Develop an Abundance Mentality
March 13th, 2007 | Michael Pink
I want to continue with this thought of developing an abundance mentality. Too many of us have avoided abundance because we thought it was somehow wrong. It was okay to inherit it or to have someone give it to us, but to work for it was somehow wrong. However, if you are working for abundance because of the good you can do with it and if you are now doing good with what supply you have, you are on the right track.
I thought the abundance mentality meant acquiring abundance for yourself, but that’s not the abundance mentality. That’s selfish and even foolish and many a person while “coveting after, has erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” (1 Tim 6:10) And being covetous is idolatry (Col 3:5)
To me, having an abundance mentality is first and foremost about giving, not receiving. You may not have much to give, but you can start now with what you have. And you don’t have to give it all to some ministry. While that is appropriate to support various godly works, it spills over to much more.
Practice abundance when you tip at the restaurant, when you dine out with friends or when you meet strangers. Give of yourself and of your substance. Do it with the belief that there is always more where that came from and you will find over time that it is true. Eradicate the scarcity mentality that came with the fall in the Garden of Eden and embrace the abundance mind-set which Jesus clearly had and offered to us by faith.
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March 14th, 2007 at 7:09 am
What is abundance and how does one achieve it?. We need to understand that there are conditions to receive abundance. We must be aligned to His ways. Must walk in both spirit and truth. Must humble ourselves and be under God’s grace. We then must be good stewards and be totally obedient to Him. We must have a closed circle (budget) and must have God’s agreement on it. This will determine how much is enough in our lives. Then we can receive the abundance. The question is what is the purpose for it. Do you have a plan? If not someone else will give you that plan. This is both on a personal level and in a corporate level. Then we can allocate the abundance to God’s plans. Praise God and may God enalgen your territory.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Not everyone can handle abundance. Not everyone can handle wealth. In fact very few Christians can handle either one and that is why Proverbs 30 ask God to give him neither poverty or wealth.We must not forget that Satan can give riches Ie, Jesus temptation, too. I have seen a lot more Christians lives destroyed from to much stuff than to little stuff.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:23 am
It seems to me there is a lot of concern in the body of Christ about having too much. Clearly having abundance can be a snare and we should be forewarned, yet it also seems to me that the church generally is broke. Pastors on poverty salaries, under funded church programs, limited outreach, minimal community impact, while the heathens who aren’t afraid of wealth take control of all the mind molders in our society, (media, arts, business, government to name a few). Yes, many of them lead destructive lives and all of them without Christ face eternal judgment, but that’s not my point.
As Christians it doesn’t have to be that way. Rather than run away from riches because we can be snared by them, develop the character and motivation to steward them wisely. Saying that riches are something to be avoided is like saying that guns are evil. I wouldn’t let my toddler play with a gun, but the son who has been trained properly would be allowed to use it wisely.
I think God wants sons. Babies are cute, but sonship is the goal regardless of your gender. Ladies, if I can be part of the bride of Christ, you can be a son… (o-;
My challenge to all of us is to grow up and learn how to steward natural riches because as Jesus said, if we can’t be faithful in temporal riches who can trust us with eternal riches?
March 14th, 2007 at 9:32 am
An excellent point. Thank you for your insight.
~Kris
March 14th, 2007 at 9:37 am
Abundance is looked at as a dirty word, like tolerance. God is the King of Glory! We who accept Christ as our Savior have been adopted into His family. Who, as a parent witholds good to their children. While I do believe that God pours out blessings differently for each of His children, HE POURS OUT BLESSINGS! If you give out of what you have, which is limited, why doubt that God chooses to do the same with His limitless abundance?
It is an old saying now, but David embodied this, “dance like no one is looking.” He was the king of a nation. Undignified before the Lord and man. Abundantly giving of himself to his God. God gave back in the measure given.
March 14th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Michael, my situation is similar to what you describe. For about 5 years I was on staff at a church of about 1500. My responsibilities were Benevolence, Outreach and Men’s Mnistry. I was expected to do this on $750 per month. That was 4 years ago… and that was not my budget, that was my salary.
While I was single I was able to make that work, because God provided. Once I got married and had a child everything changed. When faced with the need to become more of a provider, my employer (church) wasn’t able to compensate me more.
There is a very strong likelyhood that I would still be in that ministry had I been able to support my family.
March 14th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Through several avenues over the past few days the Lord has reminded me that unless I see prosperity in my life and trust he is the Lord of all things%u2026 he can%u2019t use me%u2026 because prosperity is not for me it is for the care and advancement of His body%u2026if we continue to down play what the Lord has for us then we are not open to the Heavenly blessings and open heaven He flows form%u2026 as on earth as it is in heaven%u2026 Jesus did what he saw the Father do.. He saw the cattle on a thousand hills%u2026 a land flowing with milk and honey (unlimited provision).. Now ..I have been asking the Lord to see the end from the beginning%u2026 Like Jesus%u2026 to see what the Father does%u2026 to see Heaven on Earth%u2026. Hebrews 11:1
1Now trust is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen%u2026
March 14th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Yes and amen! From the comments the following verse came to mind:
“So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” Luke 16:11
I agree with the reality that all of our “missing the mark” regarding any area of New Creation living comes from being informed by someone, or coming to the conclusion on our own of something that is simply just not Truth.
