Name It and Claim It. Where have Prosperity Preachers gone wrong? They have brought Christianity into disrepute by claiming things that are luxurious and over-the-top, making Christianity out to be a fraud, corrupt, greedy, and deceitful. When things "claimed" do not materialize, they simply move on to the next "claim." I could go into detail, but I won't, because my concern here is to correct--not to harm.
When Jesus said, "whatsoever you ask for, believe it, and you will receive it." This sounds an awful lot like "name it and claim it!" But when viewed in light of the totality of Jesus' theology, in which he stated first of all that God's will is preeminent, it becomes clear that what Jesus meant was: "whatever you ask for *in the will of God* will be granted to you.
In other words, having been sent on a mission by God the Disciples could expect every need to be met in order to accomplish that mission. This was hardly "name it and claim it."
Many Prosperity Preachers are good people, and many of the things they asked for they received, because they were asking for things concerned with fulfilling their ministries. But they therefore got the wrong notion that everything they ask for that seemed godly *to them* they can receive in the same way. And when they didn't receive what they asked for, they just moved on, and ignored the failure of this doctrine.
James 4.What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures...
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
