Category: Abundance

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At Table

So I may have some quiet moments yet. What would You say? To me? To the world? On Thanksgiving?

Today, you feast. You celebrate around the table an abundant harvest. Tomorrow and Saturday, you shop. You acquire needed or wanted goods for yourselves or your homes or as gifts for others. Whether feasting or shopping the sales, your theme is the same: abundance. Sales mean you can stretch your dollars to buy more or to get items you might not otherwise afford. Feasting and shopping are national habits on this weekend, along with parades and sports, all part of a festive celebration.

Some lament the celebratory aspect, counseling instead a focus on giving to the poor as a more spiritual way to celebrate harvest.

If you look to Me, you will see I did both. I performed My first miracle at a wedding feast. I was severely criticized and labeled as a fraud because I joined in the revelry of feasting and celebration—even with those who didn’t fit the mold of spirituality in the conventions of the day. I also counseled giving to the poor and warned against greed.

It is easy to live wholly in one mindset or the other. It’s much harder to simultaneously fully enjoy all the blessings of an abundant life, while also giving and sharing those blessings, not out of guilt but out of a conviction that abundance, the feasting, and the joy are all meant for everyone, no exceptions. Yet this is how I lived, in the paradox of abundance. On this day of Thanksgiving, it is how I Am inviting you to live also.

Feast, revel and find ways to share your joy, to invite others into your abundant life, to My Abundant Life.

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Nurture your inner life

God, do You—You always do—have anything to say to me today?

Breathe. Being frantic or fretting won’t help you. It won’t help your body or your mind, and it won’t help you get more done. Consider the lilies. Consider the thought that I love you just as you are right now, even while drawing you on to greater growth. Every winter, underground, lilies multiply. The “more blooms” that appear above ground come from more bulbs underground. Nurture your inner life, your underground life.

How do you do that? Worship is one way, because you are focused on Me and all I Am in your life and in the universe. Not sermons, not fellowship—as good as they may be, they don’t multiply your bulbs. Random acts of kindness, compassion and thoughtfulness help multiply your outward fruit and influence. Intercession as long as it is not a disguised worry is a bulb-grower.

Notice the metaphors: bulb for flowers and growth; bulb for light; bulb for inspiration, for creative ideas, for epiphanies. Anticipate surprises. Live expectant as you used to, and let your expectation be filled with My Presence, for in My Presence, nothing is impossible, nothing is too hard. The only defeat in My Presence is defeat itself. Defeat is defeated, overcome by victory. Overtaken by Love. Begin to anticipate a healthy body, a healthy lifestyle, a healthy business season. Begin again to visualize thriving. Trust that in this winter, which you are seeing as time lost, trust that underground, within, beneath the surface, is tremendous growth, is a field of multiplied bulbs, all ready, all waiting for the signal to burst forth into glorious flower. “A crop so great you cannot contain it all” – that is My Promise to you, renewed. So much fruit you can easily share, easily Give-Away. Is any of this too hard for God? Am I not God for you? Focus on that.

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Longing

Lord, recently I had this aha moment. I was thinking how I always come back to art journaling or vision journaling about travel. And I realized I have been beating myself up about that. The aha came when I thought, what if I always come back to travel because I am meant to travel. What if it is calling me and literally is part of Your calling on my life? What if this longing I have is from You to begin with?

 So, Lord, I have this want. But…I shall not want.

Stop right there. You are reading the Psalm incorrectly. You are applying the wrong English definition of want.

You are thinking, the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not long for…anything. You have made longing for sinful. No, no, no!

The meaning is, the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not lack for any good thing.

What is a good thing for you? Of course body nourishment, sustenance. A safe place to live and work. Meaningful work that brings you and others joy. And yes, travel. I didn’t create this beautiful, diverse world and then sentence you to spend your days behind some small fenced-in area.

You cannot let the fear of what might happen, which you carry every single day anyway, stop you—stop you from living your own life in the now. You keep hitting Pause, and then getting up and leaving the movie of your own life. You keep stopping the action to live in the commercial.

Write down, right now, quickly, all the places you can think of that you want to travel to.

Lord, I want so much…

I am I AM; I Am your Shepherd, you shall have all you want, all you long for. For it is I Who planted these seeds of longing within you. And after you have begun to fulfill your longings for beauty and connection here, I shall unroll the map of the world, place by place. You shall be My Creation’s ambassador. You shall go and see and experience, and teach, and come back and share and write and create and go again, all with camera in hand. Your blessing will bless and enrich many others. You are an explorer of light; you shall not lack for any good thing.

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Growth in Heaven

Lord, I want to know about heaven. Do we still grow, there? I mean, we are somehow ageless, but do we still grow?

With every human born, heaven grows. “Heaven” in the collective grows in its capacity to love and care, just as an earthly family does when a new baby is born. Do you think brilliant ideas are limited to earth only? Do you think creativity dies when eternity begins? There is much you cannot understand or conceive until you arrive. But know this: Heaven is a shorthand word for Life. And where there is life, there is growth.

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Growth

You know, God, I have so much. That seems to have turned into a block of sorts. How can I imagine more? How can I “wish” or reach for more? I know the kinds of miraculous provision You supply. What gives me the right to put myself standing in that line again?

 

Because as you grow, you require “more” in order for that growth to continue. Children cannot wear last year’s shoes. A high-schooler cannot use his third grade bat and glove. Trikes give way to training wheels and then bicycles—and eventually to cars. It’s not selfish; it’s the natural order.

But, Lord, isn’t there a point where growth stops? Where you start diminishing, sliding backwards?