The managing of money is the toddler stage that preapres us to handles the more important thing of the kingdom. If we do not look beyond the natural and into the supernatural we can never begin to grasp what it means to one day being allowed to rule nations.
i know that as a rule, i must exhibit good stewardship over what the Lord has entrusted to me, in order to find promotion (he who has been given much is expected to manage it rightly); however, I also know (spent many years in bondage to the poverty mentality being spewed from way too many pulpits) that my Daddy, desires to give me an undeserved monetray gifrt, from time-to-time, just as He did my eternal salvation. And now, that I KNOW this for some “strange” reason He does it more and more! I say, “Let’s lean toward the impossible and spectacular and let the Holy spirit spank us when we get out of line instead of burying our “talent” in the dirt somewhere believing that this is going to somehow make us holy!”
Go for the gold (not the straw) Brethren, go for the gold!
March 14th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
One of the reasons we have not had the abundance is we were not able to handle the type of abundance God provides. His idea of abundance is “pressed down shaken together and running over till we don’t have room enough to receive it. How many people can actually handle that kind of money? So the being good stewards over little is absolutely a must and being faithful to treat money as it was intended, to buy services and goods instead of being a “god” is what I believe is needed so we “ALL” can walk in that abundance. I believe it is time to be abundance minded. Thanks for reminding me.
March 14th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Wow! I see how we can misunderstand, and how some don’t operate from a abundance mentality. There are still quite a few people who think that abudance is for your personal gain, and not for the good you can do with it.
March 14th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
But Paul told Timothy to avoid riches.
Poverty is not the problem in the church in America, materalisam is. One writer put it this way, “The problem of materialism boils down to this: While God created us to love people and use things, the materialist loves things and uses people. He may deny this, but his philosophy of life insures that it will be true. Note the tendency to treat and target people as objects rather than subjects. For instance, the prevalent term “consumer” speaks not of a person, but an economic unit, of value to a company only as an object than can potentially contribute to its profits.
We have every reason to be alarmed about our country’s materialism, but no reason whatsoever to be surprised by it. For our outer materialism is nothing more nor less than the logical and inescapable extension of our inner capitulation to the philosophy of materialism. ”
Very few Christians can handle weath and the Bible definite says that not everyone will be wealthy.
March 14th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
Kern… Timothy was young and his calling was not business. It made sense for him to avoid riches. You can’t extrapolate that to mean everyone should avoid riches anymore than you can extrapolate because Job, Abraham, David, Solomon and numerouls other Biblical figures were wealthy that everyone should be wealthy.
I agree with your comment that very few Christians can handle wealth and that is a crying shame that there is much lack of spiritual maturity in the body of Christ.
March 15th, 2007 at 9:51 am
I think it all starts from feeling gratitude and being thankful to the Lord - counting your blessings every day and being thankful and grateful in prayer, and by sharing. I heard a sermon by Michael Youssef yesterday about how people in other nations have very little compared to Americans, but they are very grateful and thankful to God for what they have. They don’t see it as “having little”. I have traveled all over the world and know what he is talking about. Dr. Youssef said the people in poorer nations who have little don’t complain and gripe about how little they have, they simply are grateful for it. And then he talked about the people here in the USA, who never seem grateful or thankful for their abundance and always seem to want more money to buy more stuff to make them happy. I have seen fellow Christians who are just as guilty of this behavior as the secular community. I always wonder if they wake up every day and feel gratitude to God and say prayers of thanks. I drive an old car, but I give thanks to the Lord every day because I have a car to take me to work.
March 15th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I believe it is also crucial for us to understand our calling. If we are truly called to minister among the poor then we should not be driving up in a new mercedes. Likewise, if we are called to minister to the heads of Fortune 500 companies, we won’t have much of a voice if we pull up in a 1970 Chevy pickup missing a tailgate.
With understanding can come contentment. If we are called to be businessmen and women, our greatest impact on our employees, competitors, clients, suppliers and community will come as we gain abundance, use it wisely and give back to the community…all to the glory of God.
But I agree, this takes maturity and discipline. The question is, do we avoid riches because we might succomb to it’s allure, or do we learn how to handle it wisely, put safeguards in place to protect us and teach others how to use it.
March 15th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
I too believe that God means for all to have over-and-above abundance. God does not determine that poverty is someone’s lot in life. What we see happening in someone’s life doesn’t necessarily represent what God is trying to do in their life and how He is doing it. We know that God is not a respecter of persons and so the whole truth is applicable to all people. Christians should look for ways to increase their wealth so that they can actually be involved in God’s end-time plan. God allows us to share in the abundance He wishes for us to have and that is demonstrated by Christians everywhere. Christians with wealth are not in sin but they have faith followed by action that have made them that way. We should all do the same. It is God’s will for us. Jesus in John 10:10 came to make that clear to us. We should not let our experience be the interpretation of God’s Word to us.
