The Gospel of "Enough"

The last six months have been trying for me. They've made me begin to truly once again realize and understand what faith is.

In these days of easy finance, we tend to forget. We rent our lives away month by month and trade our freedom away for the security of a paycheck, paid vacation, and a pension plan. It is small wonder that we lose our awe of God the less control we give Him of our lives.

This journey has been more spiritual than I wanted to share at first, as my goal is to become more focused on ministry, requiring me to become more focused on God as a prerequisite. Step one is giving Him control.

In the early days of this journey, I would worry when I was still awaiting confirmation of a contract job. One of the changes I have made between August and now is being more firm on my bid price. But that brings in its own worry and fears that someone out there will be able to underbid me.

But I've discovered something wonderful in the process. Early on, I took a job that paid less than I was worth for the steady paycheck. And it came, but so did the grief and the insane hours. I made the very hard decision to cut that ample pay as it was essentially just a leap from the frying pan into the fire, and as Robert Frost so famously said about the road less travelled, "that has made all the difference".

What I have discovered and come to truly appreciate is that God is a God of enough. In this world where prosperity gospel dominates, where the mainstream church continually accepts compromise to the point where the word is weakened, understanding that is a very big step forward. I may fret about a bid, may worry when 4 or 5 days go by with no big leads, but I am less prone to panicking and taking the kinds of lowball offers that really aren't making me any money. I know the work will come, and I know I'm doing what I have to to get it, and so I hold firm on the bottom line. What I am learning is that the gaps are growing shorter and I am redefining what I really need.

Oddly enough, in our modern world, "enough" really is prosperity, we just don't tend to see it. When I arise in the morning and flip a switch to instantly light the room, I am more prosperous than every generation prior to the past 150 or so years, and still more prosperous than most of the world. When I drive my car to a store and purchase foods rather than spending my leisure time gathering it, I utilize at least two blessings that I take for granted. When the thermostat keeps my home at a constant temperature without my having to stoke the fire, that's a comfort many have not known historically and that billions still don't realize today.

So in discovering the "Gospel of Enough", I am reconciling with the fact that prosperity is not a wrong teaching, it is simply mistaught. Becoming debt free and having the ability to choose my own life's blessing; THAT is true prosperity. But it comes in first accepting what you have.