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When I was a kid, we had the comic books about a boy named "Richie Rich." In the stories, this kid had maids and butlers and a palatial mansions and gold running out of his ears. He had everything that he wanted and much more and more than enough. He had extravagances that hadn't -- and still haven't been invented. He was the richest kid that I knew.

I had a real cousin named Richie and we used to call him "Rich." And I used to sit around -- I'm probably the only one that thinks in strange ways like this -- what a shame it would be if a kid named "Rich" grew up to be dirt poor and live in shack. It would be like a woman nicknamed "Sweetie" who was the meanest person you'd ever met -- it would be a travesty! But things turned out alright and Rich got a good college education and is a CPA today. He's probably not rich, but at least he's not living in a shack! Maybe one day, he'll live up to his name.

Our society is obsessed with the "rich and famous." Everybody here under the age of 25 knows who Paris Hilton is. She gets paid for showing up at parties so that they could say that she had been there. She's never built a business or invented anything. She has no talent or great ability whatsoever. From the news reports, it seems that she lacks any sort of Christian morals. She's famous because she is the heiress to the great Hilton fortune -- she's popular simply because she's rich.

I've never been rich in this earthly life. From the time that I was about 5 years of age until I turned 11, my father made pretty good money in the oil field and we lived in a large house on sixty acres on the lake with a built-in swimming pool, but we weren't really rich. Dad just made better than average money at that time. And then came the time that God called Dad into the full-time ministry and gone was the house and the lake and the hometown and we moved into a shack of a parsonage that had been built and added on by previous pastors with their own three hands! And Dad had to get a second job selling insurance so that we could just have something to eat. Eventually the church grew and things got better, but it was rough for a while.

Some of us don't really grasp the concept of what being rich is. We think that rich is a few hundred thousand dollars a year. We think that being rich would be having that big house on the lake and a new car and nice clothes. Some of you think that having your own built-in swimming pool means that you are rich. Kids at my wife's school used to call her rich because she wore skirts all of the time and they didn't think that they could afford skirts. (They didn't know that she and her mother made most of them!) All of these things perhaps mean that someone is "well off" financially or affluent, but "being rich" speaks of a "whole 'nother level!"

From the best that I can understand from studying and reading, there are four things that indicates that a person is truly rich -- at least according to this world's standards of what it really means to be rich. You are really rich if all of these four things apply:

1. You are able to live off the interest of what you possess and still live at a greater financial level than the "average joe" who works for a living. If you have to work sixty hours a week to keep money coming in, then you are not really rich. The really rich already have the money or the inheritance stored away somewhere earning interest and the interest that they make on their riches is enough for them to live much more than comfortably.

2. You have many things that most people do not. The truly rich have personal airplanes and yachts. They own their own islands in the Caribbean and such. They wear clothes by personal designers that the normal person in the world has never even heard of. They have the latest in technology and frivolous things. The art on their walls are the originals and not prints. They have stuff that the average well-off person does not have.

3. You actually own the luxurious things that you have. If you have a yacht and you are still making payments on it or had to borrow money in order to afford it, then you are not truly rich. If you have a nice house but have to go to work everyday and work like a donkey in Afghanistan to keep it, then you are not rich. If you have nice clothes because your credit cards are maxed out or you are driving a sports car but have to pick up cans on the side of the road to pay the insurance and gas, then you are not rich. The rich own what they have. And finally:

4. You are rich if your abundance is such that you are having trouble finding places to put it. Remember the rich man in the parable of Jesus? He had "fared sumptuously" and was having to build bigger barns to keep all of his stuff, the old ones wouldn't do. If you are truly rich, then you have more increase and goods and treasure and money than you know what to do with. You have to build bigger houses and bigger whatever to keep it all!

That's what it means to be truly rich.