March 17th, 2007 at 8:30 am
The following comment by Michael Pink was an eye opener… I always thought that this type of situation only prevails in asian ministries..!
“It seems to me there is a lot of concern in the body of Christ about having too much. Clearly having abundance can be a snare and we should be forewarned, yet it also seems to me that the church generally is broke. Pastors on poverty salaries, under funded church programs, limited outreach, minimal community impact, while the heathens who aren’t afraid of wealth take control of all the mind molders in our society, (media, arts, business, government to name a few). Yes, many of them lead destructive lives and all of them without Christ face eternal judgment, but that’s not my point.
As Christians it doesn’t have to be that way. Rather than run away from riches because we can be snared by them, develop the character and motivation to steward them wisely. Saying that riches are something to be avoided is like saying that guns are evil. I wouldn’t let my toddler play with a gun, but the son who has been trained properly would be allowed to use it wisely.
March 18th, 2007 at 8:44 am
Galatians 2:10
Why does God allow so many of His children to be poor? He could make them all rich if He pleased; He could lay bags of gold at their doors; He could send them a large annual income; or He could scatter around their houses abundance of provisions, as once he made the quails lie in heaps around the camp of Israel and rained bread out of heaven to feed them. There is no necessity that they should be poor, except that He sees it to be best. “The cattle on a thousand hills”1 are His–He could supply them; He could make the rich, the great, and the mighty bring all their power and riches to the feet of His children, for the hearts of all men are in His control. But He does not choose to do so. He allows them to experience need; He allows them to struggle in poverty and obscurity. Why is this? There are many reasons. One is, to give us, who are favored with enough, an opportunity of showing our love to Jesus. We show our love to Christ when we sing of Him and when we pray to Him; but if there were no needy people in the world, we should lose the sweet privilege of displaying our love by ministering by our gifts to His poorer brethren. He has ordained that in this way we should prove that our love stands not only in word, but in deed and in truth. If we truly love Christ, we will care for those who are loved by Him. Those who are dear to Him will be dear to us. Let us then look upon it not as a duty but as a privilege to relieve the poor of the Lord’s flock, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”2 Surely this assurance is sweet enough, and this motive strong enough to lead us to help others with a willing hand and a loving heart–recollecting that all we do for His people is graciously accepted by Christ as done to Himself.
1Psalm 50:10 2Matthew 25:40
March 18th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
“Why does God allow so many of His children to be poor? He could make them all rich if He pleased; He could lay bags of gold at their doors…” My dear brother Kern… What kind of father would lay bags of anything at their children’s door who had not been properly trained first? Would you lay bags of explosives at the door of someone who did not understand their power and danger. Their potential for good and for harm? Neither will the Father lay anything including wealth at our door in some careless way only to see us use it to our harm. The fact that He doesn’t lay it at our door when He well could is further evidence of my point that He wants us to become sons, well able to handle natural, material riches. He wants us to be trained. Mature. And well able to handle finances if we are in a place in life that finances are important. There are those who labor in some fields where finances are of little or no concern, but to those of us called to the marketplace, it would be a good thing to grow up and learn how to handle well the finances and riches of this world and in the process demonstrate our readiness to be trusted with true riches. If you cannot be trusted with worldly riches who will trust you with true riches? Do not count yourself untrustworthy to handle worldly wealth my brother - unless that is true. Blessings.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:30 am
I don’t believe that God’s plan for some-one’s life is to be down and out. Absolutely no-one wants to be poor, to live in poverty. The key that is usually missing is the desire to have things be better along with a plan of action to change the circumstances. Too many want some miraculous change and then they will live their life differently. I doubt that would be so. There are so many rags-to-riches stories out there, but, if read with a discerning eye, it usually didn’t come without some effort and in most cases a lot of effort. If people, and especially God’s children, worked as much as they complained and thought outside of the box of their present existence, their lives would and/or could be changed. Another key that is missing is that of expectation. So many people have a wait-and-see attitude. They’ll believe it when they see it and it just doesn’t work that way. Unbelief breeds lack in all of its ugly forms including living a life of excuses for why they are in lack. Without believing you can, and should, have it better, you will not be able to reach your dreams. Even worse is to try to have faith when someone is telling you that you could be fighting against God’s will by doing so. To tell someone that a life of lack or poverty may be God’s will for them destroys faith along with love. I will always have to be one of those who will be accused of encouraging people to think bigger and go for their dreams. If I’m wrong then My Father will show me, but I at least won’t be responsible for taking away some-one’s hope. Even in working to make life better there can be disappointment but should never be a reason to quit. It is in quitting and settling that we lose everything.