There are two things we can focus on: what we have, or what we don’t have. It is going to be a lot more helpful to focus on what we have. That opens our eyes to see the amazing generosity God has shown us! He has been generous to us in his creation, in his providence, in saving us, and in having mercy on us. God is generous with us even when you don’t think He is. Let’s stop focusing on what we don’t have, and give thanks for what we do have! Let’s celebrate the generosity of God!
There are two things we can focus on: what we have, or what we don’t have. It is going to be a lot more helpful to focus on what we have. That opens our eyes to see the amazing generosity God has shown us! He has been generous to us in his creation, in his providence, in saving us, and in having mercy on us. God is generous with us even when you don’t think He is. Let’s stop focusing on what we don’t have, and give thanks for what we do have! Let’s celebrate the generosity of God!
Six or seven years ago my in-laws gave me a book about thanksgiving. It’s a book designed to intentionalize thinking about God’s goodness in my life by writing down one blessing a day. I thought that would be too easy so I made a personal challenge: I would write down one different blessing every day. No repeats! So I set out to do that and for a good month and a half, things were flying! I thanked God for my family members, friends, my job, but about halfway into month two, I hit a wall. I was all of 50 days in and I kid you not I remember sitting in my dorm room, paging through my book, trying to come up with a new blessing, and it took me a solid 15-20 minutes of staring into a white concrete wall to finally come up with a blessing. You know what I wrote, “Thank you God for walls.” Talk about pathetic right?! God has given me more than I can begin to imagine and I couldn’t think of a 51st blessing. But I have a hunch you understand that struggle too. As Christians, we often suffer from spiritual amnesia. When we face an unknown in life, or we see a deficiency or a void, we focus so much on what we don’t have, all the while forgetting what God has given us. Because of that amnesia, I’m so excited for God to spark our memory of how deep his generosity is to us through Psalm 145.
The guy God used to write the deep lyrics to this song personally experienced the deep generosity of God. We don’t know when in his life David wrote this song of praise, but when you look at his life, God’s generosity splashes into every memory. He was born into a family of believers, parents who brought him up to know and trust in the generous grace of God. As a boy, he learned the life of a shepherd and God protected him from lions and bears, true story! Then, out of God’s pure grace, he is chosen to be the next king of Israel, totally undeserved! Then, God generously gave him a huge shocking victory against Goliath! He also knew the generosity of God’s forgiveness. We heard last week about the darkest stretch of David’s life, a cover-up of sexual abuse, deception, and murder, but God’s generous grace didn’t run dry. Through his pastor Nathan, David received the words we all long to hear, “Your sins are forgiven.” David felt guilt and shame to point of feeling like his bones were literally wasting away. In fact, check out some of David’s 73 psalms that he wrote and you will find him saying things like, “Where are you, God? “Do you hear my cry, God?” “Do you care, God?” All these laments, seeing what he didn’t have and feeling like God wasn’t coming through. At times, he saw himself as a “have-not” and it clouded his perspective on his true reality: He was a “have-it-all” because he had the Lord. But that “have-not” mindset isn’t one that David invented. It’s a mindset we so often process life through, isn’t it?
We read a passage like Psalm 145:16, “You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing,” and if you’re like me, what often comes to mind first: “Well, I still don’t have the savings I wish I had, “I still haven’t emotionally been able to move on from that failure,” or “God still hasn’t given me the boldness I wish I had to live my faith, “or I still feel overwhelmed as a parent and God hasn’t changed that.” We see all these desires and we think, “Why isn’t God satisfying them?”
It’s no secret that many of us are struggling to stay above the tsunami of economic difficulties. In fact, studies have shown that more than 50% of Americans don’t have enough money saved up to cover a $1,000 emergency expense. I never could’ve anticipated a dozen eggs costing almost $4! Maybe your budget is getting tighter and tighter, the credit card bill growing and growing, and maybe you’ve thought, “God you promised to provide for me, when is that going to happen?” Notice the mindset…It’s that “have-not” view of life, right?
We often have a similar “have-not” lens when it comes to our emotional needs too. We see an amazing verse of comfort like Psalm 145:18 which says, “The LORD is near to those who call on him,” or Psalm 145:19, “He hears their cry and saves them,” but it doesn’t feel like God is close enough to hear us. We feel that weight of emotional baggage from a recent break-up, or our mental health struggles, or feeling like our love tank is running on empty, no one filling it up, feeling rejected, lost in grief, down in guilt, feeling like a “have-not.”
