Brian Houston hasn’t changed. He keeps defaulting back to his heretical Prosperity Gospel.
Prosperity heretics preach Christ teach Jesus Christ is rich, Christ died to make you rich, that you must tithe and demands that you are to “bless to be a blessing”.
All he has done is change his language slightly to preach the same damnable, false gospel known as the Prosperity Gospel.
“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8-9
Notice how his “good news” is belittled by the Apostle Paul’s rhetoric. Although Brian Houston says, “… I do believe […] we don’t give to get,” he can’t help slip back into the filth of the Prosperity Gospel. He claims,
“And if a whole church [gives], believe me, you’re about the see a miracle.”
And,
“However, when you do give, you trigger biblical principal, you trigger biblical possibility, you trigger miracles, you are a miracle waiting to happen, tell someone next to you, you are a miracle waiting to happen.”
This is the EXACT false gospel that Paul claims will send someone to hell. You’re not going to hear a sermon about Christ and Him crucified, you’re going to hear a sermon that teaches you how you can be perfected in the flesh by your own works (to unlock miracles):
“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”?” Galatians 3:1-6
Below you can watch the sermon and read the transcript.
TRANSCRIPT: GENEROSITY IS A DIFFERENT WORLD
“Generosity is a different world, it really is. Proverbs Chapter 11, verse 24 and 25 (Message), ‘The world of the generous’, think about generosity for a moment as a world, ‘the world of the generous gets larger and larger; the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.’
Do you know with all of my heart I believe that’s true, people who live their lives stingy, they live in a small way, it kind of hems them in and they have a small view on life, they have a small view of the people around and about them, they have a small view on anyone who is different than them, or anything that represents change. Stinginess just kind of brings your world down and shrinks it, whereas generosity you gain a greater world view, you have a greater perspective, you lift your eyes higher, you see further, you just live in a bigger world.
Well, it says, ‘the one who blesses others is abundantly blessed’ in verse 25, ‘and those who help others are helped’. So think about generosity as, a different world, it’s the ground you stand on, it’s the air you breathe, it’s the vista you see, you see a different layout of the land and you see things differently. It’s the language you speak, generosity speaks in a different language than often you’ll see in the newspapers, or through the television screen, or maybe from the people at work. It’s a different way of thinking, it’s a different way of seeing, it’s a different way of living.
Generosity is your inner world, it brings wealth to the inside and it’s your outer world. Generosity, I really do believe carves out impossible new roads and attracts supernatural, overflowing new rivers. The world of the generous, the world of the generous gets larger and larger. The ground you stand on.
Listen, Isaiah 32:8 (NKJV), it talks about the generous person, it says, ‘the generous person devises generous plans’, and in their generosity they shall what? ‘They shall stand’, it’s not just a one off act, it’s a stance, it’s a way of living. Generosity is the ground you stand on, it’s the air you breathe, we breathe oxygen and I genuinely believe it’s generosity that gives oxygen to your vision, that gives oxygen to the purposes of God in our lives, it gives oxygen to our capacity to make a difference and to bring change and transformation to the world around and about you.
Generosity is the vista you see, in Proverbs Chapter 22 (NKJV), in verse 9, it says, ‘he who has a generous eye will be blessed’. What’s a generous eye? It’s not one big giant eye in the middle of your forehead, that’s not a generous eye, a generous eye, it’s the way you see things, you see things through eyes of generosity, and when you see that way, believe me, you’ll see opportunities to be generous everywhere. It’s not only the way we see, I believe it’s the way we hear, you hear things different, you suddenly hear opportunities to be generous everywhere.
So generosity it’s a word, it affects everything, it really does affect everything. It is your inner world, it is your outer world, it is a language that we speak. In proverbs Chapter 10, it talks a lot about your mouth, your lips, your words, it says, ‘that the mouth of the generous feeds many’. Our words speak life to people, feed many. I’ve often asked our church if the people around and about you, your wife, your family, your children were dependent on your words for their nourishment, would they be malnourished? Would they be starving? Sadly, there’s households out there where people are not generous and it shows in their words, there isn’t any encouragement, there isn’t any life put into people, there isn’t any hope put into people, and they are literally starving through lack of encouragement. And so the lips, the mouth, the generous, the Bible says, feeds many.
