“Let our garners be full, furnishing every kind of produce, and our flocks bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields; let our cattle bear without mishap and without loss, let there be no outcry in our streets! How blessed are the people who are so situated; how blessed are the people whose God is the Lord!” (Psalm 144:13-15).

I could not help but think of my business as I read these words this morning. I think it is a legitimate prayer to be praying, that God would prosper you, as it is David prayed such a prayer. When these things are in place, when our barns are full and we have distributive abilities, when what we have multiplies and there are no losses, when there are no accidents, injuries, or debilitating illnesses, then we are a blessed people. All of which derives from the greater blessing, that we can call the Lord our God.

Yes, riches come other ways. You can lie, cheat, kill, and destroy to get what you want. You can pledge your allegiance to the evil one–who, if you will but bow down and worship him, can give you up to all the kingdoms of this world. And with these riches you can do both good and evil things, as even evil men do from time to time charitable things. Yet their good deeds will never merit eternal life.

True wealth, of the godly sort, comes from heaven above and is seen as a blessing from God. There is gratitude. And, there is the blessing put to good use.

Key to God-type riches is not only praying the prayer, as did David, but honoring the Lord with our God-given resources, as David no doubt taught his son. Solomon writes,

“Honor the Lord from your wealth and from the first of all your produce; so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine” (Proverbs 3:9-10).

How to honor the Lord? The tithe–the “first of all your produce.” The first ten percent. After that it is out of a grateful heart that you give under the watchful eye of God. The offering taken by Paul for the poor in Jerusalem is a good example (see 2 Corinthians 8 & 9). In general this would be aiding those in need as unto the Lord. This is God-honoring.

But you can’t give what you do not have. We are blessed to bless; that is the plan of God. So it is David prays, and so I pray: “Let my garners (my storehouses–my bank accounts, my backlog of work) be full, furnishing every kind of produce (i.e., fruit, fruitfulness, profit), and my flocks (my employees, my projects) bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields; let my cattle bear (increase, multiply), without mishap and without loss (accident, injury, sickness), let there be no outcry in my streets (on my jobs, my property)!”

Let it be so, Lord! Let it be to me according to these words. In Jesus’ name, amen.

“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

I believe this is the key to be able to be saying, as did the Psalmist King David, “I shall not want.” It is because he was drawing upon the abundance of God Almighty.

One thing about God–and there are many things about God, so many in fact, that it shall take an eternity to come to know and understand them (and then you will ever get to the end of them)–is that He does not lack anything. Instead, He possesses everything. He owns it all; the silver and the gold, and “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10). And, “no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11). He “stores up wisdom for the upright” (Proverbs 2:7). He rewards the righteous with prosperity (Proverbs 13:21).

I am inspired this morning by the word of the Lord–I always am! It is the one thing, above all other things, that breathes life into my soul, that enlightens my mind, that quickens my spirit, and that gives me the wherewithal to keep on keeping on. I love the word of God. I am so inspired I hardly know which to be focusing on, but I choose this because it is what at first moved upon my heart.

In Psalm 34, David writes, “O fear the Lord, you His saints; for to those who fear Him there is no want. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; but they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing” (34:9-10).

I shall never forget Derek Prince’s teaching on this subject. It was Memorial Day weekend, 1978, on Mackinaw Island. The church (New Covenant Christian) had a retreat there and Derek Prince, who more or less oversaw our fellowship, gave this message. We were not there; instead, we were in East Lansing and having a baby–Mary Beth was born that same weekend. It was only later that we listened to the recording. I even recall where I was when I listened to it; it was across the street from our duplex where a sister in the Lord lived along with her son David.

So Derek taught on this theme, and he first expounded upon God’s abundance, and then gave us three keys to experiencing it. Drawing upon Psalms 34 and 84, he taught us the following.

1) Fear the Lord. It is those who fear the Lord who do not want. Time would not afford me the ability to expound upon the value of fearing the Lord. Not only is it the very first and most appropriate heart-response to encountering God, it is a quality to be treasured and cultivated. There is so much to be said, and had, concerning the fear of the Lord, the reader will have to pursue it himself. I have done fairly in depth studies on the subject and learned of the countless blessings upon the person who fears the Lord–this being one of them: No want.

2) Seek the Lord. If, when first coming to know God you leave it at that, you not only miss out on the depth and height and width and length of His goodness and love, but you more or less remain an infant in God, never growing, and maybe even withering away and dying, as it were. To grow in God, to know God, He must be sought. In so doing you come to know Him more and more, and the more you seek Him the more you know Him, which results in your wanting to seek Him the more. It just grows and grows; you never get to the end of Him; you never want to.

3) Walk uprightly. The first two keys come from Psalm 34; this one comes from Psalm 84, both already quoted above–but here it is again: “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord gives grace and glory; no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (verse 11).

Now I think you can look at walking uprightly in a variety of ways. It would, of course, mean living your life in an ethical and moral way, in accordance with the word and will of God. It would most certainly mean living by faith. And it would surely entail doing what is good and right in the sight of God and men. It would mean walking–not in your own righteousness (which is filthy in God’s estimation), but in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And most definitely it would be accurately summed up in an obedient lifestyle–keeping the commandments of the Lord.

Again, I think one could elaborate further on this, but I think the picture is clear; God is a God of abundance, He lacks nothing. For the person who trusts in Him, who fears Him, seeks Him, and walks uprightly, God’s abundance becomes his. And then you can say along with the Psalmist, “I shall not want,” because you’ve everything you need and even desire. It’s because God is good, and He is this way toward those of character qualities such as these. Let us, then, live and walk this way, and experience the abundant provision of God.