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Most of us are now sitting here thinking about how poor we are, but now I've come to preach to you to change that mentality. We read in one of our texts, the words of the Apostle Paul to the apostolic church of Corinth:

This is an amazing scripture because it states that Jesus Christ came to this earth and was born in a lowly stable to a poor Hebrew family and lived in poverty for 34 years and died so that we through it "might become rich!" His reason for coming -- one of them, anyway -- was so that you and I would have an opportunity to be rich. File that away and turn your attention back to our other text, this time the Apostle John writing to the apostolic church in the city of Smyrna:

These verses and history record a frightening picture of the church in Smyrna. Most of the saints in the church were dirt poor by their days standards which would be off-the-chart poor by American comparisons. These were people serving God and yet did not often know where their next meal was coming from. Besides that, they were serving God faithfully in a town where the opposition to Christianity was fierce and many of them would give their very lives for what they believed not long after they received these words. Of the seven churches in Asia given a Word from God by the Apostle John, only Smyrna receives no rebuke. Despite their great odds and trials, they were living faithful to the things of God. And God wanted them to know that He realized their predicament. In fact, He told them "I know your tribulation and your poverty," but notice what God throws in here in parenthesis right after He acknowledged their economic poverty: "but you are rich." Or as the KJV words it, "But thou art rich."

"But thou art rich." At first glance it would seem cruel of God to place such a statement in what it meant to be a word of encouragement to the poorest church in Asia. "But thou art rich." Looking through the natural eyes it would seem that God is mocking their financial and life condition. And yet we must realize that the God who cannot lie directly told them "But thou art rich." And maybe it sounds mocking, until you realize that this life is but a vapor and then we spend eternity somewhere. And despite the greatest odds against them, this church had been faithful to God. Although many of them would lay down their very lives, they were rich because of who their spiritual Father is! They may have lived a life of poverty on earth, but one day they were going to walking on streets of gold in that great golden city with walls of jasper! They may have lived day to day for a few years upon this planet, but they were going to inherit eternal life from the maker of a new heaven and a new earth! Truly, He could look at them in their present condition and because of their faithfulness, say "but thou art rich!" They were slated to receive the blessings of a God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills!

I think the word of God to the church in Smyrna back then is also the word of God to many of you right now. You are worried about bills that one day are going to burn up and be gone forever. And many times we let the threat and the burden of the temporal affect our actions that determine eternity! Some of you have very little money in your pocket and have never had a nice house or a new car, but God wants you to know that if you are being faithful to His kingdom, then you are rich! You are rich because of what you will one day inherit. You are rich because of the treasure that is accumulating in glory on your behalf! You are rich because passing from this life will not be the end, but will only be the beginning of an eternity of blessing that will never end!

I serve God faithfully here with my whole heart, because I realize that I may only live thirty to ninety years on this earth, but one day will spend forever somewhere! And for those who serve Him faithfully and live according to His bestseller, eternity will begin with a marriage banquet unlike any festival ever put on by the richest person of this earth! And you will have a dwelling place and live in newly created planet and country that will far surpass anything you've ever seen. And to be with Jesus the One whose becoming poor made it all possible will top it all off! Now, I'm starting to realize why God can look at us and without even caring about your circumstances say "but thou art rich!" Somebody needs to hear the Word of God today and pick your head up if you are living for Him faithfully:

Your bank account and nest egg is a big, fat zero -- but thou art rich!

Your health is deteriorating and the medical bills are due -- but thou art rich!

You've got to go to work tomorrow for a boss you don't like doing something you'd rather not be doing for longer than you want to be there -- but thou art rich!

Your earthly parents were always struggling to make ends meet -- but thou art rich!

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches today: your status of prosperity is not defined by what you have or don't have in this world, but rather by what is coming to you! You've been given a name better than my cousin's name, rather you have taken on the name of Jesus Christ and so you are a joint-heir with Him! Catch this: if you do the will of God, then you will be written into the will of God! Pick your head up Smyrna, and smile at the persecutors and tormentors coming to arrest you and take your life -- because you have been faithful to the things of God, therefore you are rich!

