What is one thing you worry about, or one concern you have about the future of our church?
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
John 10:10
This January, as part of our Stewardship worship series Greater Than, we are taking time in each worship service to ask you one question that will help our leadership team continue to chart a path forward as a church in 2022. Your feedback on these questions is critical as we create a community for worship, spiritual formation, and missions that reaches many people. If you haven’t yet submitted your thoughts, please email your response to [email protected] so that I can share them with the Church Council in our upcoming meetings this spring. The question above is the one we asked from this Sunday.
As I thought about this question from last Sunday and some of the answers we’ve already received from many of you, I asked myself: What does our own worry and living a life of abundance have to do with each other?
For one thing – when I am worried about something, I usually cling to what brings me comfort.
If I am worried about my finances, I cling to my wallet and my checkbook.
If I am worried about my family, I cling to whatever control I think I have.
If I am worried about the unpredictability of my future, I cling to what I know right now
and I grip it so tight I practically suck the life right out of it.
So often when we are worried, we are tempted to focus on our own comfort. When we are worried about losing something we care about, we fight tooth and nail to make sure it is not lost. When we fear not having enough, we live out of a scarcity mentality rather than seeing God’s abundance in our lives.
The amount of worry we have is almost always directly related to the amount of satisfaction we feel, and how well we choose to live out of our abundance.
Living the life of abundance Jesus promised us isn’t necessarily about having a lot of everything.
Not all of us have an abundance of all the things we want: money, time, energy, talents, resilience, positivity, good health, popularity, or any of the other things we wish for a lot of.
None of us – as individuals or even as a church community – have all of the things we wish we had.
But I’ll bet God’s given you an awful lot of something.
Maybe that something doesn’t even feel like much of a good thing most of the time.
But it’s there. And what if that’s God’s invitation for you to use it?
We cannot let our worry of what we do not have, or fear we won’t have – keep us from living this life in a way that prioritizes using our abundance for the sake of others.
Living a life of abundance means moving away from a scarcity mentality that comes from the constant worry of what we don’t have, and toward a mentality of abundance – recognizing that God gives each of us something to share and when we do, there will always be enough to go around.
Pastor Kate
