God won’t bless you beyond your self-imposed standards. If you believe there’s never enough, you can be sure there never will be.
Not long ago, I sat in a courtroom, trying to keep my face neutral as the judge made a spectacle of scanning our bank statements. Every few minutes she’d broadcast a specific purchase or payment as “evidence.”
The implication was clear: we shouldn’t have these things. We should be driving “a hooptie” (her words, not mine). We should sell our home. We should go without. The all too familiar subtext hung in the air — who do you think you are?
It wasn’t the first time I’d been shamed for what I had. There’s a particular kind of belittling that happens when people decide you have too much. A particular scrutiny occurs when people decide you haven’t earned what you have. When your material possessions are weaponized to make a moral judgement about you.
In religious spaces, that shame often comes wrapped in spiritual language: “If you want money or nice things, you’re serving money instead of God.” “Godly people are content with what they have and don’t look for more.” And, of course, “money is evil.”
Oddly enough, sitting there, watching a manipulation of the judicial system in real-time, something shifted for me. What if the shame and the waves of guilt I felt then and through the years, wasn’t coming from God? What if the voice telling me to shrink or hide what I had had nothing to do with the God who created a world bursting with beauty and told us it was good?
What if God doesn’t mind that you want the Chanel bag, the spacious home, the thriving business, or the Michelin-star restaurant experience? What if the thing standing between you and the full life you want isn’t so-called sinful desire, but your shame around it?
Mark 14 tells the story of a woman who poured expensive perfume, worth a year’s wages, on Jesus. The disciples objected: “Why this waste? This could have been sold and given to the poor!” Their protest sounded spiritual. But Jesus shut it down saying, “Leave her alone. She has done a beautiful thing.”
The problem isn’t the material world. After all, God created it and called it good. The problem is when the things own us instead of us stewarding the things. But that’s not the same as saying you shouldn’t want them at all.
Here’s what I’d like you to consider: What if the real issue isn’t guilt because you want beautiful, quality things…what if the true shame is rooted in the fact that you don’t believe they’re for you?
Most of us can intellectually agree that God is generous, that He gives good gifts, that He delights in doing us good. But somewhere deep down, we often feel that His generosity is for everyone else. You believe the promise is true in general. But you also believe that you, as an individual, are disqualified from it.
We’ve disqualified ourselves through past mistakes, present struggles, or simply the persistent feeling that we’re not enough.
But the truth is, when you know who you are, you can’t get too high and you can’t get too low... because you believe who God says you are. Not who circumstances, courtrooms, or judgmental onlookers try to make you.
God won’t bless you beyond your self-imposed standards. If you believe there’s never enough, you can be sure there never will be. You set the ceiling. God has no ceiling. The only person who needs to believe you’re worthy of abundance is you. God already knows.
The righteous person isn’t the one who keeps all the church’s rules and thinks God owes them. The righteous person is the one who lives by faith. The one who rests in God’s character rather than their own performance. And God’s character is good.
There’s no gotcha. There’s just good.
You have to get comfortable letting people think whatever they want about you. You cannot change a person's insecurities and experiences that lead them to villainize you. Let them have their story about you. Let it be the “truth” they need to continue living a mediocre life built with the bricks of their limiting beliefs.
But don’t you dare co-op that story and live there with them. Not when He’s given you access to so much more.
I wonder…
Where did you learn that wanting more wasn’t aligned with God? And why did you believe them?
What limiting beliefs do you have about yourself or your life that are keeping God’s abundance at arm’s length?
What are you not pursuing because you’re afraid of being called shallow/selfish/a gold digger?
What would change if you stopped apologizing for what you have and started stewarding it with confidence?
I love you.
Coi Marie
Affirm: I am allowed to want it. I am allowed to have it. I am allowed to enjoy it without explanation.
If this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
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