So I grew up with poverty and poverty framed the way I viewed the world to a large extent.

Wow.

That's quite a statement right there.

So really poverty is almost a way of thinking before it's a reality.

It is.

And then what happens is people start spiritualizing poverty, and that's what...

Wow.

Poverty was preached over the pulpit.

You know, God's people were poor, the apostles were poor, the son of man had not worth the

blaze head, and Peter and John at the temple said silver and gold, have I none?

And so a lot of scriptures were pulled out of context and used to justify poverty and never

at any point where there was anyone ever challenged to get an education to get a better job

or to be better stewards or to do anything to break it.

It's let's accept it.

Let's spiritualize it and let's wear our poverty on our sleeve as a badge of honor

and a badge of our spirituality.

Yeah.

So that was, there was a lot of that in the church contexts in which I put it up.

And when that change for me is when I became of age, I moved to

Little Rock and got under the Ministry of Bishop Holmes. And he was the first person that

I'd heard preach the theology of blessing.

He talked a lot about the blessings of God, getting in the flow of blessing.

...