So I was watching a sermon on an IBethel tv webstream, and the speaker of the day (forgot who it was) mentioned that a christian business owner had been invited to a competitor's pre-grand opening celebration. The speaker mentioned that this christian business owner actually prayed that this competitor's business would prosper (and the competitor's were really touched and thankful for it). And this got me thinking on the issue of scarcity and how in the world we, as humans, ever started to focus on this concept to begin with.
Scarcity, as it is known, is a lack of some kind. Sometimes people use it as a term for rarity, but really, if people didn't want that "rare" thing, then they probably wouldn't care if it was rare or not, and so the word scarce probably wouldn't matter. But we also know, that our God is a more-than-enough God. Our God wants to richly supply all our needs and wholesome desires. He wants us to have life to the full (John 10:10). So if God is a rich supplier, where did scarcity come from? It must have come from the sinful actions of man. Okay, so we have the fact that we humans caused our own scarcities. Solutions?
I think one strong notion and solution that the christian business owner in the story put forth was, that we need to stop making our choices based on scarcity. We need to stop thinking in a competition mindset, which strongly is a result of the concept of scarcity. We need to look at the world and say "My God is able to provide;" and also, we need to remind ourselves that we have seeds, and as we sow our seeds, they produce a harvest. We don't just get our same number of seeds back, we get a bunch of seeds/harvest back (Mark 10:29-30). And on top of all this, we need to not think that if we ask God to prosper someone that He wants to prosper, that for some reason it would take away from God's ability to provide for us. By praying prosperity, we aren't taking away anything, we are merely adding to the blessings and abundance that are in the world, including our own.
