Poverty

Poverty, or financial hardship, appears in the book as a season of material limitation that places faith under pressure. Hank Kunneman describes it through his early married life, when he and Brenda counted every penny, struggled to make ends meet, and learned to connect financial decisions with obedience, giving, and persistent trust in God. The condition is portrayed as painful and humiliating, but also as a spiritual test whose decisive question is whether people will abandon their confidence in divine provision before the promised change arrives.

Definition and Lived Conditions

Poverty is made concrete through the household economy of Hank Kunneman and Brenda Kunneman. Their resources were so restricted that they carried a calculator through the grocery store to ensure that their purchases did not exceed the few dollars available. The word “money” itself had become depressing, turning an ordinary shopping trip into an exercise in anxiety, arithmetic, and restraint. Their hardship was therefore not an abstract theological topic: it governed what they could buy and made each checkout counter a test of endurance.

The same condition appeared in their transportation. They owned several poor-quality cars, some acquired from friends or family members. Most were rusted-out vehicles, except for one that was merely average but so large that its hood seemed capable of holding an airplane. One especially defective car had been bought for four hundred borrowed dollars and caught fire whenever it idled for more than about three minutes. On a snowy morning, Hank Kunneman saw flames under the hood, ran outside, and threw snow across the hood and grille until the fire went out. The unreliable car became both an embarrassment and a reminder that sustained faith did not immediately remove practical hardship.

The “Process” of Financial Faith

The book frames poverty as a prolonged process rather than an instant reversal. Hank Kunneman and Brenda Kunneman tithed, gave offerings, held to the Word of the Lord, and relied on promises concerning prosperity, yet the desired change took years. Their experience is described as wrestling: they were required to use faith repeatedly while learning to obey God financially, rather than receiving an immediate solution that would bypass endurance.

The grocery calculator became a symbol of the tension between prudence and dependence. Eventually, Hank Kunneman went to the store without it, describing the decision as almost heretical—not because he intended to spend foolishly, but because he believed the family needed a breakthrough and that he had reached a point where he would have to rely on faith or die. As each item passed across the checkout counter, he sweated under the pressure of the decision. The scene presents financial hardship as a place where belief is not expressed only in worship or speech but in the fear surrounding ordinary purchases.

This period also tests the interpretation of delay. The book insists that people must continue practicing every biblical principle they know: sowing seed, giving, and speaking the Word. Poverty can persuade a person that God is inattentive or that blessing belongs to other people, but the narrative treats that conclusion as precisely the defeat the devil seeks to produce. Prolonged deprivation can create a mental picture of permanent lack, making the sufferer feel unworthy to receive anything good; persistence is therefore presented as resistance to both circumstance and internalized unworthiness.

Poverty, Giving, and Prosperity

The book explicitly places financial hardship alongside healing as one of the two dominant areas for which people need prayer and a harvest of blessing. It argues that many people live and die with problems in these areas and rejects the claim that money itself is evil. Money is described as paper and coins; the moral danger lies instead in the love of money and in the wrong use of it. Financial blessing is considered legitimate only when the heart remains oriented toward God rather than self-indulgence.

Within this framework, prosperity carries obligations. Wealth must not produce arrogance or become an object of trust. It may be enjoyed, but it must also be used for good purposes, expressed through generosity and willing sharing. The book therefore presents a five-part ethic: people should not be arrogant about money, should not trust in its uncertainty, may enjoy it, must use it rightly, and must give generously. Poverty is not treated as proof that financial desire is automatically corrupt; instead, the reader is encouraged to ask God for financial provision while keeping motives and conduct aligned with these principles.

Financial giving is also defined as seed. The seed may be a monetary offering, time spent serving within the body of Christ, or private time in prayer. After sowing, the believer must “water” the seed by praising God, speaking about divine promises, and waiting through the seedtime period without quitting during spiritual drought. The metaphor turns poverty into a temporal problem as well as a monetary one: the harvest may require a growing season whose length is not yet known, and impatience can interrupt the process by which the answer is expected to mature.

Reversals and Material Provision

The narrative’s strongest reversal comes after years of scarcity. Hank Kunneman returned home tired from a ministry trip and received a persistent phone call from someone who insisted on visiting with something important to give him. About two hours later, the visitor handed him car keys and told him the car was his. The gift was a brand-new luxury car, which Hank Kunneman and Brenda Kunneman could either drive or trade for something else they wanted. Their reaction was speechlessness, followed by disbelief and nearly an attempt to refuse the gift because Hank Kunneman felt undeserving and worried about what other people might think.

The luxury car does not erase the earlier poverty; it functions as the narrative’s material sign of reversal after a long period of disciplined waiting. Its force depends on the contrast with the four-hundred-dollar car that caught fire, the borrowed money, the rusted vehicles, and the grocery calculator. The change is therefore presented not as ordinary financial improvement but as an unexpected provision arriving after the couple had continued to tithe, give, speak the Word, and refuse to abandon their expectation of blessing.

A related reversal occurs in the history of Hank Kunneman’s newly formed church. When a leaseholder decided that Sunday services could no longer continue because praise and worship with drums and guitars disturbed a neighboring tenant, the church had only a few days to find another meeting place. The small membership prayed and refused to give up until God intervened. An unaffiliated business professional negotiated on their behalf, and the property manager offered another space in the strip mall. It was larger and more expensive, but the move eventually expanded the congregation from one small bay to three bays and ultimately to seven times the original space. In this account, financial limitation becomes the setting for institutional expansion rather than the final measure of what the church can receive.

Public Risk and the Theology of Provision

The book extends its argument beyond household poverty to collective vulnerability. After the September 11 attacks, churches and prayer meetings filled as people sought God amid national uncertainty, but the renewed dependence lasted only briefly. Hank Kunneman calls this pattern risky because seeking God only when disaster arrives leaves people waiting for the next misfortune instead of cultivating regular fellowship and daily commitment.

The same logic is applied to war and natural disasters. Hank Kunneman contrasts the rapid seizure of Baghdad by American troops after twenty-one days with later scenes of soldiers dying amid widespread violence, attributing the difference, in his theological interpretation, to the loss of sustained prayer for military personnel. He also recounts prophetic warnings concerning hurricanes in Florida: an initial prayer effort did not prevent the storms, but the following year hundreds prayed fervently and refused to accept a negative outcome, after which the named storm did not strike. He further reports that collective prayer in 2006 coincided with the absence of major hurricanes hitting the United States after several record hurricane years.

The account of tornadoes makes the same point through personal trial and mixed results. During one storm, Hank Kunneman and Brenda Kunneman spoke to a tornado said to be less than a mile from their home, but a large branch struck the house and they fled to the basement. On another occasion, they spoke to a forming tornado near a medical office building, and the storm dissipated after the tornado rose back into the sky. The differing outcomes did not cause them to abandon the practice of speaking to threatening circumstances; instead, the contrast is used to argue for continued spiritual growth and persistence.

Across these examples, poverty belongs to a wider theology of risk. Whether the danger is an empty bank account, a failing car, an endangered church lease, war, hurricanes, or a tornado, the prescribed response is not occasional panic but sustained prayer, giving, declaration, and trust. The book’s central claim is that financial hardship should not become the reason a person gives up before the harvest; it should become the setting in which endurance, ethical stewardship, and confidence in God’s provision are repeatedly tested.