Abundance sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
More time. More money. More opportunities. More creativity. More freedom. More of God.
Without much thought, at first I’d say, yes please. I’ll take the lot.
There’s just one small problem.
Where exactly am I going to put it?
I’ve realised recently that I already have an abundance of quite a few things. Ideas, for example. I have an extraordinary number of those. Unfortunately, I don’t necessarily have an abundance of time, money or space in which to do anything with them.
I also have an abundance of thoughts.
I just don’t always appear to have access to them. With an abundance of factors blocking their access — brain fog, menopause, busy lifestyle, medical factors — take your pick.
I can be halfway through saying something genuinely profound, stop for approximately three seconds and discover that the entire thought has apparently locked itself away somewhere in the building.
Perhaps this is not the kind of abundance I had in mind.
Then there’s my piano.
I own a piano. I love playing the piano. At present, however, actually getting to the piano requires a degree of logistical planning because of how we’ve had to arrange the space in our house.
So there it sits.
An abundance of piano.
A slight shortage of access.
And yet, if I did have access, would my procrastination lose its grip long enough to let me focus, or would my motivation actually kick in enough to play it?
And sometimes I wonder whether that’s what we do with abundance generally.
We pray for more. We work towards more. We talk about prosperity and living abundantly. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting more.
I would quite happily have more money.
There. I said it.
I don’t worship money, but I can think of plenty of things I could do with it. Things I could create. People I could help. Ideas I could actually develop rather than adding them to the increasingly overcrowded waiting room inside my head.
But perhaps the more important question isn’t simply, Do I want more?
Perhaps it’s:
What would I do with it if I got it?
Because abundance needs somewhere to go.
It needs a container.
And if the container isn’t big enough, organised enough or ready enough to hold what’s being poured into it, abundance can start to feel remarkably like overwhelm.
And that’s where Solomon comes in.
“Ask for whatever you want me to give you.” — 1 Kings 3:5
Imagine that.
Anything.
Solomon could have asked for riches. A long life. Victory over his enemies.
He didn’t.
He asked for a discerning heart. Wisdom to govern God’s people and to distinguish between right and wrong.
And God was pleased with his answer.
Solomon was offered anything he wanted, and he asked for the wisdom to steward what he had already been given.
Because he already had something enormous.
A kingdom.
What he recognised was that having something and having the capacity to carry it well are not the same thing.
And because Solomon asked for wisdom rather than riches or honour, God gave him the wisdom he asked for — and also gave him riches and honour that he hadn’t asked for.
That challenges me.
Because I’m quite good at asking God for the next thing.
More time would be lovely.
More money would be extremely useful.
More opportunities? Absolutely.
More ideas?
Actually, perhaps we could put a temporary hold on those until I’ve dealt with the existing backlog.
But maybe sometimes the prayer I need isn’t:
Lord, give me more.
Maybe it’s:
Lord, give me the wisdom, the tenacity and clarity to know what to do with what You’ve already given me.
Because information isn’t enough.
I can know exactly what I ought to eat and still eat something else.
I can know I need rest and still fill the time with noise.
I can know I want to write and spend the time I could have been writing scrolling through my phone.
I can have an idea that genuinely feels as though God has given it to me and still need discernment to know whether it is for now.
Not every good thing has to be done today.
Some things need wisdom.
Some need clarity.
Some need capacity.
Some need tenacity.
And all of them need stewardship.
Jesus spoke about this too. He said that whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.
There’s that uncomfortable word again.
Trusted.
Because if I’m asking my Heavenly Father for more, perhaps it’s reasonable for me to look at what I’m doing with the little — or actually, the considerable amount — that I already have.
Take time.
I frequently feel as though there simply isn’t enough of it.
I work full-time, which means around forty hours of every week are already allocated before I begin thinking about writing, creating, exercising, building things, spending time with the people I love, playing the aforementioned inaccessible piano, or simply sitting still long enough to remember what I was thinking about five minutes ago.
And yes, there are times when I would very much like God to release me into something different.
But then I have to ask myself an irritating question.
What am I doing with the time I do have?
Because apparently telling God I could accomplish extraordinary things if only He gave me more time becomes slightly less convincing when my phone can produce documentary evidence to the contrary in the form of my screen-time report.
There are moments when I wonder whether I’m waiting for the next season while failing to properly inhabit this one.
Perhaps there are things I’m learning here.
Gratitude.
Discipline.
Patience.
Consistency.
How to do something when I don’t particularly feel like doing it.
How to steward small pockets of time before asking for enormous ones.
That doesn’t mean we have to pretend to love every season we’re in. Nor do I believe wanting change automatically makes us ungrateful.
Sometimes we really do need things to change.
But I don’t want to spend so much time staring at the next mountain that I miss what God is teaching me on this one.
Because if I don’t learn it here, will I simply carry the same habits into whatever comes next?
Will I finally get the time I’ve been asking for and discover that I still don’t know how to use it?
Will I get the opportunity and discover I haven’t developed the capacity to carry it?
Will I get the abundance and then wonder why it feels so heavy?
