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Who’s ready to get a little bit better? I’m a believer: I’m a Christ follower and I love Jesus a whole lot. Not a real big fan of religion because people get jacked up with that, but I love Jesus. I get a lot of questions from my brothers and sisters in Christ; can I be a Christian and still want to have it all? Is it unchristian to want to have it all? Is that even possible to have it all and still be a believer?
Here’s the thing… If you want to have it all, but you want to have it all because you’re selfish or because of your own selfish ambition that you want to be better than everybody else. And you want everybody to know your name and you want to compete with others. You want to win and make other people look bad. If you have pride and arrogance; if you want to have it all from that place, then you aren’t very Christian, anymore. You went way off the deep end. But most people that ask me that question or similar questions, that’s not on their radar; they’re not greedy, they’re not selfish. Woah, that’s another one of greed, right… Like you’re greedy if you want too much. Some of you have probably also heard: You should be content with what you have.
And so here’s what I would say.
If you’re dealing with those things in your heart, then I would probably tell you, you need to take a time out and check yourself, check your heart. Really pray through some of that stuff. Get some counsel; the support helps. We all need to get some people in our lives who can help us see our blind spots. We all have them. Get some help, tell the truth and get some help. Truthfully, most of the people who will ask me that question, they aren’t dealing with that stuff. In fact, they are genuine people, they love people and they want to make a difference in the world.
And so here’s the thing: if you’re coming at this, Hey, I think I want to have it all me, maybe even, I think I’m supposed to have it all. Here’s a couple checks for you.
You’ve got to consider others better than yourself. If you have a hard time doing that, check yourself and start humbling yourself; if you have a problem serving people, then you might have a heart issue. The greatest in the kingdom is serving! But if you don’t and you love people and you love to serve people and you can’t wait to impact more people in a positive way, then you might be free and clear. You could have it all.
Seek ye first, the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.
All these things sound like having it. If your heart is to say, I want to honor, God, I want to put His kingdom first. I want to make a difference that has an eternal impact. Then your heart is safe and it might just be okay for you to have it all. In fact, that was Jesus talking. And he said, if you seek my kingdom first, all these things, Jesus is not opposed to you having more things as long as in your heart is His kingdom first.
If you’re coming at this from a place of, Oh my goodness, I feel a burden. I feel a responsibility. There’s gifts. There’s skills. There’s talents. I know I can create massive wealth or I know I can create massive impact. I know I can be the best in the world… then you might be okay because in Deuteronomy 8:18, the Bible talks about it is God who has given you the power to create wealth so that He can establish His covenant. If you deep down inside, you’ve struggled with this because you feel this burden, this responsibility to use what God has given. That just might be God, that might be the Spirit of God, whispering to your heart saying, Right. There’s more in you. There’s greatness, but you have to give to the world. It’s time to take back your power and take full responsibility so that you can give that greatness to the world. If you want to take responsibility, you might be ready to have it all.
If your motivation is to give glory to God, Matthew 5:16, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. This is a part of my life, one of the mantras and I want to leverage my life for God’s Lord. I want the people to see me and see Jesus in me.
I want them to see what I do. And I want them to say, that couldn’t have been Mark because he isn’t that good. He is not that smart. I wanted them to see me and for me to glorify God. In fact, I know that God said to me, he said, Mark, your responsibility is to make me and Jesus famous. And I’m going to give glory to God.
If your heart’s not to say, I want to have more than other people, that’s greed. But if your heart is the saying, Oh my goodness, God created it all. And there’s more than enough. There’s this idea of a fixed “pie mentality.”. If I take a slice of the pie, then you have less. But the reality is that there is abundance that is not a fixed pie.
It is this resource of abundance that God has created. I know not everybody’s a believer, but most of you if you believe in the universe and you believe in a higher power, you believe that there is abundance. And so if you need to check yourself on this whole, Hey, is it greed, selfish? If you’re coming at it from abundance and there’s more than enough for everybody to go around, then you might be okay, John 10:10 says the thief to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus said, I’ve come to give life and life more abundantly, life overflowing, life to the full, who doesn’t want to step into that. See I used to believe that the desire to have it all compromised my faith.
And there’s a lot of baggage from growing up, being in church, and conversations about wealthy people. And there are greedy people out there, but can I just tell you the more wealthy people I meet, the more successful people I meet;the more I realize that there are some genuine, good souls, and a lot of them are people that want to make a difference in this world. And so now my belief is that I honor God more because then my life is going to be leveraged through the Lord because anytime someone sees me, I can point them back to Him. Now, I’m not imposing my faith on anyone. I don’t expect everyone to have my faith, but I’m pretty sure the principals that I’m dropping right now could apply to you no matter what your faith is.
For those of you that share my faith in Jesus. God needs some believers to rise up in the world and say, You know what, I’m not ashamed of the gospel. And I’m not ashamed to walk in wealth and prosperity because He gave us the power to do that. What are we doing with it? And there is time for a transfer of wealth into the Kingdom so that we can make a difference in this world. So that love, not religion, love can win in this world. The world needs people to rise up and say, I’m going to be on a mission to let love win. So if that’s you, I think you might need to grab hold of some of this today. I hope I brought encouragement to you and you begin to step into that. Because as I like to say, you should go out there and give your greatness to the world because somebody needs what’s on the inside of you. Don’t hold it back, go up there and give it away. You’re amazing. Have a great day.