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What I have just preached to you is absolutely true and needed to be preached, but really I was preaching to you as if God had said "but you shall be rich." Such a comment would have been true, because those who are faithful to God's word shall inherit tremendous things. But what I just got through bringing to you is not the point of the text tonight. What God actually told the church in Smyrna and what He is telling you and I is not "but you shall be rich" rather "but thou art rich." "You are rich right now." In your present circumstances on this earth with all of the trouble and pain that we've already mentioned, the God who cannot lie says that those who are faithful to Him are rich already!

If that is true, then every area of what we've learned about what it means to really be rich in the natural must be true in the spiritual in our lives right now! If doing the will of God now, writes me into God's will, then know that Jesus Christ has already died so I should be receiving some of my inheritance right now! And so God can truly look at you who are members of the apostolic church of today and say "but thou art rich." Think of it:

1. The truly rich are able to live off the interest of their treasure and still live at a higher level than the "average joe." Let me take you to a set of scriptures that I love:

I am using the King James Version because all of the other modern translation struggle with trying to express what the KJV sums up by saying "earnest." The other translations use such words as "guarantee" or "deposit" and then have to put a footnote to fully explain what is meant. Let me save you the time and trouble.

What Paul was saying over and over was that the Holy Spirit -- which they had received -- was the "earnest of their inheritance." The Greek word for "earnest" here is arrhabon (ar-rhab-on') which means, and I quote a Greek dictionary here: "a pledge that is part of the purchase money or property given in advance as security for the rest." In other words, an earnest is a small part of the inheritance given now as a sign that the rest of the money is there for your inheritance one day.

And Paul said that receiving the Holy Ghost was the "earnest of our inheritance!" I know that most of us down here count receiving the Holy Ghost and feeling God's Spirit work in our lives regularly as the greatest aspect of our life, but I want to tell you that just as great at it is, it is only the earnest -- a small down payment of what is to come! If you think a Holy Ghost service down here is great, wait until you get to glory! The greatest move of the Spirit of God and the time where you felt the closest to Him is nothing to compare with what God has waiting for us in eternity! It's just the earnest! It's just the interest off our inheritance. It's just a small part of what is to come!

So I don't care about your financial or life circumstances tonight, if you have received the Holy Spirit and are allowing it to remain active in your life, then God can say without lying, "but thou are rich!" Because you are living high on what is just the interest of your inheritance! You are able to live for Him on just a small part of the treasure that you will one day possess! You are truly rich if you have God's Spirit!

2. Furthermore, if you are filled with God's Spirit and living faithfully for Him, then you are rich because you have many things that most people do not! You've got forgiveness for your sins and had the guilt and debt of the past washed away! Most people have to live carrying yesterday around, but you have been freed! You have been given a joy that passes all understanding! Money cannot buy the joy that you have when you have the fullness of Jesus Christ! You have been given a revelation of how great and of truly who God is that surpasses most believers and even people with theological degrees because it was taught you inwardly through the Holy Spirit! You've got a shepherd that watches over you and a Chief Shepherd that watches over him and makes sure that you've got spiritual food for nourishment and direction and protection! You've got a purpose for living beyond just breathing and dying and accumulating stuff and then leaving it for others to enjoy. Most people don't have that; most people are laying awake at night like you once did wondering "is this all there is to life?" And, oh, you have received the revelation of a love of a God whose grace and mercy far surpasses understanding! Most people don't even realize such a love exists! Therefore we can say, "but thou art rich" because you've got much that most don't!

3. And all of these great things that you now possess have already been paid for on Calvary by Jesus Christ! You are not having to earn them by your actions today. You are not having to pay for them through nailing yourself to a cross or trying to save up enough goodness to cover the payments! Your forgiveness, your experience, your salvation is paid in full because Jesus Christ --though He was rich -- yet became poor that you could become rich! Granted, you must do some things to inherit what has been paid for, and you must remain in Daddy's house to reap the blessings, but you don't have to work to earn it -- you own what you have! But thou art rich!

