Gratitude and Abundance

I'm sure that you have all heard the question: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

How you answer that question will depend on what you believe about how God created our world.  For those that believe in evolution, the answer may be (with my tongue firmly planted in cheek :-): "Well, first came an egg that a reptile laid, but the embryo in the egg wanted to have feathers, and the result was a chicken.  So, obviously, the egg came first."  :-)  People who believe in creation would answer: "God created the chicken first, it laid some eggs, and Eve made Adam a veggie omelet for breakfast." :-)

I really don't want to get into a debate about evolution versus creation, because I'll cover that in an upcoming article.  And I don't want to discount the idea of evolution, since my God is big enough that He could have either created the world with a bang and a magnificent process, or He could have just spoken and it was so.  Which one is true, or whether there is another possibility that we haven't thought of, doesn't really affect my faith in God.

But the question that I do want to look at for this article is something that I would call the chicken and egg question of abundance.  When it comes to living in abundance, which comes first: Gratitude or abundance?

There is some teaching that says we need to be grateful before we will ever experience abundance.  And I know that I have tried to learn to be grateful in order to have more abundance in my life.  But the problem with that attitude is that it is based on the assumption that I don't, yet, have abundance.

In other words, when I look at being thankful as the means by which I will get abundance, I have to assume that I don't already have it.  And if I assume that I don't already have it, I actually push abundance out into my future.  Rather than simply enjoying it today, I end up waiting for it.

We all receive things in our lives according to our faith.  Faith says that something is already ours, even if we can't hold in our hands.  But even if we can't hold the things we want in our hands, we can hold them in our minds. 

The difficulty for us comes because we have a conflict in our hearts.  Throughout our lives we have come to believe certain things.  We learned most of them when we were young, and they have formed the basis of what we believe.  So when we hear the truth of God's word, a conflict arises between what we have always believed, but which is probably not true, and the Bible.  In order to remove the unbelief and live in faith, we must confront the unbelief, and the lies behind it, whenever we see it in our lives. 

One of the wrong beliefs that most of us grew up with is: I'll believe it when I see it.  The problem with that belief is that it puts things in the wrong order.  The truth is that we see it because we believe it, not the other way around.

In the context of faith and abundance, our unbelief says: I'll believe that I have abundance in my life when I see it.  The truth is:  I'll see abundance in my life when I believe that I already have it.

I know that we look around at our circumstances and say, "But I don't have the abundance I want.  Just look at my bank account, or my credit card balances."  But seeing our current reality as something that is persistent, or even permanent, is part of the problem.  We end up stuck where we are because we believe that things don't, or can't, change.

Faith is being able to acknowledge our current circumstances, but still hold onto the promise of what we hope for, even though it is not yet tangible for us.  By definition, hope is something that we don't see (Romans 8:24-25).  So when Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substance of what we hope for, it's saying that faith is the conviction (the belief and attitude) that we already have our hope.  It is as real to us today, at least in how we think and feel about it, as if we were already holding it in our hands.

So when it comes to gratitude, we should be thankful for what we already have, and also for all that we hope for.  Being truly grateful for all that God has given us, and all that He is giving us by faith, changes how we feel about our lives.  Our hope shapes our future, as we speak and act today in a way that says: "I am so happy and grateful now that all I hope for is already mine."

There are a lot of things in our lives, especially in our relationship with God that should create gratitude in our hearts.  When we think about who God is, His attributes and character, we can be thankful that He never changes, always loves us, and that He answers our prayers.

Being grateful for who God is, and all that He has done, and is doing, for me, is something that I am still learning.  I have a long way to go in my life, because I have been in the habit of focusing too much on what I don't like about what I have, or what I don't have that I want (or lack), which creates frustration rather than gratitude.

But let me take a step back and cover a fundamental truth about what we think, and how it affects our lives and our faith.

Our thoughts are things.  They exist as a network of neurons in our brains, which may not be tangible in our outer worlds, but they do physically exist in our heads.  Whatever we think in our minds has an affect on our lives.  Jesus said, "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." (Matthew 5:28)

He was talking to people who believed that it was their outward actions, not their thoughts, which would cause problems.  Because they didn't know what we know today, they didn't realize that our thoughts are not only part of our current reality, but they shape our lives.

