Cultivating God’s Abundance

Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Our God is a God of abundance and generosity. This is seen in who He is and in all that He does.

Just consider something as common as the earth God created, the ground we all walk on. It’s made of dirt and rock. It’s so cheap and mundane we trample it underfoot without thought. It’s just “dirt”!

Yet, that dirt is so rich and diverse in its elements that we can dig into it and draw out materials to produce stunning works of art and powerful supercomputers. We can fashion its elements into cars and smartphones. We can use it to construct buildings so tall they literally reach the clouds. We can split the atoms of some of these elements to create power for modern civilization. We can use other elements to make spaceships that explore the outer reaches of our solar system.

This inherent abundance is why in Genesis, God commanded humans to “cultivate” the earth (Genesis 2). The word cultivate implies a generous potential hidden in the dirt under our feet—that God created the earth in such a way it can be developed and fashioned into something greater than it is.

In this we see we need not have a scarcity mindset with the resources God has given to us. We can have a generosity abundance mindset, giving our stuff away to the glory of God, “cultivating” it, knowing God is able to return it multiplied to meet our every need.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch the son of Neriah, I prayed to the Lord, saying: ‘Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you. You show steadfast love to thousands, but you repay the guilt of fathers to their children after them, O great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deed, whose eyes are open to all the ways of the children of man, rewarding each one according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds.’”

~Jeremiah 32:16-19 (ESV)

“Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.”

~Genesis 2:10-15