I really do believe that generosity, it can carve out impossible new roads. We’ve seen the generosity of our church over the years, for our church collectively to see amazing new roads open up to us, new roads, bringing new opportunities, new possibilities. I love God, because he’s the ultimate generous thinker, He is the ultimate bigger thinker, when His disciples were thinking Jerusalem, He’s thinking Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. He’s always thinking bigger than we are, and I pray that our generous hearts can open us up to that kind of generous world in Jesus name.
So generosity, it’s not based just on circumstance, you know, it’s not something that changes according to our circumstance. And you can see that again, often in scripture, the Macedonians, I love their example and the Apostle Paul points to their example because they were people in desperate need, they really were in overwhelming financial crisis in a challenging and difficult time and in 2 Corinthians 8, Verse 1, Paul says, ‘I make known to you the grace bestowed on the church or the churches in Macedonia, that in difficult times, a great trial of affliction, their abundance of their joy and deep poverty (you wouldn’t think those two words would belong together, there like the antifascist of each other, joy and deep poverty and yet) the abundance of their joy and the abundance of their poverty bounded in the riches of their liberality, riches of their generosity’.
And it’s true you know, when someone is truly generous, the one thing they never loose, even in the darkest times is a sense of inner joy. Joy’s not built like happiness, happiness comes from the root word ‘happen’, so it’s all to do with what’s happening, but joy is different, joy, even in the darkest times, people who are genuinely generous will stay generous.
I went to Sri Lanka, I had never been to that part of the world and I had never really been outside of our part of the world here, so it’s my first time outside of a Western country and my eyes were opened, I didn’t stay in beautiful hotels in the big cities, I stayed in people’s homes and on concrete floors and in that environment, I saw people’s generosity. You know, you see their deep joy and their happiness and it’s a challenge, cause honestly wherever I’ve been in the world, where there’s difficulty and poverty and desperate need, it’s amazing how people still have a joy about them. And that’s just proof that some of the things we value are not the true values in life. But they are also amazingly generous, people didn’t have money to bring for their ties and offerings, so they were bringing chickens and egg and they were bringing their product, so that they can give and tithe and honour God.
And so, I want you to know, sometimes, where in difficult times one can think, this is not our time to be generous and you know the amounts are not always the same, but a true generous heart is always the same, you’ve always got that heart to give, you always give with the same sacrificial heart. And if a whole church does that, believe me, you’re about the see a miracle.
Generosity, it’s expressed in an act, but it’s proven in a lifestyle. And the truth is, I think so often, that we can just see generosity as an act, an offering, something we do, but the reality is, it’s an expression of your generosity and it’s an overflow of your life because generosity is actually proven in a lifestyle. I see generosity as being futuristic, by that I mean, it doesn’t look backwards at what we have done in the past, you can always look back and look at the testimony and give God the praise and give God the glory, but in 2 Corinthians Chapter 8, Verse 10, Paul, speaking again to the Corinthians, and this is what he says, ‘In this I give advice: not only to be doing what you began and were desiring to do a year ago; but now, it says, for the completion of it’.
So in other words, not living back a year ago, doing what we said we would do then, but the truth is that generosity isn’t looking back at something I once gave, something I once did, we’re as generous as our current reality. Where your hearts at today, that’s how generous you are. And I pray that we would be generous people who are futuristic, because we’re giving into future possibility, we’re giving into future opportunity, it looks forwards, it doesn’t look backward, and I think that is important.
Generosity doesn’t come with selfish motive, it doesn’t come with any motive of our own. In other words it doesn’t make us look better or feel better and be accepted by other people, no. Generosity is just a heart attitude, we give out of our hearts, it’s entirely without motive and it comes entirely without any strings attached. Which again I think is important, because sometimes people, they are generous but they make sure that they control the foundation or whatever it is that they give to, so in other words, there’s still that sense of control, you haven’t totally let it go. And generosity, sometimes, is all about giving where there is no natural hope of return, where we are not going to control, we just say, ‘God this is yours, I trust you with it, I’ll trust you Lord that you will make a difference with it’, in Jesus name.
The world of the generous gets larger and larger, I believe the world of the generous, the power it has in your life, is that generosity gives you an inner wealth and in that inner wealth there is nothing, nothing that can compare to what God does on the inside when someone truly understands the power of generosity.