Maybe before we pray for bigger harvests, we sometimes need bigger barns.
Not necessarily bigger physical ones.
Bigger capacity.
Greater wisdom.
Better discernment.
The tenacity to actually put into practice what we already know.
And perhaps contentment belongs somewhere in all of this too.
“I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” — Philippians 4:12
I appear to have achieved plenty and want simultaneously.
I have plenty of ideas and not always enough money to execute them.
Plenty I want to do and not always enough time.
Plenty of thoughts and, as previously established, occasionally limited access to them.
But when I stop looking exclusively at what I don’t have, I realise how much abundance is already sitting around me.
I have a husband I love, whom there was a time I never knew I would meet.
I have an extraordinarily loving dog who would presumably like an abundance of treats.
I have a home.
I eat every day.
I have choices about what I eat — something I’ve become much more aware of since changing my diet and discovering both how much money I used to spend on things I didn’t need and how little we actually need to be satisfied.
I can rest.
I can create.
I can worship freely.
I can complain about working eight hours and getting paid for it while people elsewhere in the world work far harder in circumstances I can barely imagine, sometimes without freedom, security or enough food.
That doesn’t mean my frustrations aren’t real.
Gratitude doesn’t require pretending something is perfect.
But it does require me to stop occasionally and recognise what is already here.
And yet, strangely, when I think about all the things I want more of, there is one abundance I find myself craving more than the others.
Jesus.
His presence.
Intimacy with Him.
Time to sit with Him and hear Him properly.
I miss those moments when He gives me pictures, when something suddenly becomes clear, when I recognise His voice and know He is showing me something.
And perhaps sometimes when I feel as though God has gone quiet, the problem isn’t that He has gone anywhere.
He promised never to leave us or forsake us.
Perhaps sometimes my life has simply become very loud.
I can ask for intimacy with the Lord but intimacy needs a container too.
Time.
Attention.
Stillness.
Space.
A willingness to put something else down.
“Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” — Psalm 84:10
The writer goes on to say he would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
That puts abundance into perspective.
Because I could have an abundance of money.
An abundance of opportunities.
An abundance of possessions.
An abundance of ideas.
I could finally acquire all the time, space and resources I currently think would make everything easier.
But Jesus asked a rather sobering question:
“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” — Mark 8:36
The whole world.
Now that really is abundance.
And yet Jesus makes it clear that even that can amount to nothing if, in gaining it, we lose what matters most.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply, How much can I gain?
Perhaps it’s also, what is it costing me to gain it?
If my pursuit of more money costs me my peace, is that prosperity?
If more opportunities leave me with no time for the people I love, is that abundance?
If I’m so busy trying to fulfil every idea I’ve been given that I have no time left for the God who gave me the ability to have them, have I really gained anything at all?
Maybe prosperity has more faces than we realise.
Maybe abundance does too.
Perhaps the question isn’t whether it’s wrong to want more.
I don’t think it is.
Perhaps the questions are:
Why do I want it?
What will I do with it?
Do I have the capacity to carry it?
Am I stewarding what I already have?
And most importantly:
What am I becoming while I wait for it?
James tells us that if any of us lacks wisdom, we should ask God, who gives generously.
Perhaps that is one prayer for abundance we can make without worrying about where we’re going to put it.
More wisdom.
Wisdom to know what deserves our time.
Wisdom to know which ideas are for now and which can wait.
Wisdom to recognise when we genuinely need more and when we simply haven’t noticed how much we already have.
Wisdom to create the right containers for whatever God entrusts to us next.
And wisdom to remember that the greatest abundance I could ever possess isn’t something I can put in my bank account, squeeze into my diary or somehow find room for beside the piano.
It is knowing Him.
Everything else is temporary.
One day, this life — with its crowded diaries, unfinished projects, financial limitations, inaccessible pianos and mysteriously disappearing thoughts — will be the briefest part of our story.
For those of us who belong to Christ, eternity awaits.
So yes, I still want abundance.
I still have dreams.
I still want more time, more freedom and enough money to do some of the things I believe have been put on my heart.
But perhaps before I ask God to pour in more, I need to look at the containers.
And perhaps the wisest prayer isn’t simply:
Lord, give me more.
Perhaps it’s:
Lord, give me the wisdom to steward what You have already given me — and prepare me to carry whatever You choose to give me next.
Jesus said that whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much (Luke 16:10), and told us to seek first His Kingdom (Matthew 6:33). Perhaps those two things belong together. We are called to steward faithfully what God has already placed in our hands, while remembering that our first priority is Him. Before all the projects, plans, opportunities and things we hope He might entrust to us next, He wants us close enough to know His heart. Because abundance without wisdom can become overwhelm, and abundance without Him can leave us strangely empty.
So perhaps before we ask God to fill our lives with more, there’s a better question:
Lord, am I making room for You in the abundance I already have?
Lord, I need You. I can’t do any of this without You. Help me make room for You before I ask You to make room for more. Fill me with Your presence, give me Your wisdom, and let everything I do flow from knowing You first.
