For all of my life I’ve known financial poverty. For years I
had spiritual and emotional poverty as well. But since I was born again I’ve
been spiritually and emotionally filled to over flowing with the love of God in
such a way that I have enough left over to pour back out to others. I still
have a bank account that is basically non-existent – more debt than anything
else and what little comes in goes right back out again. But a strange thing
happened when I started to trust God with my finances. All of my bills are
paid, even when I look at the amount coming in and it doesn’t match the amount
going out. I have delicious food in my refrigerator, delicious things in the
freezer, delicious meals of every kind imaginable that I make for myself all the
time. When I first moved to New York I learned to cook and it came very
naturally to me. I can go into any kitchen and cook gourmet meals, and my own
kitchen is so well stocked all the time that it’s easy to whip up something
divine. I have champagne taste on a non-existent budget, but somehow I’m eating
five star meals. The other day I bought something like 22 mangos for three
dollars – I lost count of how many there were when I was putting them away.
That kind of thing happens all the time. Where I live now there are stores that
have manager specials and discount produce racks and a farmer’s market that
sells boxes and baskets and bags of food for one, two or three dollars,
depending on how big the box, basket or bag is. I’ll get bags of avocados and
bags of apples, boxes of zucchini and mushrooms – I just got three containers
of the most delicious strawberries I’ve had in years, three one-pound packages
for two dollars, and a basket of I don’t
know how many pounds of escarole for $1.99. I work in Soup Kitchens and Food
Pantries, teaching nutrition and wellness classes, and they give me food too. And
then there’s my wardrobe – the thrift stores near where I live are amazing, and
even the sales at some of the regular stores make me think I’m living in
another time. I’m eating and dressing better than I ever did in my life, and I’m not
spending much money at all.
Jesus says in John 10:10, “I came so that they may have life
and have it abundantly.” He also says at the beginning of that verse, “The
thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” So yes, the devil, or the
enemy as we call him when we don’t want to even say that “d” word, does exist,
and he is trying to steal and kill and destroy. But Jesus has given us His word
that He came so that we could have life abundantly and His word is the only thing that matters. I remember a time when I
was in church, and I was praying about my finances. It was a particularly
difficult time for me in the early days of being born again and I wasn’t used
to this new life of trusting in God as my provider. I was used to having money
and credit cards and being able to spend what I wanted when I wanted to.
Suddenly I was in this situation of being deeply in debt and not knowing how I
could pay my bills and my rent and not knowing sometimes even how I could buy
food or take the subway. It was during a time in the service when the Pastor
asked people to pray for each other, and a woman asked me what my need was. I
told her it was finances, and she said, “You’re not claiming God’s blessing
over your life.” She then proceeded to pray in a very fiery way, “breaking the
bonds of satan” over my finances and "claiming" a financial blessing for me. It was very
impressive, but I kept feeling that something was wrong with what she was
saying. There are times that we do need to go into warfare prayers – I’ve done
it for myself and friends and family often enough, but for some reason I kept
feeling that this was not a time that warfare was needed. I didn’t feel like I
wasn’t receiving God’s blessing or that anything was blocking my finances in
the spiritual realm. I didn’t know what was wrong, but it wasn’t that. And then
slowly over time, as I continued to talk to God about it, He showed me that all
of my life I had been in bondage to the idea of money. That it was so important
to my family and the lack of it had caused so much stress in my own life, that
I saw everything in terms of dollars and cents. I even saw God’s love in those
terms – if He was really blessing me, He would make me financially successful,
right? But money has nothing to do with security and stability with God. He
invented everything and He owns everything and He’s in control of everything.
As soon as I started to understand that fact, the things that I needed started
to come out of nowhere. Sometimes in the form of actual money, but sometimes in
the form of a box of mangos for three dollars or a chic white wool suit for a
dollar.
When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven, He gives lots
of examples in parables. The mustard seed that grows into a huge tree for birds
to nest in, the yeast that makes a huge amount of dough rise, the man who finds
a great treasure in a field or the merchant who finds a pearl of great value and then they sell everything they have to buy these things they have found.
Everything is described in ways that are abundant, but there really isn’t any
money involved except for the man and the merchant who sell everything to buy
the field and the pearl – the treasure could be anything, and it’s not
described as money, and a pearl is a pearl – unless you sell it, it doesn’t mean
anything financially.
In Isaiah 65:17, God speaks about something new He will
create, “See I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will
not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” This speaks of a time in the
future for everyone, but it also speaks to us individually about what He can do
in our lives right now. In verse 23 He says, “They will not labor in vain, nor
will their children be doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed
by the Lord, they and their descendants with them. Before they call I will
answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.” This makes me think of that
woman in the church that day, claiming God’s promises over my life. He was
already willing and able to give them to me, I just hadn’t figured out how to
let Him provide for me in the way He wanted to. I was still trying to live my
life in the old way when it came to money, and I was not allowing Him to show
me that money doesn’t really matter at all.