 Not diminishing as much as shedding—ready to transform. You are not yet in that place—in fact, you are nowhere near that place, in your own life’s journey. So let’s engage in some “wishful thinking.” Go ahead. What would you be? What would you do? What would you have? Just play a little. Please. I can’t reveal, if you “can’t imagine.”

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The Sower’s Seed

So God, how does Your Resurrection affect daily decisions?

It takes the weight and burden out of the fear of making “the wrong decision.” What if you knew it was impossible for you to make a “wrong” decision? What if you interpreted “all things work together for good” that way? What if you saw your life–your daily life–as a continual unfolding of blessing–for you and everyone around you, everyone you come in contact with? What if you lived as though you really, literally, are a magnet of and for love and blessing, for peace, and for prosperity? A magnet of blessing in your world, magnetizing blessing to yourself and to everyone around you? Why don’t you try living “as if”–suspend all your disbelief, and live “as if” all this were true? Because it is. It is true. But your fears and worries blind you.

There is nothing wrong with the Sower’s seed. The seed is abundant and holds within itself all the power it needs to grow and multiply into an abundant crop of even more seeds. It needs good, deep soil, and water. That is your job. “Weed and feed.” That is your job. You are trying to find seeds and plant seeds; no–that is the Sower’s work. Your work is to weed and feed.

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Good Gifts

Lord, we’ve talked, and I’ve read and journaled and thought so much about creativity and gifts over the past fifteen years—actually, more like the past thirty years! Yet I see so many people, from strangers I meet to those closest to me, who remain unfulfilled in what they do.

“Earnestly desire the greater gifts” really means, seek and find your best gifts for your best life. It means, don’t settle. It means, don’t be satisfied with mediocre, with “just okay.” It means, swing for the fences.

Imagine a kid on Christmas morning, or a birthday, with a pile of gifts. He opens just one and says, ok, that’s enough. I guess I can learn to be satisfied with just this. Imagine he opened a set of ski poles—and never opened his skis! Or imagine she opened a package containing doll outfits, and never opened the box with the doll! You have to open and explore all your gifts for each individual gift to make sense. And yes, it takes time and effort—but your life, every life, is so worth it.

If you are looking around at anyone else’s life and thinking, I wish I had that, it is a sure sign you have not opened all your gifts. For My Heart, My Will, is that everyone live a life of fulfillment, contributing to the goodness and joy in the world.

Do you celebrate just one birthday? Or do you celebrate each milestone?

Can you believe opening and learning to use your gifts can be an ongoing, lifetime adventure? That as long as you are alive, I have more to give you? And that My gifts are wonderful, and perfect for you?

Can you believe?

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On Abundance, “Best,” Competition and Destiny

I think I need to hear from You about “best.” As in, best in show; as in, do your best; as in, personal best; as in, best effort. As in competition. How does this relate to abundance?

Abundance says, there is enough for everyone to thrive, for everyone to reach their own best potential. There is enough food. There is enough opportunity. There is enough creativity.

Competition says, I have to be better than you.

Destiny says, I can work with abundance and become my best. The focus is different. Others may come along and rank-order, but when your focus is destiny, you are centered on your own performance, your own offering. Your own calling. You write a song, not thinking, I have to make this song so commercially viable that it outsells every other song this year. You write a song, thinking, what needs to be shared, to be expressed–and what combination of words and musical notes best accomplishes that goal? You write the song that is yours to write, and you give that song your best effort and focus…and then you write another song, and you give that song your best, too.

It’s like love. You love whole-heartedly every day–and someday, you say “I do” to THE love of your life, which in turn produces more love in the form of family.

Each love is your best love. And sometimes that love reciprocated chooses you–just as an audience chooses the “best” song of the year by responding to its gift, by listening or buying it. But the initial focus wasn’t to beat everyone else. The initial focus is to write the best version of your song. Live your best life. Sometimes others will notice and compare; other times, they won’t, and you are living in the shadows. Don’t fear competition–just give and live your best, not in a way that exhausts you but in a way that exhilarates you.

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Adjust Your Sails

Lord, You know I am still stressing over finances. I can’t seem to stop worrying. And when I worry, I react badly—inside—to what others say or do. And I second-guess my every decision, even decisions I thought I heard about from You.

You are waiting for the wind to shift before you adjust your sails. It is what the world does. I am saying to you, adjust your sails and the wind will shift. Get ready, anticipating a blessing. The man in the parable was greedy and stingy, but I am telling you, build a bigger barn. A bumper crop is coming; it is even now growing. It is even now on its way. Take in the rainbow; it is a sign for you of My provision.

Am I not still Jehovah-Jireh? Can I not now also be your Jehovah-Rapha?

You are reacting as you always do, trying to make up a deficit at cost to yourself. What about the loaves and fishes? What about the lost coin? What about the pearl of great price? What about the coin in the fish’s mouth? If the Kingdom of God doesn’t touch you right where you live, and in your society—which includes money, the very foundation of exchange for everything except the air you breathe—then what good is it?

My Kingdom is not esoteric. My Kingdom is based on Love. My Kingdom is not ascetic. It is not a system of exchange, your wealth for poverty. What would miraculous provision look like, to you?

Let Me provide, as a lesson to you. Let Me work, so you can clearly see it is I. I have shown a spotlight on what you call a deficit to illuminate a much bigger deficit in your thinking, in your pattern of thought and belief—about money, and Me, and you, your life. That is the deficit that must be overcome, and the miraculous is the only way that will happen. So I don’t want you to engineer anything in the natural. Instead, set your sails. Instead, watch Me shift the wind. Instead, watch Me work. Continue to be generous, and watch Me give to you.