“ Pastor, your articles and books are really good. Instead of giving them out for free, why not sell them?”
Apostle Joshua Selman once taught about 3 dimensions of wealth. He called them Transactional Wealth, Transformational Wealth, and Sovereign Wealth. While Sovereign wealth is that which God bestows upon those who commit to advancing His kingdom, I’d need to elaborate on the other two for you to understand why my books and articles have remained free.
– TRANSACTIONAL WEALTH
This is wealth gathered through exchange of products and services. This kind of wealth accumulates based on your client-base. Don’t expect to be wealthy here if you’re not transacting anything.
Transactions can be in form of your job – rendering your skills to a company and earning a salary at the end of the month. It can also be a business where you render your services or sell your products for a fee. If you’re not providing a service, selling a product or earning a salary, you’d be poor in this dimension.
Quickly, let me show you 3 laws that govern TRANSACTIONAL WEALTH:
1. THE LAW OF VALUE
If you want to enjoy transactional wealth, then you must be valuable. Value is a measure of your usefulness. If you have anything that serves as a solution to someone else, then you’re valuable (e.g shoe shining, accountability, leadership, changing diapers, etc). Anything you do that adds value to another person makes you a valuable person.
If there is nothing about your life that people considers a solution, then you have a problem. You have to contact me after reading this for special counselling. If you can sing and people consider your songs inspiring, then you’re valuable. If you can drive people from one destination to another, then you’re valuable. Jesus could teach at age 12, Joseph could take care of his father’s sheep, Daniel could interpret dreams. What value is your life adding or capable of adding? You don’t have to know everything, just know something that can get people out of trouble.
The second law that governs Transactional Wealth is:
2. THE LAW OF PRODUCTIVITY
This is where you turn your products into services. People may applaud your values, but they only reward your productivity. For instance, how many church choristers have been nominated for Grammy? They won’t be known as long as all they engage is the first law. But if they master their songs and put them in a CD or online for sale, people will pay for it. The more you sell, the more money you make.
I write books and daily devotionals for free, and I’ve been doing that for a long time. But guess what? I don’t get a pay for it. However, when I mastered my writing skill, people began to pay me to write and develop contents for them.
Today, I run a mentorship course on inspirational writing. People contact me from far and near to write and edit their books for them. If I didn’t introduce writing services, people will still be clapping for me, and I’d probably be begging to eat. What’s the use of a clap if it can’t put food on my table? All those claps may be satiating for a moment, but you’d eventually get hungry for real food. And when that happens, you’d face reality.
David could defend his father’s sheep, he was valuable. He could kill wild beasts – just to protect the sheep. But he advanced his value into a service when he volunteered to face Goliath. Nobody paid him a dime when he protected animals, but when he advanced, the king promised him a wife and treasures.
For years now, there’s been an urgency in the spirit. They were going to kill Daniel and all the magicians because none of them could interpret the king’s dream. If Daniel didn’t turn his values into a service at that point, he would have died for nothing. Some people are busy looking for jobs when what they should be doing is turning their values into products and services. The service you’re stabbing may be what is delaying your prosperity.
The third law that governs Transactional Wealth is:
3. THE LAW OF EXCHANGE
This has to do with advertising your products or services. Turn your values into products and services all you want, but if nobody knows about you, you’d still be poor.
God marketed Jesus. After John baptized Him, heaven opened and a voice descended saying, “this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”. Imagine if the president of a nation does a public broadcast declaring that he is pleased with your services. What do you think will happen to you the next minute? I know, you’d never run out of business again.
Don’t hesitate to tell people about what you do. The more awareness you create, the more you’re likely going to sell and command prosperity. Your social media platforms should be for selling, not for playing. Stop posting selfies, post products and services. Who’s paying you for all those selfies you post. Yes, you’d attract “likes”, but who the “like” help?
Alright, that’s it for Transactional Wealth. Let’s see the second dimension of wealth. Ready?
– TRANSFORMATIONAL WEALTH
This is the wealth you gather through your investment in people over time. For some years now, I’ve invested my time and resources to being a blessing to people – transforming their lives by the things l share. They may not give me a dime for my services, they may not even sow any form of seed in my life, but this dimension of wealth has a way of getting the returns back to me.
When Jesus died for the world, many people still hated him. But today, many of those who hated Him now follow Him. This is about serving humanity; you can’t sow and not reap what you sow.
This is why we shouldn’t get agitated over the wealth of some pastors who are genuinely called by God. They’ve served, and God is paying them. The only challenge with this dimension of wealth is that it comes over a period of time, and sometimes it may not come during your lifetime, it would rather meet your children.
The church today is enjoying the investment of our fathers of faith. At some point they called Christians church rats. If a woman desired to marry a pastor back then, they’d check to see if she’s mentally unstable. But today, it’s the pride of most parents to give their daughters to a pastor. And that’s because the returns of the investments of our fathers of faith have landed in the church.
You must be willing to invest your resources in impacting lives. Somebody recently sent me a message saying “Sir, thank you for all you do, you’re a blessing to the body of Christ”. There is no day that I don’t receive messages like that. Honestly, even if I don’t want to be rich, it’s too late.
Now that you know why I do what I do, I encourage you to engage in transactional wealth, but also engage in transformational wealth.
I hope this has brought enlightenment to someone.
Remain ever blessed, in Jesus precious name!
#EmekaAnslem
