Living From Abundance

Alright, time to dive back into writing again. 🙂 It’s been a whirlwind of a few weeks here with camp and teams coming and all the summer happenings. And the busyness isn’t over just yet. But thankfully, this weekend, I’ve had (or created) some time to just sit and reflect on what the Lord has been teaching me lately, and I figured it’s time to share. 🙂

I recently learned a new word in Romanian (okay, I’ve been learning lots of words everyday, my Romanian is improving a lot, but I still have a long way to go) but this word in particular is one that I’ve heard in several different contexts lately: belșug. It means abundance, like an abundance of a harvest, wealth beyond belief. I first read the word from a Bible verse posted in the kitchen where I live, and have since noticed it in sermons and songs that I hear. It’s kind of funny sounding to me, belșug, but the word abundance has been on my heart a lot. As has the word scarcity. Have you ever heard of the concept of having a “scarcity mindset?” Basically it’s the idea of living from the belief that there are limited resources, so the resources you do have need to be hoarded or used frugally. This is something that I see sometimes as a social worker, people who have gone hungry hoard food even when there is a huge dinner table set before them, or they hide money away in different places because they have gone without before. But these last few weeks the Lord has been showing me that I frequently live with a scarcity mindset too. But for me, I live believing I have a scarcity of time. 

For example, I pride myself on being an efficient person. I like finding ways to accomplish tasks well, but also quickly. Like literally, you should see me go to the grocery store. I have a list, I know exactly where the things are on the shelves of my preferred grocery store, and I treat the aisles (and if I’m being honest, sometimes the people) like an obstacle course that I’m being timed on. After all, the faster I accomplish task A, the more time I have to either spend on task B, or if I hurry through boththen I can accomplish even more tasks in a shorter amount of time! What a win, right? I can be super effective because I can do so much running through life! right? …well, wrong. I mean, maybe technically right, but at what cost? You see, I sometimes tend to measure my effectiveness by the list of things I can accomplish in a given day. After all, there are only24 hours in a day, and only7 days in a week and only52 weeks in a year…how am I supposed to do all that I want to, all that I believe God has called me to do in that amount of time? While my mind and heart know running faster only perpetuates the problem, sometimes it’s the easiest thing to believe. 

But then, the Lord just gives me a minute to stop. breathe.Recognize that I’m living with a scarcity mentality when He has given me an abundance. A belșug, if you will. And recognizing this abundance is only possible when I shift how I view myself and my role in ministry. When I see my work as so important, I start to think God needs me. And this, my friend, is a dangerous thing to think. Because it shrinks God, puts him in a box, makes Him less than all-sufficient. And we would never in our right minds call Him lacking, right? But sometimes I act like that. OR I think that somehow I need to earn a place in ministry, I need to earn his approval. But that’s also wrong. God lavishes his love and approval on me because He wants toand so He made that lavishing possible through Christ. And when I am in Christ, I don’t have to worry about a scarcity of time, because my sole purpose is to glorify God and bring him joy. And I will get to do that for ETERNITY. like, woah. Just sit with that for a minute. or, you know, an hour. 

Because you know what I’m learning? The only fix for a scarcity mindset is to dwell on the abundance that I really have. For me, and my scarcity of time, it means giving chunks of my day, my week, my year, to just sitting with the Lord. No agenda, no time-limit, allowing Him to fill me, so that I can work from the abundance of acceptance and love that He gives to me. I don’t have to run through life, because time will not run out on me. I can see people as He does, because in those quiet spaces He gives me His eyes for the world He loves. A. W. Tozer (one of my favorite theologians) talks about this in his sermons on the book of John. He states that even Jesus did not help the multitudes by staying among them all the time, he had to retreat and spend time(I italicized AND bolded that word, cause it’s really important, at least for me) with the Father, and be filled so that when he wasamong them, he would have what they needed. It sounds like a paradox, to save time, spend it lavishly on the Lord. But so much of the Christian walk is this way. To save your life you must lose it, to live is Christ, to die is gain. It sounds weird, I know. But to quote Tozer again, “If you can explain everything in your life, you are not living for the Lord. But as I walk with him in quietness, in silence, He nourishes aspects of my life that I do not even know are there.” So I guess my challenge for you today is this: find the areas in your life, in your spiritual walk where you are living with a scarcity mindset. Maybe it’s time like me, or maybe its resources, or relationships, or acceptance. And fill that scarcity with the abundance of the love of the Lord. Let his assurance wash over you, and let that abundance fuel the way you interact with others, yourself, and the Lord.