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, ‘Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 18:1-4)

Since entry into God’s kingdom is predicated on it, the words of Jesus here should be considered very carefully.

The context is the disciples arguing about who is the greater, and our Lord, to quell their wrangling takes a little child and says, “Hey guys, look here. This little one, the person like him, he is the greatest.” So it is, we had better take a look-see, and determine to be as our Lord has said.

While children without discipline can be quite nasty, they are also innocent of what we grown ups are guilty of; namely, the lust for position and power. Yes, kids think mostly of themselves, and want to be first. But they do not possess worldly ambitions. They have not yet moved into the grosser sins of the love of money, a lust for sex, and a self-exaltation. They are, as it were, precious little sponges, ready to absorb the world around them, be it good or bad.

I cannot help but think of my grandson, Milan. How we love Milan! He is three years old, and Jesus is here saying, “Become like Milan.” Oh! I was thinking for him to become like me!

The Lord uses the word “humble” in describing the kid before him. Humility, while I don’t know as I have much, I understand. In a state of humility, you know your need. You know who is greater than you. You know you need help. You are always looking up and not down. You not only like to be coddled, but you need to be coddled. As much as you hate it, you know you need to be disciplined, and when you are you have this sense you are loved. You know you need to be loved. You know you need to be cared for. As with all these things, you are not inhibited nor weighted down with the cares of life. When afraid, you know who to run to. You are happy because you have not yet learned to be sad. You are free because you have not yet come to be bound by sin.

Honestly, I don’t know as to all that Jesus had in mind when He said what He said; the above is only what comes to mind. I do know this: it takes a man a measure of humility to come to Jesus and acknowledge he needs to be saved. I think of all the greats in the kingdom, great men and women of prominence and power, godly ones. And then here comes a poor sinner to the altar of God’s grace. “Have mercy on me, O God, a sinner!” Perhaps what the Lord is saying is that this person, he is greater than the others. Or, maybe it is a man like me, fairly well-versed in the Scripture, somewhat aged in the Lord, having a little wisdom and knowledge, on his knees more or less begging for mercy, unable to continue without the Lord’s help. I don’t know.

What I do know, is that if a person wants to enter God’s kingdom, he must become like a child. If a person wants to be great in God’s kingdom, he must become like a child. Childlikeness, then, is something every believer, young or old, ought aspire to.

I remember the Lord speaking to me once. At the time I was serving as an elder at Mt. Hope Church. He said, “You may be an elder in the church, but you are a child to Me.” This is worth not only remembering, but acting out. I am like a child before My Heavenly Father, and I shouldn’t be thinking otherwise.

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

The thing is, if you are born again you are already transformed–on the inside. It just needs to show up on the outside. That Christians need to get this is what Paul is after.

I recall landing upon this verse years ago sitting on the deck of my in-law’s cottage. It was early morning and, with coffee in hand and an earnest desire to be different, I read this section of Scripture. A light went on and I realized then and there that key to transformation was learning to think differently. That was likely thirty-plus years ago and I’m still in process.

Paul is here not speaking of the new-birth experience, but of Christian living. The entire chapter of Romans 12 is devoted to how we as Christians are to conduct ourselves. We’re even instructed how it is we are to think: “think so as to have sound judgment.”

So much–if not all our outer behavior stems from what goes on in our heads. “As a man thinks in himself, so he is.” You are what you think. You’re not what you eat, you’re what you think. So it is that if we’re to live as God wants, and if we wish to be different, we’ve got to think different than we do.

Here’s the deal: if indeed we have become God’s by virtue of being born again; and if by this we are by nature then children of God; it stands that our outward behavior should reflect that. If we are completely new on the inside–which we are (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17)–then our outward manner of life ought be completely new.

This takes an effort on our part; hence the admonition by Paul to be transformed. It’s more or less an imperative.

Conformity to the world is a natural thing. It happens almost by osmosis. We’re in the world, and we live and breathe and work in the world. Everything that is in the world, “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life,” these are not of God but are constantly impinging upon us from all sides at all times. It is the world’s spirit, and it is always after you wanting you to conform to it. This is possibly the Christian’s greatest temptation because it is real, it is powerful, and it is continual. That’s why I said it takes effort.

If there is a battlefield, and if there is a war to be won, it is in the realm of the thinking.

Everything that God has to say about you as His son or daughter is absolutely true. Yet so many of us live sub-par lives–way below the standard of the abundant life Jesus speaks of in John 10. And it’s not God’s problem but ours. It’s as if He puts the challenge to us: “I’ve done everything I can do, the rest is up to you.” I mean if God did everything, what need would there be for the New Testament? For Jesus’ teaching? Paul’s? James’ or John’s or Peter’s?

A certain and real amount of change shows up in the newly born again child of God. He has forsaken his life of sin and dedicated his life to Christ. That alone is huge. Yet real transformation, total transformation comes by way of mind renewal. You learn–by practice–to think as does God; you begin to replace your old, natural and the world’s way of thinking, with God’s way of thinking. You think thoughts that are in harmony with God’s Word; the thoughts contrary you reject.

This is a lifelong and daily thing. It is a constant struggle. It is a fight you must fight, a battle you must engage. Otherwise, at best you’ll never experience all that God has for you; at worst you are doomed to the trash heap of shipwrecked Christians, those who never got off the ground as to their Christianity.

Total transformation is God’s perfect will for each of us who name the name of Jesus. It comes about in one way and one way only: a renewal of the way we think. It takes practice, it’s work, but it is worth it.