Cultivating a Mindset of Abundance
Image by jacqueline macou from Pixabay
When I preached from the Epistle to the Hebrews, I mentioned how the Israelites in the wilderness had to cultivate a different mindset once they were beyond the borders of Egypt. When they were slaves, they had known a mindset of scarcity: oppressed by the Egyptians, they learned to be anxious and contentious. But God heard their cries and delivered them from their oppressors.
When they later faced challenges in the wilderness, they were superbly positioned to draw on their memory of God’s mighty works and cultivate a new mindset of abundance as they learned to trust that God would continue to protect and provide for His own.
They never did cultivate that mindset of abundance. They continued to think like slaves, and their anxiety manifested itself first in secret murmuring, then finally in outright rebellion. It's easy to look back on their disobedience and wonder how they could be so faithless.
But their problem was that they were, like us, short-sighted and forgetful. A settled life posture of trust in God would have enabled them to see their challenges in an expanded frame of reference that included His promises and His faithfulness. But in their short-sightedness, in their forgetfulness of all they had seen God do, all they could see was the challenges, and they panicked.
What a mindset of abundance is not.
What does a mindset of abundance look like?
It looks like quiet confidence in God’s promises and His character.
With a mindset of abundance, I am not so easily troubled by my circumstances. When I am facing a crisis, I remember that God is not surprised. He has already wisely provided all I need for life and godliness (2 Pet 1:3). Nothing can happen to me or my loved ones – good or ill – without His permission.
In the middle of the storm, I am confident that He can be trusted.
In this state of quiet confidence, my awareness of the Presence of the Good Shepherd is not something I must call to mind; it runs in the background, part of the operating system of my mind. A set of unconscious assumptions about the power, goodness, and wisdom of God will take the edge off my anxieties.
What I’m describing is, of course, an idealized state. So long as I live in this body, like the Hebrews in the wilderness, I will often be forgetful of God’s goodness; like Peter on the waves, I will sometimes be overwhelmed by the threat in front of me, and I will forget how often God has proven Himself faithful to me and my loved ones.
Which is why I use the word “cultivate.”
Just as the farmer must work diligently to cultivate his crops, so I must work diligently to cultivate this quiet confidence in God and His promises. How? By curating what I meditate on. Even without the steady barrage of bad news I see in the media, I see enough setbacks in my own life to create anxiety. When I worry, I am meditating on my anxieties, giving them control over my mind.
I cultivate a mindset of abundance by marinating in His Word, by fellowshipping with others on this same journey, by making it a practice to quiet my heart before my good, good Father.
While in this life I will never arrive at any sort of final state, I can cultivate the mental habits that will deepen this confidence. By God’s grace, through the steady, sanctifying work of His Spirit and His Word and His people, my confidence in God and His promises will become more and more my natural state.
This is what I want, and it is what God’s Spirit wants to cultivate in me.
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship
When they later faced challenges in the wilderness, they were superbly positioned to draw on their memory of God’s mighty works and cultivate a new mindset of abundance as they learned to trust that God would continue to protect and provide for His own.
They never did cultivate that mindset of abundance. They continued to think like slaves, and their anxiety manifested itself first in secret murmuring, then finally in outright rebellion. It's easy to look back on their disobedience and wonder how they could be so faithless.
But their problem was that they were, like us, short-sighted and forgetful. A settled life posture of trust in God would have enabled them to see their challenges in an expanded frame of reference that included His promises and His faithfulness. But in their short-sightedness, in their forgetfulness of all they had seen God do, all they could see was the challenges, and they panicked.
What a mindset of abundance is not.
- A mindset of abundance is not an optimistic attitude, a firm conviction that somehow everything will work out.
- A mindset of abundance is not the prosperity gospel. It’s true that hucksters have hijacked that language to describe their schemes. But like all heresies, the prosperity gospel emphasizes one precious truth (God cares for His own) to the exclusion of others (a robust theology of suffering and a confidence in the wisdom and sovereignty of God). As a result, the “gospel” it presents is little more than a positive mental attitude dressed up in Christian language.
What does a mindset of abundance look like?
It looks like quiet confidence in God’s promises and His character.
With a mindset of abundance, I am not so easily troubled by my circumstances. When I am facing a crisis, I remember that God is not surprised. He has already wisely provided all I need for life and godliness (2 Pet 1:3). Nothing can happen to me or my loved ones – good or ill – without His permission.
In the middle of the storm, I am confident that He can be trusted.
In this state of quiet confidence, my awareness of the Presence of the Good Shepherd is not something I must call to mind; it runs in the background, part of the operating system of my mind. A set of unconscious assumptions about the power, goodness, and wisdom of God will take the edge off my anxieties.
What I’m describing is, of course, an idealized state. So long as I live in this body, like the Hebrews in the wilderness, I will often be forgetful of God’s goodness; like Peter on the waves, I will sometimes be overwhelmed by the threat in front of me, and I will forget how often God has proven Himself faithful to me and my loved ones.
Which is why I use the word “cultivate.”
Just as the farmer must work diligently to cultivate his crops, so I must work diligently to cultivate this quiet confidence in God and His promises. How? By curating what I meditate on. Even without the steady barrage of bad news I see in the media, I see enough setbacks in my own life to create anxiety. When I worry, I am meditating on my anxieties, giving them control over my mind.
I cultivate a mindset of abundance by marinating in His Word, by fellowshipping with others on this same journey, by making it a practice to quiet my heart before my good, good Father.
While in this life I will never arrive at any sort of final state, I can cultivate the mental habits that will deepen this confidence. By God’s grace, through the steady, sanctifying work of His Spirit and His Word and His people, my confidence in God and His promises will become more and more my natural state.
This is what I want, and it is what God’s Spirit wants to cultivate in me.
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship
Recent
Archive
2025
January
February
2024
January
February
March
April
May
June
August
September
October
2023
August
September
Impossible Christianity: Why Following Jesus Does Not Mean You Have to Change the World, Be an Expert on Everything, Accept Spiritual Failure, and Feel Miserable Pretty Much All the TimeTwo Distorted Versions of Discipleship: Part TwoGiving Your Children a Better Why: The Primary Purpose of Going to ChurchJesus and My Identity Crisis
October
November
Categories
no categories