I’m not going to say that we don’t need money – God has
provided that when I need it. Jesus knows we need money to live on this earth.
In Mark 12:17, when He is asked about paying taxes, He says “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God
what belongs to God.” He may be mystical and spiritual, but He’s also
practical. He advocates feeding and clothing people, and paying your taxes. He’s
realistic about the world we live in. But He also doesn’t want us to be focused
on money in the way that we can become. When money defines us, or makes us
scared to stand up for the truth, when we feel like we’re nothing if we don’t
have it, or that we are something if we do, that’s when He gets worried for our
souls because He knows that we can’t live our lives in the abundance He has to
offer because we’re so busy trying to store our riches here on earth. We may be
so focused on money that we lose our focus on God. We may lose our soul trying to gain the world.
In Matthew Chapter 13, Jesus tells the parable of the sower
and the seeds. He talks about the different kinds of soil that the seed falls
on and how it grows or doesn’t grow. If we have so much that is on our mind all
the time, so many “cares of the world” that weigh us down, if we can’t take
that leap of faith to trust that God will provide for our needs, then we run the risk of
being choked like the thorns choke the plants before they can grow. In verse 22,
He says, “The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the
word, but the worries of this life, and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the
word, making it unfruitful.” In Isaiah 65, He is promising that we will have
abundance, but we might miss it if we are so caught up in how we think abundance
should look.
In Luke Chapter 13, He tells the parable of the fig tree, a
story about a man who wants to cut down a fig tree in his vineyard because it
is not bearing fruit and has not in three years. But the man who takes care of
the vineyard says, “leave it alone for one more year and I’ll dig around it and
fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine, if not then cut it down.” This
is the kind of patience God has for each one of us. He is not looking at us as
a profit/loss measure of deliverables. Why then can’t we let Him provide for us
what we need, allowing Him to show us the places where we can let go of those
things that are holding us back from living our lives in abundance, those
things that keep us focused on the world so that we cannot bear fruit.
Later on in Luke 13, He talks about entering the Kingdom of
Heaven through the “narrow door.” He talks about how there are people who think
they are living righteous lives, but that when they expect to enter Heaven, He
will say He never knew them. The Message translation has something interesting
in verses 23-27, “A bystander said, ‘Master will only a few be saved?’ He said,
‘Whether a few or many is none of your business. Put your mind on your life
with God. The way to life – to God!- is vigorous and requires your total
attention. A lot of you are going to assume that you’ll sit down to God’s
salvation banquet just because you’re been hanging around the neighborhood all
your lives. Well, one day, you’re going to be banging on the door, wanting to
get in, but you’ll find the door locked and the Master saying, ‘Sorry, you’re
not on my guest list.’ You’ll protest, ‘But we’ve known you all our lives,’
only to be interrupted with His abrupt, ‘Your kind of knowing can hardly be
called knowing. You don’t know the first thing about me.’
It is scary to me to think that I could walk around my whole
life thinking that I knew the Lord, only to find out that I’d been deceiving myself
the whole time. But it’s easy enough to do. Something happens to our income, we
lose money or a job, there is a calamity, a natural disaster, an illness. We
make a decision to do something that is not quite ethical, or we try to
manipulate a situation, maybe lying about someone or something to help us get
ahead. Or maybe we’ve never had any money, maybe it’s something very simple
that comes from our feeling of lack. We decide that we deserve more than we
have, so we make a choice that is a choice that God has told us not to choose. I’ve
done that in my life, taken jobs that were suspect, worked for people who were
unethical, had relationships with people who were not free to have a
relationship with me. Each and every time I knew in a deep part of myself that
I was doing something wrong, but I deceived myself into believing that it was
all right. I justified the decisions I had made very easily - I need a job, I need money, I need love and I deserve these things. God doesn't say that we don't need or deserve these things, but He does tell us to be careful about how we go about getting them.
In Matthew 6:33 Jesus tells us, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and
His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” That is how we
hear it most often, from The King James Bible and it resonates, but I think The
New Living Translation says it even more beautifully because of its simplicity,
“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give
you everything you need.” It’s an equation that doesn’t make sense to us when
we think about the way that the world operates. It seems that we need to be
seeking the money, following our bliss, looking for Mr. or Ms. Right, trying to
get ahead, trying to get one over, but God says to seek Him, and He will give
us everything we need, and give it to us in abundance. It may not appear in the
form that we expect it, it may appear before you even know you need it, it may
appear as something that you are not feeling ready for, it may come walking
into your life in a way that makes you wonder if it’s from God. But as long as
you remember that God is the one who is in control, as long as you are seeking
Him and are open to receiving His provision, whatever it is, if it is from Him, He will show you how
it fits beautifully into the abundant life He has promised you.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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