Experiencing God’s Abundance & Blessings

I was asked by a friend to explain how we can experience the reality of God’s abundance and His blessings. I have a few observations I’d like to share on this subject:

The first is that God’s abundance and blessings seem to be all around us, even though most of the time we are unaware of them. Many of us have experienced the exact opposite, so let me explain what I mean.  (What I’m about to share may sound like an endorsement of what has been called “The Prosperity Gospel”. I’m not a fan of the prosperity gospel and this isn’t an endorsement of it. So bear with me as I outline a view that may have a few similarities, but is different in many ways.)

I once thought that God was holding back some (or most) of His blessings from me for reasons that I didn’t understand.  The more I read about others people’s experiences and the longer I walk with God, the more convinced I’ve become that He has already provided all that we will ever need in the way of resources and power, but we’ve failed to perceive and appropriate them.  This is a huge issue that most Christians have yet to fully understand and I’ll admit, I struggle with it myself quite often . Yet there’s ample evidence to support this idea and I think it’s time to shift our thinking and begin to see things as they really are.

Most of us tend to think (because it’s what we experience) that God has not given us the fullness of His blessings. We tend to believe that he has not released the full power needed to heal the sick or adequate resources to fund our ministry projects. There are many other things we would like to see released into our storehouse, and we pray for their release, but the fact is — most (if not all) of it has already been released.

In his book The Veil, Blake Healy wrote about seeing churches that struggled financially while in the spirit, at those same churches, he saw piles of gold and silver heaped up all around them. The poor were unaware that they sat in the midst of great treasure. They believed that God was holding out on them, but the reality was that His financial abundance was all around them — they merely failed to perceive it and appropriate it.

Healy also wrote about seeing angels with containers full of healing oil that were present at worship services for the purpose of delivering healing to the sick, but often the angels didn’t release the healing they carried. God’s healing power was present. He was not holding it back. But for unknown reasons, the people who needed it were unable to appropriate the power, though it had been made available to them.

John Wimber was given a vision where God told him that He had provided enough healing power to heal every person on earth and that the problem of failed healing was not that God was holding anything back — the problem was our inability to receive what He had already provided for us.

If the facts are established by the mouth of two or three witnesses, I think we have enough evidence to believe that God is not holding back what we need in order to live in His blessings. The problem is our inability to perceive and receive what He has already provided.

From my limited experiences with this subject, the blessings of God tend to follow my obedience to His call upon my life. When I say His call I’m referring to the destiny each of us has been given, which was written on the scrolls of our lives in heaven. It’s the destiny God planned out for us before we were born, and some would argue, the destiny we agreed to before we came to earth to live in a physical body. Many of us have yet to learn what that calling is. If this describes you,  it would be wise for you to find out what your destiny is.

Whatever God has called you to do and to be — when you discover that calling and follow it you’ll notice divinely ordained relationships beginning to develop and you’ll experience divine provision appearing seemingly out of nowhere. God arranges things according to His will for each person. His favor and blessings follow us as we follow His plans. This is what is meant by the phrase, “Where God guides, God provides.” There is blessing in obedience and there tends to be lack when we are not living in obedience. If we aren’t experiencing His abundance and favor — it might be because we have yet to find our divinely ordained destiny or if we have, we’ve gotten off the path.

Part of experiencing His abundance and blessing is a matter of training our heart and mind to think according to His will. “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” Our thought patterns have a great ability to influence the things we experience. In a very real sense, we are what we think. One problem in receiving God’s blessing is often a matter of wrong thinking.

This might sound cliché, but I’ve found that taking my thoughts captive and submitting them to the truth about God is a helpful exercise when it comes to defeating a poverty mindset, unbelief, fear or any other pattern of thinking that’s destructive or counter to God’s call upon my life.

Whenever I find myself thinking in a way that is negative or when my thoughts take on a perspective of unbelief or fear — I mentally stop for a moment and consider if what I’m thinking is true from what I know about God’s character, His kingdom and His call upon my life. If what I’m thinking is not true, I discard the thought and meditate for a moment on the truth that I know about that issue. If I’m not sure what the truth is, I either ask the Holy Spirit for understanding or search the scriptures to find the truth . Once I know what the truth is, I allow it to sink in to my heart and mind for a while and eventually, it will replace the lie that I believed. This is how the mind is renewed and brought into obedience. If you do this often enough it can become a habit.

Habitual renewing of the mind is one of the keys to perceiving and receiving the blessings God has provided.