When we have that “have-not” mentality thinking about our physical and emotional needs, it cannot help but influence how we view our spiritual needs. Such thoughts influence us to see God as indifferent, out of touch, late, uncaring, not understanding, which of course is where Satan and our sinful flesh want us to think, a mindset locked into a “have-not” framework until we go to where Satan belongs, where we would be eternal “have-nots” when it comes to God’s generous grace. But even in our spiritual amnesia, our generous God shows his generosity by coming near to us again and again, by satisfying our needs even at the risk of us never recognizing that this side of heaven. You can know that God will always be generous to you, how? Because of the day he satisfied your greatest need.
It was on this day that God satisfied our deepest need “at the proper time.” The day he opened wide his hands and satisfied the number one desire we all have: Good Friday. The day Jesus opened his hands and gave us forgiveness, the deepest bond with God, a hope that goes beyond financial challenges, a new mentality and life through faith of a “have-it-all.” We could lose our homes, our closest family, our jobs, and even our own lives, but if we have Jesus, have we really lost anything?
Take a minute in your head right now and think about your financial situation over the last five years. Maybe every single one of those days or many of those days you had sleepless nights, exhausting conversations with yourself, or stared at your bank account statement, and thought “How will I make this work?” and yet here you are 5 years later. Without you realizing it, God gave you exactly what you needed every single time. That “random” bonus at work. That “random” gift from a friend. That “random” bill got discounted. I don’t need to do air-quotes for you to see none of that was random. It was the Lord giving you your daily bread.
As you think about the emotional needs you are restless in trying to satisfy, think about that text from a friend that came at just the right time you needed a pick-me-up. Think about that smile from a church member who you might not know very well but is so happy you are there in church that day. Think of that memory of your dad saying, “I’m proud of you.” Think of what your God wants you to never forget, “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them. The Lord watches over all who love him.” That’s you! God is near you! He loves you!
All these amazing examples of God’s generosity stem from the place where he opened his hands and satisfied the number one desire of every living thing in all creation: To be close to God, to live in his kingdom, one that goes beyond generations, from millennials to “gen-Zers” to the ancients, I mean boomers, just kidding! His kingdom will never rust or fade or decay. His promise to provide will always be true. No circumstance or need can snatch you from your heavenly Father’s hands. He has fulfilled your deepest desire, he is near you, and he hears you. When you pray you aren’t talking into a void of oxygen, you have the listening ear of the God who made every cell and planet, your Savior who carried all your struggles and banished sin and death from your life forever, the Holy Spirit who grows your faith and is preparing you to come home. When you and I see that we are “have-it-alls” through Jesus, life looks so very different.
You start to recognize all the little gifts of God’s generosity that are always around you. Instead of living the bitter and lonely life of the “have-not” mindset, you see and taste those hints of God’s grace. You rejoice each morning you wake up because God has given you another day to serve him. You smile when the water is hot in the shower and not an ice-bath-hose. You open your dresser, or your fridge, and marvel at how God used people and nature to bring you all you have. You open that Bible and are stunned that God would have all this written for you. When we have such a mindset, it completely changes how we process adversity, loss, and pain. Instead of getting sucked into dwelling on what we don’t have, we let what we have shine light on our path forward.
Jesus’ satisfied our greatest need, to be at peace with God and in his family. Knowing that truth helps us put things into the right perspective. When we face uncertainty and heartache, we know such things are not existential threats to us because we have Jesus. It’s something God has brought us to and he will bring us through it. Even if that means bringing us home to heaven, can we really complain about that?! God kept his greatest promise to send a Savior and we know he will keep all his other promises. We don’t get frazzled, but we boldly “call on God in truth.” What does that mean? It means we live with a “your will be done” mindset, white-knuckle gripping God through the promises he’s given us and boldly praying in his name because he has promised to satisfy our needs in just the right way and at just the right time. That’s peace, that’s joy. That’s the “have-it-all” lifestyle we live through faith in the God who gave us his own life.
I met a pastor at a leadership conference who shared with me a story about one of his members. He gave his church the challenge to count themselves to sleep by thinking of all the blessings God had given them that day. He said, “Come up with an “A-Z” list. Apple, bagel, coffee, donut, whatever. Train your soul to see God’s goodness, because God is good.” That was the challenge. After church one of his members came up to him and said, “Come up with 26 good things from A-Z? I bet I can come with 2,600!” Two months later he had a 37-page binder, tiny font, single-spaced of 2600 different blessings. But the coolest part wasn’t that he accomplished that, but that after he finished he said, “It changed my life.” You can call me a plagiarizer (if that’s even a word) but let’s give ourselves the same challenge. Over the last week, try to count all the good things God gives you each day no matter how big or how small. Let’s focus on the generosity of our God, his truly amazing grace, his nail-pierced hands that opened our hearts and satisfies all our needs. We truly do have it all! Amen.