Blessed Friday unto you, my dear beloved. I hope you are still well and in good health.
In the story of the Bible, God is depicted as the generous host who provides for the needs of His guests. However, us humans live from the mindset of scarcity and hoard God's many gifts. In this message, I explore God's plan for overcoming our selfishness by giving the ultimate gift of Himself in the person of Jesus.
Imagine your friend invites you to a party. You arrive there and there are a lot of people, decorations, food and drinks. There's enough for everyone. When you get hosted by someone that generous, you don't have to worry about your needs. You can just enjoy yourself and focus on people around you, that is what a good host wants for their guests. And this is the picture of the world we find in the Bible. Creation is an expression of God's generous love. He is the host and humans are His guest in the world of opportunities and abundance. And we are called to keep the party going, to spread His goodness.
This is a beautiful picture, but it is not the way people experience the world. Rather, we find the world of scarcity and struggle, not abundance. And Jesus grew up in that kind of world, under military occupation, people losing their land or families to debt and poverty. And yet He would say things like this: "Look at the birds, they don't store up food for themselves, yet they have enough, or consider the wildflowers. They are beautiful and abundant, and they don't stress about their existence. And you are to live that way, too" (read Like 22:34).
But surely Jesus knew that things don't always work out. Sometimes, there's really not enough. And Jesus did experience poverty first-hand, but He viewed the world through the story of the Hebrew scriptures, which claimed that scarcity problem isn't caused by lack of resources. Rather, the problem is our attitude of mindset that God cannot be trusted. "Maybe God is holding out on me? Maybe there's not enough? And maybe I should take matters into my own hands." And once we are deceived into that mindset of scarcity. We can justify the impulse to take care of me and mine before anyone else.
And that leads to envy, anger, violence and a world where it seems like there's not enough. The party is over, it is turned into a battleground. But God wants humans to experience His generosity. So, He chooses one people, the family of Abraham. He promises to give them the abundance that He wants for everybody else. God will provide that they need, all they have to do is trust His generosity. And through them the world will see how generous the host really is.
But that is not what happens, Abraham's descendants, the Israelites, enter the land of abundance and they promptly forget the host who gave it to them. They act like it's all theirs and like there's not enough. It leads to wars and Israel's self-destruction. If I were the host of the party, I would just give up, don't you think? But God doesn't. What He does is surprising, He gives another gift. But this gift is different, what God gives is Himself.
Jesus the host Himself comes to join in the spoiled party. And notice, Jesus lives with the conviction that there's enough. And that our generous host can be trusted. His mindset of abundance allowed Him to live sacrificially and generously even towards His enemies.
And Jesus called His followers to trust in God's abundance, like Him. That's why He said things like, "Sell your possessions and give to the poor, or don't worry about your life (Luke 12:33). He is inviting us to live a different story. One that is built on trust in God's goodness and love. But living generously doesn't mean life is going to be well. Look at Jesus, He was betrayed by His friends and He suffered. But this was no surprise to Jesus, He knew people would take advantage of His generosity. In fact, it was His plan. Jesus know we are all hopelessly deceived by this lie that there is not enough.
And that lie needs to be defeated. So, that is what Jesus was doing when He gave us the gift of His life. Jesus' death was the ultimate expression of God's generous love. God's love can turn death into life and scarcity back to abundance. Or as Apostle Paul put it, "You know the gift of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, that even though He was rich, for your sake He became poor so that you through His poverty, might become rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9)
And, Jesus called His followers to live like the real party has begun. He called it the Kingdom of God. Our invitation beloved to this party, is yet another gift, the personal presence of God's own Spirit, that can teach us to trust the generosity of the host just like Jesus did. When you believe there's enough, you start seeing opportunities for generosity everywhere! With our time, money and our attention. One of the most important ways that we can experience the abundance of God's new creation, is sharing with others because of our trust that God is the generous host! #abundance #generosity #wisdom #trustGodwisdom #faithoverfear #believe
