been rich or prosperous in the economy of God?
How can you strike it rich and be blessed right now.
Then, always, and now, you can strike it rich in God’s prosperity plan.
The ancient Proverb writer, then, found that a person with a generous heart gave and in return gained prosperity and provision. The reward of the generous man was prosperity according to v. 24a.
There is one who scatters, yet increases all the more, Proverbs 24a.
What seems to be a paradox–by giving freely, a person gets–is really perfectly good supply and demand economics when you consider the context of Proverbs 11. The word “scatters” means to disperse. The scattering man dispersed grain. Grain was like money. Dispersing your grain in the marketplace, you kept the price of grain down. Keeping the price down benefited the entire community. And the community would in turn do business with that generous man who released his grain in the marketplace economy. They would buy from him. So, the reward of the generous heart was prosperity for himself and his community. In contrast, the result of the stingy man was poverty according to v. 24b: And there is one who withholds what is justly due, but it results only in want.
The generous man had a generous heart according to v. 25a: The generous man will be prosperous. Reciprocity was the blessing for the generous heart: And he who waters will himself be watered.
God has always rewarded the generous person according to 2Cor. 9:6-9:
Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows
generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has purposed in his heart to give, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
The boy who gave his lunch to feed five thousand was rewarded in John 6:9. He was a co-contributor to one Jesus’s grandest miracles. The single mom of Zarephath of 1 Kings 17 gave her last oil and flour to feed the Prophet Elijah. He later raised her son from the dead. The barren wife of Shumen of 2 Kings 4 was rewarded for building the Prophet Elisha a house. She was later given a son.
Be generous and be blessed now. Be swift. Don’t waste time. The opportunity is now especially to the household of God according to Proverbs 3:27:
Do not withhold good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.
You don’t have to be a math whiz or an NBA superstar to be wealthy. Give back. Pay forward, the future by scattering your seeds now, giving what you can, where you can for the good of the community. That’s a slam dunk to prosperity.
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