Today in my time with the Lord, I was meditating on 1 Corinthians 9:8 —
“And God is able to make every grace overflow to you, so that in every way, always having everything you need, you may excel in every good work.”
God has provided all that we need. It dawned on me that sometimes those of us in the Church can have a tendency to hyper-spiritualize scripture and say that the blessings we get from the Lord are only spiritual and not physical. However, I’d like to pose a different perspective…
What if the blessings of God are both spiritual and physical? What if “always having everything you need” means that we actually DO always have what we need – need boldness? got it! need courage? got it! need faith, hope, love, or peace? have them all in abundance! Now – why do we then say it doesn’t work that way when it comes to money? need money for rent? got it! need finances to cover a car repair? got it!
Philippians 4:19 says, “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
Money is something we all need to survive in this world. And our Father in heaven is not poor. What if we don’t see these kinds of provisions because we either don’t ask or we ask with wrong motives…
“…you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives to spend it on your pleasures.” James 4:2b-3
What if we’re missing out on God’s provisions because we think His blessings are only spiritual and not also physical, so we don’t even ask Him in faith for these things?
Please understand, I am not encouraging a “prosperity gospel” – but I DO believe that the gospel includes prosperity!
2 Peter 1 tells us that we have “everything we need for life and godliness” and Psalm 23:1 says, “the Lord is my shepherd, I HAVE what I need.
What if instead of saying that these promises are just about spiritual blessings, we believe that they are promises for BOTH spiritual and physical blessings?
What would happen to your heart if you chose to rest in the fact that God is good and He has promised to provide?
I heard once that we should “pray like it depends on God, and work like it depends on us.” So what if we prayed in faith expecting God to answer our requests, and then asked HIM for the steps of obedience to take?
I’m not advocating for some pie in the sky wishful thinking.
I’m advocating for bold faith-filled prayers to a Father in heaven who loves us. What if when we prayed we actually expected God to grant us our requests?
I don’t have all the answers, but I do have faith in a good God – a Good Father whose gifts are always good. (James 1:17)
I’ll end with an encouragement to meditate on this verse…
“Jesus replied to them, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘be lifted and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, everything you pray and ask for — believe you that you have received it and it will be yours.” Mark 11: 22-24
Sarah Louise 