In Proverbs Chapter 11, Verse 25, ‘The generous soul’, the soul, what is that? It’s obviously, it’s your emotions, the way you feel, your mind, the way you think, your choices, the decisions you make, your will, that’s what your soul is and the Bible here talks about a ‘generous soul’. And it says, ‘the generous soul will be made rich, and the person who waters will also be watered themselves’.
If you feel dry and parched on the inside, you start watering, you start giving, you start scattering and that’s where the Bible says you will be receiving yourself. The person who waters, will themselves be watered. And I genuinely believe that in the amazing capacity of generosity to bring a wealth to the inside.
Because so many people, they have a poverty, but it’s in their soul, they’ve got poverty of soul, you can tell by the way they speak, you can tell it by the things they say, they things they do, a poverty of soul. But you know, that wealth on the inside, it does mean literally that you have a different way of thinking, it does literally mean that you feel different, it literally means that you make different choices, think about that. Just by being generous, you feel different and it’s so true, any dad, any mum, anyone who has given a present and your excited about it and you watch your child’s eyes just makes you feel better.
When you live your life in a generous way, you get all caught up in your own need and you know there are things in your own life that you want and it’s amazing how it can shut you down on the inside, but you live generously and you just feel better, you think better. I love being around generous people because I love the way they think, they see life with an entirely different perspective, they really do.
And obviously, when you’re generous you make different decisions and obviously if we are generous people, all our decisions don’t involve what’s best for me. Our decisions have a whole lot more to do with what’s best for the world around and about me. How could I best make a difference? People aren’t necessarily naturally generous. So much of the words in the language around and about us is not generous.
I don’t think we should ever presume on our generosity, think I’m as generous as I need to be, I want to grow in generosity, I want to grow in the idea of living sacrificially and putting other people first. You never come second by putting God first. It doesn’t mean, you know, God won’t open up the windows of heaven and pour out blessing for you. Sometimes you can’t out give God because the blessing just overtakes you. Sometimes you almost feel apologetic when God blesses you, cause things come your way, you didn’t ask for them, you didn’t expect them, God just starts blessing you and the more generous you are, the more you open your life up to a life if faith, a life of trusting God, a life of saying, ‘Lord, I’m going to put you first and I’m going to take you at your word and I’m going to trust you to fulfil your promise in my life’.
Generosity brings a wealth to the inside, and do you know I have no doubt the power of generosity in our lives is that it literally does transform the way we see, we just see things different. I already mentioned this verse, Proverbs 22, verse 9, it talks about a generous eye. Have you still got a generous eye? Are you actually looking for ways and opportunities to be generous? It’s amazing how people tighten up when you begin to talk about money, it just tightens them up, it really does, and people make apologies.
Years and years ago I was in this, in Auckland in New Zealand, there was like this big combined church convention and they guy who was convening it, probably had to pay the bills for the entire thing, it was in a racecourse and he was talking about money and he did go on a bit, in fact he went on and on and on and I remember thinking to myself, you’ve talked me out of it, I was going to give, but I’m not going to now. And I felt very rationalized and very justified in thinking like that, but you know something, it was just meaning that I was stopping looking through generous eyes. All of a sudden I was looking for excuses instead of just looking at what I could do to make a difference and be part of the answer and not part of a problem.
We have to be really careful that we don’t take on some of the mindset of some of the world around and about us, who get upset about money and angry about money, people who point the finger at the church and start talking about money. Can I tell you right now, money is their problem, they have an issue with it and that’s why it makes them so angry. Other people who are generous on the inside, they love seeing people being blessed, they love seeing people, they love seeing God working in people’s lives, it’s a different spirit altogether, and I say lets’ not let that other spirit get on us, don’t let it get on you, don’t let it become a rationalizing, justifying thing that excuses the way you think and feel. Let’s in fact break the power of that and live our lives seeing through generous eyes because it changes what you see.