4. The fourth criteria to being truly rich was to have to build bigger storehouses to hold the abundance of riches. Do you know why Jesus said "you must be born again?" Do you know why the old man has to die at repentance and be buried at baptism? Because when the Spirit of God comes, your body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost! You become a storage house of God's treasure. And the old man of sin is not big enough, strong enough, or great enough to hold all that God is wanting to give you. Therefore you've got to tear the old spiritual man down and become a new creature in Christ Jesus! But understand why: it's because you must have a new barn to hold all of the great blessings and anointings that God has for you in His kingdom! Trying to live for God in the old man won't work because God has much, much more for you than you can ever imagine! Therefore you must become a new temple; a new spiritual house! And if that is so, then you match the criteria: you may have your last two nickels rubbing together in your pockets right now, but if you have been made a new creature through the work of the Holy Ghost, then you can say "but I am rich!" You have become a treasure house of God!

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Now let me preach to you further, though, because there are some of you who are saying right now "That may be true, but I don't feel very rich." Let me direct your attention to the 15th chapter of Luke to find out why you feel that way. In verse 11 of that chapter, we find that a story about a man who had two sons, and within this story are two reasons why some Christians don't feel rich although they are.

For those of you who have not got there yet, the story in the 15th chapter of Luke, 11th verse, is commonly known as the story of the Prodigal Son. The story is of a man who had two sons and the younger son decided that he was tired of life in his father's house and so the younger went to his father and demanded his inheritance from him and then left, went to a far country, and blew the money on sinful living. The scripture says that eventually the money ran out and the young man had to get a job and the only job was feeding pigs the slop which was the common food of the day. The younger son had become so desperate that the pig slop began to look appetizing, and he reached out and started to put some of it in his mouth before he shook himself and said "wait a minute! Even the servants and the slaves in daddy's house eat better than this. I'll go back home and admit that I have sinned against God and my family and offer just to be a servant!" Most of you know the story: Daddy took him back as a son.

But go back to when the younger son first left home. What was it that caused him to go away and leave daddy's house? It was one thing: he didn't realize how good he had it! He didn't realize how rich he truly was. He had forgotten how low and how bad things were if not in the house of the Father. I'm preaching to some of you today that you are not as excited about God as you used to be. I'm preaching to some "spoiled" Christians who have taken for granted this week your salvation and the opportunity given even tonight to worship God with all of your heart. And I've preached my guts out, but you don't feel rich and here's why: you've forgotten just how bad this world is without the blessing of your spiritual Father! You've forgotten just how lean and how low the pigpen of sin is! You've forgotten just what an honor it is to sit in a church with people who love truth and have no other agenda but to praise Him and learn of Him! You've forgotten what a privilege it is to sit at Daddy's table and eat the finest spiritual food in this world! You've forgotten what an honor and privileged position the robe of honor is and the blessings that surround you every day truly are! Some of you have lived in Daddy's house so long, that you have forgotten what the weight of a sinful past felt like and how lacking in joy and true happiness people are without God at the center!

To you I say you need to shake yourself! This world has nothing to offer you! The best that it has to offer cannot even compare with the lowest of blessings of Daddy's house! If you don't feel rich in God today and excited to be here, then you need to shake yourself and come back to reality! You are taking for granted the things of God! The richness of His house has lulled you into a spiritual slumber! Wake up! Don't let it be that you have to again hit bottom to realize the richness of His mercy. You may not feel it right now, but shake yourself -- forget feelings, "but thou art rich!"

