(ThyBlackMan.com) When we turn to Deuteronomy 11:16, we read, “Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them.” Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived. If I check myself, I don’t have to worry about you checking me. If I keep myself in line, I don’t have to worry about what anybody has to say. Why? Because I’m taking heed to myself.
That your heart, or spirit, be not deceived. There are spirits out there that will tell you that you can do whatever you want to do. You’re grown. That’s true. Man is a free moral agent. God will not force His will on your life. He only wants you to receive the blessings of God because they are there for you. He said, “Behold, I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life.” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Choose life, but He said that both of them are there.
The decision process is yours. The quality decision process belongs to you. “. . .and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them;” The scripture records that you turn away and serve other gods and worship them, such as the lotto, casino boats and dog tracks. It’s your money. I’m just showing you something. Now, here’s a financial plan that God has outlined for us. God says, “I guarantee that this will work. Prove Me. Try Me.” But we’d rather go somewhere and stick our money on a blackjack table or a tonk game or in a dice game or pitty-pat and believe that we’re going to 
win something, when all I’ve got to do is sow me some seed and I’ve got a guaranteed return.
God is the only Person I’ve met or heard about that gives you a ninety-percent increase on every dime you sow. That means that out of the ten cents He makes a penny. Everybody wants 60-40, 70-30. The average lawyer wants a third and he wants a retainer at the door. But we’d rather go on all these other opposites and look to all these other gods as our source when our father, Abraham says, “His name shall be known as Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord My Provider.” (Genesis 22:14) God said, “Make sure now. Take heed to yourselves that your job has not become your source.”
That’s just one vehicle that God has allowed to funnel finances into your life. That’s just one. He’s got other kinds of things He could do. He could have an uncle that you never knew about leave you a bunch of money or an oil field in Texas pumping oil. He can send somebody from Timbuktu with a million-dollar check. But if you box Him in and say, “This job is my source,” you’ve gotten another god.
“I’m going to the casino and see if I can’t hit big.” Well, you’ve got another god. All you’ve got to do is get you an envelope, find you some good hot soil where the church is growing and going, where the Spirit of God is and the people are receiving the Word, things are happening and they’re reaching the community, and sow that seed.
Deuteronomy 11:19: “And ye shall teach them your children” When you learn something you’re supposed to teach it to your children. But if you learned it wrong, you’ve been teaching them wrong. If you learned how to come to church and pay dues, you talk wrong when you teach them to pay dues. That’s not God’s way. He said, “Even from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances and have not kept them.” (Malachi 3:7)
Order is God’s way of doing things. That’s what an ordinance is. That’s God’s order for the way He wants to finance everything that He has to do.
“. . .teach them to your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou riseth up.” The Word, the Word, the Word. Teach them what thus saith the Lord all the time: at the dinner table, before they go to bed at night, “Baby, God loves you.” Before they go to school, “God loves you and He’s covering you. Just do what God says. Walk in His precepts and His examples and everything is going to be all right.”
Staff Writer; Dr. Henry W. Roberts, II
This man of god is the pastor/teacher of Word of Life Community Church of Whistler and Chickasaw, AL. For teaching materials, please call (251) 456-2652.