Our daily bread

First I want to acknowledge that I have received some of the most thoughtful comments on my previous post What if abundance was the norm?. Thank you to all who put so much time and effort into responding. I hope to respond personally to each one.

In thinking further about abundance vs. scarcity, I thought about a line from the Lord's Prayer, the one where we pray to God the Father to "Give us this day our daily bread."

This reminded me of a book I read a long time ago, back when I'd just finished college and had started my first job, back when I was single. The book is Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman by Anne Ortlund.

There was a part of the book where the author talked about work, as in the paid kind. She said that even if we're getting a paycheck, we aren't really working for the money. Ideally, we would be working for God, and He would be providing for our needs. That provision could come in the form of a paycheck, but it could come in other ways too. In the Lord's Prayer, we're clearly asking God, the Loving Father, to provide for what we need to live. And our work is about doing our part to bring about His Kingdom and accomplish His will on earth as in Heaven.

The take home message I got was this: if I work a job and draw a paycheck, it should be because I am called by God to that work. That should be the reason I do it. If I'm doing what God has called me to do, then I can trust Him to provide for my needs.

How does this tie into my current musings on abundance? It just strikes me that working in order to get a paycheck has to be a great form of poverty indeed. A few months back, someone on Steemit posted a video where he interviewed Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame. In the interview Mr. Kiyosaki explained that he works for free, even though he is very wealthy. What he meant by that was that he works in order to solve a problem, not to get paid. Basically, he works because he believes the work is good and worth doing.

Not only is working for the paycheck a form of poverty, it's a form of serving money. I mean, what else is working for money? Jesus Christ, God the Father's Incarnate Son, said that you cannot serve both God and money. You will love one and hate the other. What does that say to those of us who are working a job we don't like or feel called to in order to get the paycheck? I'm not here to judge anyone's choices, but I have been pondering what those ancient words mean for me.

I have a job, and I do believe I am called to that work, so I have no plans of quitting even though I feel less in need of the paycheck. Nonetheless, I've been considering what the full ramifications of working out of obedience to God rather than out of a need for compensation. If I didn't need the money, would I approach my job any differently?

Give us this day our daily bread. I want to believe and trust more fully in a God who provides abundantly for my needs so that I can abandon myself to obeying Him. Period.

I want to close by saying that my belief in an abundantly providential God does not mean there is no suffering, financial or otherwise. This is not the prosperity Gospel I'm after. I'm after that complete trust in a God who knows and loves me and provides for me no matter what may be going on in my life.

I'm realizing that to really have the attitude of I'm working for God, not the paycheck (especially when the work I do happens to be associated with a paycheck, I have to also believe in a paradigm of abundance rather than one of scarcity. At the very least I have to believe that God Himself is not limited by my financial circumstances, which ends up meaning that I am not limited by my financial circumstances either.