How Scarcity Thinking Impacts Our Relationship With God

Lavish and abundance. We all like the idea. If it’s season tickets, all-you-can-eat buffets, or even that unlimited carwash card. Some of us try to accumulate enough money, things, relationships, or followers to try to feel this way. But it never holds up because there’s something hard-wired into our broken, fallen human condition that upends it. It’s called scarcity thinking.

Here’s what this looks like:

1. There’s a limited amount of love, goodness, money, talent, or opportunity, and I need to grab mine or someone else will.
2. I need to grab mine from someone else by taking from them, outperforming them, or cutting them down.
3. If I feel like I have “mine,” I need to protect it by being defensive, stingy, or insecure, or preemptively attacking others.
4. A sense of scarcity dramatically increases the price we are willing to pay (our lives, relationships, or health).

Scarcity isn’t an amount so much as it’s a mindset. Scarcity quickly goes from a feeling or an experience to an identity.

Some of us struggle with the idea that if we could get enough, achieve enough, be loved enough, accepted enough, have this opportunity, be recognized by those people, be in that relationship, then we wouldn’t feel scarcity anymore.

That’s not how it works.

The target always moves, and the mindset doesn’t disappear on its own.

When we believe in a god of scarcity, that god will never be enough. So, we are constantly seeking out others to make up the difference. That not only changes how we view God, but also how we view God’s love, other people, and why and how we love them.

Lavished
1 John 3
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 

Love always involves a relationship. And that relationship has effects beyond itself.

The relationship you have upward directly impacts the relationships you live outward.

There’s a huge contrast between how we should do it and how the world around us does it.

1 John 3
The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.

The manner in which we live should be something the world just doesn’t get. Not because we’re weird or hard to understand, but because we’re not playing from the same book as they are.

1 John 3
But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

A life of faith is having hope, moving in the direction of that which we do not yet see, but it’s not an aspirational hope, like hoping to lose weight or win the lottery; it’s more like a journey you take with a destination. You pack for the trip.

If we know how things end, it changes how we travel.

When you know something can’t run out, you’re much freer with how you give it away.

So, what does it look like to live that way? There’s a catch.

Laid Down
1 John 3
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

And this is where many of us get stuck. The idea of love, even the feeling of love, is compelling, attractive, and strong; however, there’s a price tag.

Love is faith with consequences.

1. To your sense of morality
2. Lifestyle and priorities
3. Time and resources
4. Reputation

Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. We lay down our lives for others by following His example. If your faith doesn’t result in action, especially when it comes to love, was it really faith at all?

The truth that we’re loved completely, Jesus is who made that possible.

James 2
17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

If there aren’t enough people who “believe” the right things, our world is drastically affected. In the absence of the people who believe in the right things and actually do something about them, our world becomes a race to the bottom, where the loudest, most forceful, and brutal voices win out.

As Christ followers, if we don’t like what we see in the world, God has placed His Spirit, power, and presence in us to change the temperature. And He’s done that for a purpose. So why don’t we do this?

Fear.

But if we have a limitless supply and we know how it ends, what is there to be afraid of?

Confident
1 John 3
19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

We’re always subtly asking, “What’s in it for me?” That’s why we appropriate this verse to get what we want, and that’s actually worshiping the god of scarcity. But our God is different. God’s abundance is lavished on us. His love laid down. That’s what makes it possible to have confidence in asking.

Confidence in God gives you the right perspective to ask for the right things for the right purpose.

It’s about His abundance and our alignment. Not for our own walks, but for what we need in any situation to do His will. To walk the way Jesus walked, love the way Jesus loved, pour it out into our broken world, because His love will never run out, and there’s no situation that overwhelms it.

Be confident that God will give you all you need, and as you see need in our broken world, you can ask and ask with confidence.