the art of ABUNDANCE.

Light is so much brighter when all you have known is darkness.
How true this is.
I agree with it, and I think it portrays a lovely truth that things are enjoyed so much more when they contrast what you previously knew.
But there’s a danger in the addiction of this truth.
And the danger is this: when we become so addicted to enjoying things by comparing or contrasting them, we lose sight of their truth value, worth, and individuality.
So when I only enjoy the light because it isn’t darkness, I’m not truly enjoying the light for it being light, I’m enjoying it because it isn’t darkness.
Let me rework this for you:
If I enjoy a healthy relationship with someone because I just got out of a unhealthy relationship, I’m not truly valuing the relationship for what is is, I’m valuing it for what it’s not.
Get it?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s important to value things for what they’re not as well as what they are, but I think that too often it becomes the focus of our appreciation and we lose something in the process:
Abundance.
What is abundance?
It’s having so much of something you could never need anything else.
And the way abundance is created in our walk with the Father of Lights is through intimacy, adoration, appreciation, and realization.
I recently was in a time of ministry, where I was supposed to be focused on the Lord, and receiving from him, when he spoke to me and showed me why I wasn’t ready to receive.
Why wasn’t I?
Because my heart was so busy comparing the experience to other experiences and making sure things matched up or were better that I was disengaged from the current moment.
I was in an art museum, too busy thinking about other paintings I had seen before to truly enjoy the painting right in front of me and appreciate the beauty it had.
Comparison kills adoration.
Contrast kills appreciation.
And it’s the same in our walk with the Lord.
If I’m constantly thanking God for all the things he’s not, am I really adoring him?
Am I really appreciating who he is if I’m simply appreciating who he’s not?
The Creator wants to take us to a place where we don’t need to constantly be thanking him for not sending us to hell, but where so thankful for the intimacy he has with us, and the promise of an eternity with him that we explode in abundance of joy and peace.
Abundance comes from the actual harvest, not by comparing the harvest to other harvests.
Abundance comes when we look at what we’ve been given, and we realize that it’s more than we could ever need, but it’s all ours’.
You wouldn’t say that a man who has a moldy piece of bread for lunch has abundance just because the man next to him only has a cracker.
Abundance doesn’t come from comparison, it comes from revelation and realization.
So in my time with God, if I’m busy trying to make it a time that is similar to my other times with him, I may miss out on what he has for me in that moment. God is a god of the present- not the past, not the future, the present.
He does things in the now.
Yes he heals our past and prepares us for the future, but if you’re looking for Jesus, you will always find him in the present moment, talking to the woman at the well, healing the blind beggar, ministering to the lost and orphaned people around him.
He lived a life of abundance because he lived in the moment.
He was engaged in the present.
He had a revelation of the Father’s love, and lived out of a place not only of intimacy but of appreciation for that intimacy.
He was able to love his disciples not because he had compared them to the other Jews and found something in them of higher value, but because he saw them, chose them, and appreciated each one for who they were.
You never read about Jesus saying to John “You know John, I just really appreciate your friendship and your simple obedience and child-like heart. You’re not like Peter, who always is overthinking everything and being bull-headed, or like Thomas, who always needs an explanation.”
No. Of course not.
He loved well because he realized well.
And I think that we have become a generation of people unable to realize.
When we realize, we start to appreciate what’s in front of us; and more than usual, we have way more to be thankful for than we think we do.
And when we come to the place where we can look at all we have, praise instead of compare, we begin to live more abundantly.
When we compare our experience to another’s experience, we rob ourselves of joy and adoration for the individuality of our experience.
Guys, life is not a cookie cutter.
And praise God for that.
Every relationship is different.
Every experience is different.
Every God moment is different.
Every encounter is different.
John 3:19 says that God’s judgement is based on a contrast and comparison. He says that the world is condemned first and foremost because they compared the darkness to the light, and decided to love the darkness rather than the light.
It’s why mankind fell.
Because Adam and Eve decided that what God had given them wasn’t enough. They need to compare fruits, they needed to contrast experiences.
There’s more God, I know it.
And in eating of the fruit of curiosity, we step out of the innocence of the present and get lost in the lust of the future.
“What it isn’t” muddles “what it is”.
Our Heavenly Father longs for us to have abundance.
He longs for us to have contentment.
To have joy, peace, and hope.
But we cannot have new wine in old wineskins.
He has told us that he is doing a new thing.
Why must we insist on comparing it with the old?

Abundance comes when we open our eyes and refuse to look back.