BY GREG CRUM
“As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee.” Genesis 17:4-6
Here in Genesis 17, we read of God’s desire to bless Abraham. God didn’t want to give Abraham and his family just enough. According to His own words, He wanted to give him too much. In verse one of Chapter 17, God referred to Himself as “the Almighty God.” The Hebrew in this instance is “El Shaddai,” which translates into English as the “All sufficient One,” or in other words, the God who is more than enough!
Current events in this world are pushing us to believe that there is not going to be enough of what we need to go around. The devil is working overtime it seems to entice us into becoming afraid that we are going to go without things that we would want or need. Friends, for the believer, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Why? Because the God we serve is, always has been, and always will be, the God of more than enough. To put it another way, He’s the God of too much!
In times of financial distress, whether personally, locally, or globally, we must remind ourselves that the God of the Bible has shown us a pattern that He’s more than, not less than, to all that dare to trust in Him. This world wants us to believe in lack, in deficits and in shortfalls, but God is all about abundance, overflow and windfalls! The wicked of this world say we are running out of resources, and because of this, people must do without and live restricted lifestyles so we can “save the planet.”
The Bible says that God created this world to last until we do, and it will last until the Lord comes again to renovate this planet by fire. God created this world with more than enough resources to make it all the way to the end. Let’s not worry about running out of resources any time soon. According to the Scriptures God has made too much!
Brothers and sisters, I know that living in our area and seeing the poverty of some can alter the way we think life is supposed to be lived. That’s where we must renew our minds with the Word of God so we can begin to see things God’s way.
The Bible teaches that when God gets involved in the lives of His people (and they allow Him to by putting their faith in Him and obeying His directives), they always end up with too much.
Read Genesis 13:1-6, and think about how God dealt with Abraham. He blessed Abraham and all who were attached to him way too much! Then read Exodus 3:7-8. What was God’s plan for the Israelites? In His mind it wasn’t good enough to just bless them with some milk and honey; He planned on giving them so much of it that it was as if it was flowing like rivers in their lives!
So many people in our area have such low expectations of God’s ability to provide for them. Evidently, they believe that God is either too weak or too stingy to give them what they need in this life. These things couldn’t be further from the truth. God has always been a God of more than enough, and He still wants to prove that to those that will look to Him for their every need!