The other part of the story is another reason why some here don't feel rich in God despite what I have preached. When the younger son got home, the daddy killed a fatted calf and threw a feast in celebration of the younger son's return home. They called the neighbors and their friends and began to rejoice. The Bible says that the older brother was in the field while all this happened, and when he came home, he heard the music and dancing and laughter and happiness and called a servant and asked, "what's going on?" When the servant told him that they were celebrating because his younger brother had come home, the older brother got mad and refused to come into the celebration at the house. And when his father came out and begged him to come in, the older brother said:

Listen to the attitude of the older brother: "I was faithful, I did not leave" and yet "you never killed the finest goat for me, and you never through a celebration for me and my friends." And I want you to catch the response of the father:

In other words, the daddy was saying, "you've been here and you could have had a party and had the fatted calf anytime you wanted." "You could have had it every day of the week for six weeks if that is what you had wanted, but the reason that we've never thrown a party for you, older brother, is because you've never asked for one!" The older brother really had nobody else to blame for his jealousy and lack of blessing because it had always been available to him. He had lived faithfully in daddy's house but had not taken advantage of all the blessings that were available to him! He had faithfully served his father, but was living beneath the privileges readily available!

There are some of us here today, that have been born again into the house of God and you are living faithfully in daddy's house, but you don't feel rich today spiritually because you are living far beneath your privileges as a child of God. You don't pray everyday and lay hold of the assurance that knows that you are trusting in God completely. You don't worship fervently and expect to receive a new mercy and blessing each time you come to God's house. You are content to just live in God's house and yet see just what little you have to do to still be considered faithful, and you don't realize that the attitude of "minimal obedience" is causing you to live in Daddy's house at a level far beneath what is readily available to you!

Somebody needs to realize who you are in God! Somebody needs to realize that every promise given in this bestselling book is for you! Somebody needs to realize that the protection and the joy and the peace and the anointings and the blessings and the healings recorded here are available for everybody who is in Daddy's house! But you have got to want them and ask for them? Some of us don't feel rich because we are living a pauper's life in the house of the King of Kings! It's time to step out in faith and realize that His promises are true and they are for you! Forget about your first birth circumstances -- that doesn't matter -- you've been born again and you've been born into a rich family of God! You are rich -- stop living beneath your royal prerogatives in God! Stop using the past as an excuse. Stop using your educational level as an excuse. Stop with the self-depreciating lies that say God cannot use you or bless you as He can others. God shows no partiality, older brother, and so if you are not partying with Jesus and receiving the riches that He has to offer in His house, then it is your own fault because you are not asking and receiving what is rightfully yours! Like Paul's claim about his Roman citizenship: "I was born into this inheritance!" When you are born again, you become a child of God! It's time to start living, laying hold and enjoying what is yours for the taking! You may not feel like it because you haven't asked for the greatest blessing, but thou art rich! It's time to enjoy God's blessings for us! But thou art rich! In God, you are rich!

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I close with this:

In the Richie Rich comic books that I read as a kid, the plot was always about the crazy things that robbers and thieves were trying to do steal all of the rich kid's treasure. Richie Rich had to constantly be on guard from those who would take what was his. So it is with the children of God: if you haven't realized it already, there is an enemy of your soul that is trying to steal the treasure that you have been given. He wants you to leave Daddy's house and waste your inheritance. He wants to steal your joy and your peace. He wants to rob you of the revelations that you have received about God. He wants to rip the robes of righteousness and authority off your of spiritual man. He wants to steal your close relationship with Jesus from your life. And most of all, he wants to come and take away the realization that you are truly, truly rich in God! He wants you to forget about all that you have in this spiritual Garden of Eden called the Apostolic church and get you focused as he did Eve on the forbidden. The robber of your soul wants to steal from you the realization of all that you have been blessed with.

Be sober and be vigilant! Let the walls of obedience to God's Word protect you from Satan's attacks. Raise up the shield of faith to quench his fiery darts of sin that would destroy you. Fight the good fight of faith and do not grow faint or weary. Keep standing tall and endure until the end. But listen closely: every time that he does attack you and every time that he tries to get you discouraged and tries to rob your joy away from you, you need to smile and give God the glory: because the robber only comes to those who are rich and have something worth stealing! The devil's campaign against you is tangible proof of just how rich you are in God! He wouldn't give you the time of day if there were not things of tremendous value in your life!

Maybe life or circumstances or the devil or your past says otherwise, yet God says this: "but thou art rich!" Don't ever forget it and take full advantage of your privileged spiritual possessions!