“Trusting in God’s Provision”

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Have you ever felt like you didn’t have enough? Enough money, enough love, enough time? This mindset of scarcity causes to have extreme stress and anxiety. Nothing causes us more stress than the scarcity of money. We all have bills to pay. We want to help our families. We may have debt or loans, but we worry about money no matter what kind of financial shape we may be in.

I remember when I was in seminary at Duke. Everything was so expensive like buying all the books needed and the cost of living. My parents did help me quite a bit, but I felt like they had already given me so much so I took a part time job at the library to have a little extra money.

That first semester at Duke a deer ran into the very nice car my parents had bought me when I graduated Tech the previous year and my car was totaled. It seemed like everything that could go wrong was going wrong? Have you ever had one of those days?

The car that I could afford to replace my car was not nearly as nice and each time I would get into this car I would be angry. To make matters worse, the fan belt kept breaking so people could hear me coming for miles. I was embarrassed to drive that car, and felt like I was being humbled in the sight of the Lord. I kept thinking, “This is not the car I am supposed to be driving. I miss my nice car. Why does everything have to be so hard?” Even though I felt defeated in those moments, I was missing out on the reality before me.

I was blessed to be able to attend Duke and be the first person in my family to attend graduate school. I was blessed that I got a car to replace my totaled car. I was blessed with family and friends who were supporting me, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. I had just been looking at all wrong with the mindset of scarcity instead of the mindset of abundance. It is all about our mindset. Our Scripture for today from the Gospel of John invites us to live in the mindset of abundance, because this is how the God we serve operates.