A long time ago, Bobbie and I were on the beach on holiday in Hawaii. And so we’re on the beach and there’s a lot of people around, but there’s a lot of Japanese people around and this old white lady was right beside us on her towel, she literally says out loud so everyone could hear, ‘I feel like I’m in Japan’, and you know, it was the most ungenerous thing. That very night I was watching television and I was watching the Government in Hawaii talking about the impact of Japanese tourism in Hawaii and how because of a recession at that time there were less tourists coming and it was hurting the country and I was thinking, what a different way of looking. The reality Hawaii is so much better off with the tourism and for the Japanese and what they pour into their economy, we better make sure we think and we speak and we live life believers [audience applause] we have to open up our hearts and open up our souls to bigger spiritedness, bigger thinking and really believe in Jesus name.
That God’s called us to live our life through generous eyes. Generosity, it positions you biblically, it really does! Listen to Deuteronomy, God’s promise to His people, in the Old Testament, Chapter 28, Verse 12-13, ‘The Lord will open to you good treasure, the Heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow and the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not beneath. If you heed the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today, and are careful to observe them.’ You will be the lender not the borrower, you will be the head and not the tail, you will be above and not beneath.
I wonder where life has got you weighed down. You feel like you’re always under the weight of debt, you feel like you’re always chasing your own tail, you feel like you’re never, ever getting ahead. And I do believe that when you live generously you open your life up to being the head and not the tail, you open your life up to being above and not beneath, to being the lender and not the borrower. Do you always feel in life that you’re always the borrower, always the one who’s got to go to the bank with your hand out?
You know, there are seasons in life, we’ve all been there, but you don’t have to stay there. Listen to what the word says, ‘live generously’ and then declare the word of the Lord, ‘I’m the head not the tail, I’m above and not beneath, I’m the lender not the borrower’, praise God.
Ha, ha, I really believe it. Generosity brings a healthy return, it really does! It brings a healthy return. Again Proverbs 11, verse 24-25, ‘There is one who scatters, yet increases more; there’s one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty. The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself.’
When I was in bible college, I had a great friend who was Sri Lankan, [Brian pronounces long name] he was an amazing guy, he was loved by everybody. He used to tell a story, way back in the early 1970’s how he arrived in Australia with just one American dollar, and when he left Australia, he had never, ever had to use that one dollar. Well he also used to tell how he had this shaving cream in the men’s area, in the men’s rest room for the college and because we boarded there, we stayed there, and he reckoned it was like the widow with the oil jars that never ran out. He just had his shaving cream there and everybody used this shaving cream, and the thing just never seemed to run out, it just kept giving and giving and giving and giving and giving and giving. And you know, he living his life with that kind of expectation, he was filled with testimonies of faith and stories of God’s provision.
And I do believe, we should never get away, we don’t give to get, we absolutely do not! We give out of a heart that wants to honour God, put Him first and make a difference in the world around and about us. However, when you do give, you trigger biblical principal, you trigger biblical possibility, you trigger miracles, you are a miracle waiting to happen, tell someone next to you, you are a miracle waiting to happen. And let’s believe from our generosity today that we see the increase, we see the testimonies, we hear the stories of the grace and the goodness of and almighty God, in Jesus name.
How do you become a more generous person? I think you can start by the words you speak, start to speak words of generosity, start to believe it will make a difference in your life. You see the lips of the righteous they do feed, and you know the bible tells us that in the very next verse, ‘The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and adds no sorrow with it.’ (Proverbs 10:22). That’s what I think about God’s blessing, it’s not like in life we don’t have seasons of sorrow and challenge and grief and difficulty, but it’s not the blessing of the Lord that brings that into your life. The blessing of the Lord adds into your life and brings no sorrow with it.
I was preaching in London, I walked into what was the back area, the green room and the guy who was speaking that night another speaker at this conference, and I said hi to him and he just grunted at me, he just grunted at me and pretty much ignored the fact that I was even there. And being such a humble man, I was ticked, I mean I was really annoyed. I mean who does this guy think he is? I went in there with every attitude you can imagine and this guy starts to preach and he preaches brilliantly, I mean he preached so incredibility. And afterwards, everyone’s telling him how wonderful it was, but I was refusing, there’s no way I was going to tell him how good it was, there is no way whatsoever. If he looked at me, I would have just glared at him, if it wasn’t for the Holy Spirit and I feel like the Holy Spirit convicted me, so I said, ‘hey man, that was fantastic’, and then he engaged and he was friendly. And not long after that, I got a shock message that he died. The whole thing was, he was in agony and pain, he had an illness that nobody even knew he had, so it wasn’t even about me at all, it was about him.
