In the United States, the Jewish people make up a mere 2% of the population. Yet they are some of the most influential people in the country.  

They fill the ranks of the top level of doctors, scientists, lawyers, educators and bankers. 

It is no secret that a quarter of all American Nobel Prize winners are Jewish. Forbes magazine found that the Jews make up two-fifths of the top 40 wealthiest Americans every year. Up to 40% of the partners at leading law firms in New York and Washington DC are also Jewish.  

“What is it about this small group of people and why are they so influential in our society? What are they doing that other people don’t do? What do they know that others don’t know?” Pastor Craig Hill asked his audience at the inaugural N5 (Nehemiah 5) conference held online on October 29-30.  

Pastor Craig Hill is the founder of Family Foundations International and a leading expert on topics such as family, marriage and personal wealth management.   

Pastor Craig Hill and his wife Janice. He is the founder of Family Foundations International (FFI), a Christian ministry dedicated to helping individuals, couples, and families become people of influence, and build a godly heritage for multiple generations.

At the N5 conference which sought to equip believers to steward financial resources according to God’s Word and for His kingdom purposes, Ps Craig Hill shared with them three key biblical wealth secrets that parents should teach their children.  

The first key, practised by the Jewish people, is knowing the importance of generational blessing.  

1. Bless your family at least once a week  

The first thing that Jewish people do is knowing how to bless their children, said Ps Craig. They understand the power of blessing. The meaning of the biblical Hebrew word for blessing is to “empower to prosper”.  

“So if you empower your daughter to prosper, what it means is not just to do well financially. A blessing can empower a son to prosper in his intimacy with God, in his prayer life, in his emotional well-being, in his relationships, in his studies, his future career, his future ministry, his future marriage with his future children, his future health, and yes, of course, his finances as well,” said Ps Craig.  

He noted that people in today’s culture use the word “blessing” very lightly.  

“We just say to people, God bless you, brother. Even when somebody sneezes, people say bless you. Well, what does it mean? Not a lot, just words,” he said.  

Yet he pointed to the biblical story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis chapter 27 in which the two sons understood that if they could get their father to impart that blessing to them, it would open a door in the spirit for them to prosper. They understood it in such a way that one brother was willing to lie and deceive just to get that blessing while the other brother was so devastated that he wanted to kill his brother when he found out that he had lost it.  

“What was so powerful, so important about this blessing? Were they looking for just words from their dad?” asked Ps Craig.  

He posited that a blessing is a spiritual impartation that comes from God through a father or mother that lands in the heart of a son or daughter, and opens the door in the spirit for them to prosper. 

Jacob, who stole his father’s blessing from his brother, eventually became a large and wealthy tribe. His people occupied a lot of land, conquered his enemies and experienced very little sickness. Esau became the tribe of Edom, which was a small tribe. His tribe never had much land or wealth, and was frequently overrun by enemies. They struggled for their whole lives.  

Knowing the power of this impartation, the Jewish people today make it a point to have dinner together as a family once a week on Shabbat or Friday night, said Ps Craig.  

“After dinner, the father looks his wife in the eyes and blesses her, and says something like, ‘My beautiful wife, you’re more beautiful than anyone that I know. You are a godly woman. You’re a woman of prayer. He reads the second half of Proverbs 31 over his wife and personalises it. What do you think that does to the heart of a wife? She just comes alive on the inside,” said Ps Craig.  

Pastor Craig Hill having a moment with his wife, Janice, at a conference.

After that, the father and mother look their children in the eyes and they bless each one of them.

For instance, a parent may say: “Son, you’re not an ordinary young man. You are connected by covenant to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You can expect the good hand of your God to be over you all the days of your life. You will be blessed when you go out and come in. I noticed you have an interest in science. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day you would be a doctor. But not just a common doctor, you will be a specialist. People will fly from around the world to consult with you, son. God will send you a wonderful wife. She will be beautiful. She will love you. You will love her. You will have many children. Your children will be blessed. I love you. I’m proud of you. I bless you.”  

“What do you think will happen to that young man or young woman whose father and mother speak words like that over them every single week?” asked Ps Craig.  

Pastor Craig Hill with his children and grandchildren, whom he and his wife bless regularly.

Such weekly rituals are also fruitful because it forces parents to keep short accounts with their children.  

“You’re forced to make it right on the blessing night because when you go to look your daughter in the eyes and if you have not made it right with her, she won’t make eye contact with you. You’re going to have to repent at least once a week and ask them to forgive you,” said Ps Craig.  

Having such a posture of humility and repentance goes back to the literal meaning of the word ‘bless’, which means to kneel in front of someone.  

“In today’s culture, the person receiving the blessing kneels and a person giving the blessing stands above them. In God’s culture, it’s the opposite,” noted Ps Craig.  

Jesus served his disciples by kneeling before them, washing their feet and blessing them. 

“Look them in the eyes, repent if you’ve wounded them and bless them. Speak scripture to them and speak what God has shown you about their lives. It is not a common practice but it is a powerful thing you can do in your family.”  

2. Don’t put all your money into one jar and spend first 

Most of us know Proverbs 22:6 which says to “train up a child in the way he should go”, noted Ps Craig, but few people read on to the next verse to see what they should train their child in. The next verse says: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”  

“That is an awesome Scripture to teach our children,” said Ps Craig.  

Many people, like the allegorical families who live on the first and second river, take all their money and put it in one receptacle, such as a bank account.  

“They spend first and they pay their bills first. Then after that, if they’re Christians, they try to tithe, give, save and invest. But you know how much is left to do those things if you spend first? The answer is zero, it’s very hard to do any of the rest of that,” said Ps Craig.   

