No budget for God’s blessings.

  I am one of those people who likes to see all my ducks in a line before I do anything. I take risks occasionally, but I love the idea of playing it safe. Recently, life has gotten me thinking more about my faith and accessing God’s promises. Like many Christians, sometimes I fall into the trap of thinking God’s ability to deliver on His promises is limited by what I believe He can do. But I am learning daily whatever I can conceive in my mind. My God can multiply many times over. Going through this period of difficulty, I had an epiphany I cannot budget for God’s blessings. Yes, we have a responsibility to make the best plans we can for our lives, but if you are a believer, accept we cannot budget for God’s blessings.

As I flip the pages of my Bible, I am confronted with several accounts of God blessing the lives of the faithful. There is one thing common among all the stories: every blessing was beyond the imagination or expectations of the receivers. Here is a truth: If God can only bless us based on our measurement of His blessings, there is nothing extraordinary about Him. I want to put this out there. Every time God has blessed our lives, it was always more than we bargained for because he knows our thoughts long before we utter a request. Here is what Jesus says: “Your Father knows what you need even before you ask” (Matthew 6: 8). God loves working with the deficit of our thoughts to unleash a surplus of His blessings in our lives.

Has God ever made you look like a complete idiot? Have you ever wasted precious time worrying about something God turned around and made you look foolish? Have you lost sleep over a situation He was working out right before your eyes? Have you made plans for things in your life only for God to do the opposite of what you had planned? Again, I want to say to us there is no budget for God’s blessings. Ephesians 3: 20 “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” Anything you and I can construct in our limited thoughts God can do much more and nothing is stopping Him.

For every blessing or promise God delivered in the Bible, there is no budget anyone could come up with to balance the equation. If God can only work within the confines of the spaces we fit Him in, we have no need for Him. Abraham had stopped budgeting for children when God told him he would be the father of many (Genesis 12: 1-4); Elijah had no food budget when God stranded Him by a brook and then sent ravens to feed him (1Kings 17: 2-16); five thousand people made no provisions for lunch, but ate from God’s storeroom (John 6: 5-13); there is no budget for God’s blessings.

We confidently sing about counting our blessings, but can our blessings be counted? Even while we are counting our blessings, God is still blessing us and they pass unnoticed because they are coming rapidly. If we were to add up all the ways God blesses our lives daily, we do not have a brain big enough to contain even the thought. The next you sing about counting your blessings, contemplate for a minute. Am I only counting the blessings I am aware of? God’s blessings have to be more than the things we can see and feel. Some of His blessings are just not measurable.

Recently I said to a friend, that if we put our lives on paper it doesn’t add up. Based on our budget, we cannot afford to live the way do, so it must be someone greater than ourselves who handles our lives. This doesn’t mean we don’t feel the strain of hardship in our lives, but we have never been left alone to work it out. The budget for my life may always run a deficit according to the standards of the world, but when it goes before God, all He sees is the surplus. Whether there is much or little to work with from my perspective, I can be contented because God is on the job (Philippians 4: 11-13).

The next time you worry about how any situation is going to work in your life, remember God works outside of everything you have budgeted for. Even when we ask God to bless our lives, He never just delivers on what He asks for, He provides us with much more (Matthew 6: 32). Is it not wonderful to serve a God who can see beyond our budget? Even as we pray and ask God to open the door of His promises, let us prepare for a harvest, because no budget can contain Him.