CREATING KINGDOM WEALTH | DIPO ONIFADE

But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: For it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

Deuteronomy 8:18

This topic is an inexhaustible topic but I will address my teaching practically. I have chosen to pick an area of Creating Kingdom Wealth that I consider important but neglected. The area appears inconsequential but is very important to creating and maintaining kingdom wealth. That area borders on the characteristics that a Christian must have in order to create and maintain kingdom wealth.

I’ll focus this teaching bearing the following simple questions in mind:

1. What are the personality traits of wealthy people?

2. What are the qualities that we should emulate in wealthy people?

The answers to these questions appear easy but are difficult to meet for a lot of us. I will however attempt to state six (6) really important characteristics of wealthy people.

1. REALIZATION THAT GOD IS THE ONE THAT GIVES POWER TO GET WEALTH

This to my mind is the foundation. Just like the scripture says we must first and foremost acknowledge God.

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. ⁶ In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Proverbs 3:5-6

It is only after we have acknowledged God that we can fully take advantage of the powers that he has made available to us, including the power to get wealth.

Acknowledgement of God is like an eye drop that opens our closed eyes to see the powers that God has promised us about wealth.

Therefore, the importance of acknowledging God cannot be overemphasized. Why?

All natural resources are God given. Land, sun, water, oil, gas, minerals, forests etc.

Other resources that are not considered natural are also God given. These include ideas, attitudes, mind, imagination, intelligence, common sense, discretion etc.

2. HARD WORK

Hard work has the capacity to make us high achievers. Regular working hours are expected to be minimum working hours. Being energetic and putting in extra hours are traits of wealthy individuals. The desire for success and an entrepreneurial spirit propel hard working individuals to make their own decisions about setting up businesses and doing something they genuinely care about. The alternative to hard work in my view is being laid back and lazy.

We must ask ourselves the question:

Does a laid back, lazy attitude make for success in creating and maintaining wealth?

3. EDUCATION

Statistics show that well over sixty percent of wealthy people attribute their success to education. I am not saying that lack of education is a barrier to being wealthy or creating wealth as we also have close to thirty percent of wealthy people who have attained wealth through non-traditional routes.

4. SMART INVESTING FOR BIGGER GAINS

The higher the percentage of your income that you invest wisely, the bigger the returns. Big time investors believe that investing and saving money is more rewarding than spending money.

5. RISK TAKING

Taking risks from time to time without being impulsive in decision making is an important characteristic of the wealthy. When you are focused on building and maintaining wealth, you must be skilled at gathering and analyzing information to help you determine whether to say “yes” or walk away from an investment proposal.

6. FRUGALITY

This is a very simplistic quality of the wealthy. And it makes a lot of sense. The basic principle behind this is that you accumulate wealth when you spend less. It is good advice to avoid wasteful spending and shun an opulent lifestyle because it simply means we are able to apply more of our income into asset building and investment for returns.

In my view however, there are a lot more questions that we must consider and answer to help us discover ourselves and help in creating and sustaining our businesses.

Are you able to take risks? Creating wealth involves taking on a risk of loss of wealth, integrity, associates etc. How do you respond to the likelihood of these losses?

Do you present yourself as humble enough to learn? Or as an arrogant know-all kind of person?

Can you be trusted by people?

Are you hardworking and able to sacrifice for the purpose of your dedicated goal?

Do you easily get discouraged and lose hope? Are you easily swayed by the negative decisions of others? Do you bother so much about what people think about you and your ideas?

When you are successful what are your goals? Who will be the beneficiaries of your wealth? Are you willing to deploy your wealth to achieve the plan and purpose of God?

Do you have a conscience? Do you understand the concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, Godly and ungodly?

How do you handle the wealth that God has given you?

There is a common saying that you never know a man until he has money.

An important lesson for success in wealth creation is that we must learn to master wealth.

How do you show that you have mastered wealth? The only way you show that you have mastered wealth is when, apart from God, no one (except you) can see the difference in your lifestyle. There will be no difference between what you do at the time you have money and when you do not have.

In my view these are issues that we must have at the back of our minds.

Like I said earlier, the posers appear simple but may be tricky and when we search ourselves we may discover that we are not able to answer most in the correct way.

- Dipo Onifade