In contrast, the people on the third river do not put all their money in one receptacle and they do not spend their money first.  

“They have chosen to be wealthy by choosing to be a master rather than a servant. They put their money in at least five different jars. They tithe first, then give offerings second and they save third. They invest fourth, and they spend what’s left,” he said.  

The very first qualification is that believers learn how to manage money that belongs to God by giving the Lord’s tithe. Next would come the offerings where Christians are led by God to give to needs around them. Then they save and invest certain sums before spending what is left.  

“The people who live on the third river use their money for very intentional, specific purposes, and they spend what’s left. Spending first and then trying to allocate money for other things after that is impossible. It never works,” said Ps Craig.  

3. Learn how to multiply your resources and break the power of debt 

Proverbs 22: 7 states that the borrower is a slave to the lender. Ps Craig realised that most people today, including himself in the past, have multiple masters who are ahead of Jesus.  

“People have a master for their house because they take a mortgage loan. They have a master for their car finance payments and then they have a master for their credit cards,” said Ps Craig.  

“I realised that if Jesus himself walked into that church or into our houses and said, I would like you to direct money to give to a missions project in India, we could not do it. That’s because 100% of our cash flow was already allocated to debt obligations and expenses that we had signed up for while we were second river dwellers – paying our house, car and all the different expenses.

“If the Lord Himself said I want you to give to this, it wouldn’t matter whether we wanted to or not, we couldn’t because we are slaves. Jesus is not our master. We have multiple masters ahead of him,” said Ps Craig.  

He said it is a cultural deception to believe that incurring debt for personal consumption is normal. 

“It was a lie that I bought into in the past myself. I literally thought I couldn’t have a house if I didn’t borrow money from a bank. I couldn’t have a car if I didn’t borrow money from a bank. I believed it for the first half of my adult life but around the year 2000, I started to get a revelation from Proverbs 22:7. I’ve been deceived all my life.

“God never intended for me to be a slave. Nobody forced me to do it. Nobody put a gun to my head and said borrow money for your house, borrow money for your car. I did. I chose to be a slave,” said Ps Craig. 

Four generations ago, nobody had any debt, he added.  
 
“Not our great grandparents, and probably even our grandparents. How did we get from nobody having any debt to everybody having debt? It is the spirit of Mammon that’s been operating and convincing people to borrow money. It’s a way of enslaving nations and generations. People teach their children to take on debt by their own behaviour,” said Ps Craig.  

When he realised that he was not in control of his finances, Ps Craig asked God at that time if he should sell his house. He wanted to be able to use his money to do what God tells him to do instead of having it allocated to all kinds of other masters.  

“Son, that’s not my plan. I want to teach you how to eliminate debt. If you will do the natural, I will do the supernatural,” came God’s reply to him. 

So, Ps Craig proceeded to calculate how long it would take for him to pay off his house. He did not have a car loan or credit card debt at that time. He calculated that it would take him and his wife about 11-and-a-half years to pay off the house debts if they were to tighten their belts and pay off more every month.  

God, however, directed his attention to his investment or multiplication jar and asked him how much was in it.  

At that point, he had not put anything in that jar because he had never been successful at investing or bothered much with it.  

The Lord told him to put something in it.  

“I said, Lord, I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know how to invest. And the Lord said He could bring a 1000:1 natural or supernatural multiplication factor to my life tomorrow. But guess what? 1000 times zero is still zero,” said Ps Craig.  

He went back to the Bible and noticed a simple principle – multiplication starts from something, not nothing.  

When Jesus multiplied the food for the 5,000 men and all their families, he did not start with nothing. He took a little boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fishes and did the miracle of feeding the thousands. 

When Elisha encountered a widow in 2 Kings 4, she told him that her husband had died and his creditor was about to take her sons as his slaves in lieu of her husband’s debts. 

“When Elisha asked her what she had in the house, the first words that came out of her mouth was ‘nothing’. That’s what the enemy always causes people to focus on – what they can’t do and what they don’t have,” observed Ps Craig.  

Later on, the widow remarked that she did have one small jar of oil and Elijah instructed her to use it and, eventually, it multiplied supernaturally. 

“God told me, Son, I can’t do anything with what you don’t have. And I can’t help you with what you can’t do. Quit telling Me what you can’t do and what you don’t have. Would you please tell Me what you do have?” said Ps Craig.  

He began to put a small amount of money in the multiplication jar. A few months later, God brought across his and his wife’s path a mentor who had a particular investment strategy. 

“God pointed me to Genesis 1:28, which gives the command for all humanity: Be fruitful and multiply. I told God that I thought that verse was just about having children or spiritual children,” said Ps Craig.  

“Yes, it is about that, He said, but he also added, Son, I’m a multiplier. I multiply everything I touch. It’s My nature and you are created in My image. I want to teach you how to multiply financial resources,” said Ps Craig.  

Not long after he put some money in the multiplication jar, he invested it in a particular investment which was introduced by his mentor. It multiplied to such an extent that he paid off his house mortgage in the next three years. He made his last house payment in 2003 and has never been in debt again.  

“God also gave us a strategy on how to deliver our children from debt so that nobody in our future generations would ever be in debt. My hope is that we would break the spirit of Mammon over our minds and lives and not use personal debt for consumption,” said Ps Craig.  

“May Singapore be known as a nation of blessing from one generation to another instead of being in bondage to debt.”  

Find more details on the five biblical principles on financial stewardship and multiplication in Pastor Craig Hill’s book, Five Wealth Secrets 96% of Us Don’t Know.

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