See when we don’t look through generous eyes, it’s so easy for us to make judgment and see things with a poor spirit, I pray that we will always be people who are not afraid to tell people, even if it goes against the grain, even if someone is doing the wrong thing by you, you are to speak life and encouragement, and just keep coming back with words of generosity. It’s a great way to learn how to be generous, I think we can learn generosity, and I also believe that one of the ways to becoming more generous is simply give away something that hurts.
Serving Jesus is sacrificial and sacrifice hurts, otherwise it’s not sacrifice. Do you give till it hurts? I always have to ask myself about Bobbie and I, are we going to give when it hurts? I hope so, because I see that as a challenge and the best way to become more generous is to be generous and give something that hurts. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2, ‘Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame’, it literally means it meant nothing to him, compared with the opportunity he had to give his very life, to make a difference for you and I, ‘Despising the shame he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God’, That’s true generosity.
You know, I think generosity can break strongholds in our lives, when people are generous it can break strongholds. Strongholds we not even realize their fear of going without, their fear of nothing. Maybe just having poor motive and being just about ourselves, it breaks strongholds in people’s lives when they learn to give till it hurts. And I honestly believe the power in one of the beautiful things about out church, and one of the reasons God has been so filled with grace towards our church is because the people of our church, you do, you give till it hurts, and that’s sacrifice, and that sacrifice has power to it and we should never underestimate it.
When Ben, my second son, was maybe 16, 17, Bobbie and I give him a surfboard for Christmas, and I was so excited about it, I think he was excited about it, but he only had it, it was still shiny, I don’t think it had even been in the surf. And he comes and he says, ‘dad, I feel like I should give this surfboard to Daniel’, Daniel was a school friend of his and I remember feeling indignant, I had given him something, a surfboard, I mean it doesn’t cost nothing, you know there’s sacrifice in this and you now something, Ben didn’t want to give it away. One thing about Ben, and I’m just showing off now about my own son, but he has always been a generous kid, always, I have never known him any different, he’s just a generous kid. He genuinely cared more about his friends happiness than he cared about his own, that’s what I see is generosity, you know, it has a cost to it, it’s sacrificial and again you feel joyful when you give sacrificially. You actually, you feel better, you feel blessed, it opens up something in your life. Let’s not be afraid to give away something that hurts.
I think through generosity we learn the importance of being kind rather than always being right, I’m that kind of person that I have to be right and that’s not generous. Proverbs 16, verse 2 and verse 3 says, ‘All the ways of a man are pure or right in his own eyes’, I look at everything through my eyes and that way I always kind of feel like I’m right. ‘But the Lord weighs the spirits, Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established’.
I just think sometimes being kind is so much more important than being right, and kindness is generosity. On the road when someone gets mad, Monday morning on the way to work, road rage, you know the power of kindness. I always remember my father used to tell this story about, he was, you know, he wasn’t in a good place and he had nervous breakdowns and stuff and he was all angry and bitter on the inside, and some guy cut him off on the way home from work and so my father winds the window down and this is what he says, he said, ‘where are you going?’ He said the guy just smiled at him and said, ‘home’. [Audience and Brian laugh] Do you ever notice that makes people even madder? When you just kill it with kindness, it just makes them even madder.
Let’s live not always having to be right, let’s live just wanting to be a blessing and wanting to be kind and wanting to make a difference and that’s what generosity looks like. I believe generosity, it really shows when you give and there’s no natural possibility of a return, it’s such a great way to live your life.”
Categories: Hillsong
“However, when you do give, you trigger biblical principal, you trigger biblical possibility, you trigger miracles, you are a miracle waiting to happen, tell someone next to you, you are a miracle waiting to happen.”
This man is a very, very sick pup.
Why do people fall for this doctrine of demons?!!!
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Timothy 6:10 KJV
Isn’t it funny, that GOD tells us where evil comes from, then every time “the CHURCH” doors are open, “god” loves for you to give “him” your money.
I don’t remember reading of a monetary system in heaven which leads me to believe that GOD DOESN’T NEED YOUR MONEY!!! Man does.