In Matthew 15:16-20 Jesus said, "'Are you still so dull?' (referring to the fact that they still didn't understand His parables) Jesus asked them.  'Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body?  But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man "unclean."  For out of the heart (out of our minds) come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.  These are what make a man "unclean"; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him "unclean."'"

Jesus wasn't just teaching them that the kingdom of God has a higher standard of holiness that encompasses both our actions and our thoughts.  He was teaching them the spiritual reality that our thoughts are part of who we are, and, if we don't change them, they will eventually be expressed in our words and actions. 

Science tells us that our minds cannot distinguish between a real event that we have experienced and one that we vividly imagined.  The more vivid the images in our minds, particularly if aided by pictures we see with our eyes, and the more emotionally involved we get with those images, the stronger the memory.

I saw a show in which researchers were trying to determine the effects of stress and emotion on our memories.  They showed two groups of volunteers the same slide show.  One group simply watched the slides, but the other group was asked to place one of their arms in a tub of ice-cold water shortly after watching them.  They found that the group that had the "stress" of holding their arms in the cold water was better able to recall the images in the slide show than the group that didn't have this stress.

There was also some research done with patients that had been in accidents.  The researchers found that they could lessen the impact of these traumatic events by giving the patients drugs that blocked their emotions.  One of the theories that came out of this research is that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is potentially caused because of the emotions associated with the events, and not just the events themselves.

If we think about the fact that our brains were designed by God to help us avoid troubles, this all makes sense.  If something caused strong emotions, that event needs to be remembered.  The problem with PTSD is that, because the memory is so strong, the person continues to relive the experience.

What does all of this mean to us?  It means that stress, or strong emotions, determine the strength of a memory.  And, because our brains can't tell the difference, the things we experience and the things we imagine both end up becoming memories.

Our memories form the beliefs that we have about ourselves and the world we live in.  And because of that, they affect the way we think, feel, and act.  The more we think about something, and the stronger we feel about it, the more prevalent it becomes, and the sooner it will be expressed in our lives.

If we want to enjoy more abundance in our lives, then we need to think more about abundance.  The more we imagine ourselves living in abundance, and the more excited and emotional we are when we think about it, the more prevalent those thoughts, those memories, become in our minds.

Both sin and faith work the same way.  Because they determine the images and thoughts in our minds, which then become memories, they also become part of who we are.

One of the greatest weapons that God has given us is our ability to choose what we think.  We can imagine anything we want, good or bad.  And when we vividly imagine having something now, rejoice in it, we actually create a memory of having it.  The more we imagine it, the stronger the memory becomes, and the greater it affects our thoughts, feelings, and actions each and every day.

The other thing to keep in mind is that abundance is something we already have.  It is all around us, and John 10:10 tells us that Jesus came to give us both life and abundance.  The abundance we experience does not come from the circumstances we see around us, but from God.  2 Corinthians 9:8 says, "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work."

God supplies all that we need.  When we look around at nature, and see what He has created, we realize that God is a God of infinite variety and abundance.  And when we look at our lives, we recognize that we all have our own definition of what abundance means to us.  All that we need to realize now is that God has already provided everything that we need in order to enjoy abundance, no matter how we define it. 

The question that many people have is: Does God want me to have material abundance?  The simple answer to that question is: Yes.

God wants to bring greater abundance and into the world.  He does that by making sure that we have all we need, and more, so that we can abound in good works.  He doesn't give us abundance so that we can heap up treasures, but so that we can increase the wealth that is available in the world.  The benefit is that the poor have their needs met, and we can see God do greater things through us.

As far as material possessions go, we can enjoy them as long as we don't sacrifice wealth for things.  Wealth, and therefore abundance, is brought about in our lives by properly using money.  God brings money into our lives and wants us to increase it.  Jesus taught about this in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25.

So when it comes to the chicken and the egg, to gratitude and abundance, the answer is: God has given us abundance, and because we already have it, we are thankful for it.  The reality of that abundance will be expressed more and more in our lives as we see it in our minds, rejoice in it, and give thanks for it today.

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