We want abundance to come quickly. However, building wealth often feels like moving two steps forward and three steps back. In stagnant seasons, it’s easy to doubt ourselves and become restless. Get-rich-quick schemes might even be tempting!
If you are searching for an abundant life, I have good news. Abundance doesn’t come from attaining material things, purchasing investments, or even achieving goals. The secret to living an abundant life is contentment.
Contentment makes you feel rich regardless of your circ*mstances. Whether you have a lot of money or a little, contentment turns it into enough.
Contentment doesn’t mean complacency. Instead, contentment provides the patience to make the right decisions at the right time for the right reasons. Because they are not desperate, content people can enjoy the process of building. Because they have enough, they don’t hoard–they give and serve.
Living an abundant life must come from the inside. If abundance depends on external factors, you’ll never have peace. Ecclesiastes 5:10 says, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.”
So, in this blog, we share four tips for living an abundant life:
1. Pursue Gratitude
2. Delight in Your Boundaries
3. Act From Revelation, Not Imitation
4. Know Your Financial Season
How to Be Content: 4 Tips for Living an Abundant Life
1. Pursue Gratitude
“The thief does not come except to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:10, NKJV
Whereas contentment turns what you have into enough, the enemy always wants to make you feel like you live in lack and scarcity. Gratitude doesn’t always come easily. In certain seasons, you have to fight for God’s perspective. Focus on what you do have, not what you don’t. Make a “thank you list” to God as you pray or journal. As you orient your heart towards a posture of worship, gratitude will shape your perspective and help you see clearly. More often than not, gratitude and recognition of what you have in your hands today will be the bridge to your next season.
2. Delight in Your Boundaries
“Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.” Psalm 16:5-6, NIV
God is your portion above everything else– the wealth, the career, the ministry, and the influence. King David knew that God, and God alone, was his inheritance. Remember, he was the youngest son in his family during a time when the eldest received the father’s inheritance. So, David had a special recognition that God was his portion in life and His inheritance in heaven.
God will place certain boundaries around your life to keep you safe and focused on His mission for your life. God-given boundaries are different from self-imposed limits. God gives us limitations to keep our feet on the right path. You will start living an abundant life when you delight in your boundaries for any season. The provision and protection are within the land that God has for you.
3. Act From Revelation, Not Imitation
“The Lord directs the steps of the godly.
He delights in every detail of their lives.
Though they stumble, they will never fall,
for the Lord holds them by the hand.” Psalm 37:23-24, NLT
There’s a lot of financial advice out there. In our digital age, the internet is flooded with get-rich-quick-schemes, influencers pushing their financial products, and a slew of messages selling an “easy” pathway to get rich in your 20s. It’s hard to know who to listen to and even harder to be content.
As Christians, we must tune out the noise and move with God’s pace and plan for our lives. When we embrace the hustle culture, we run the risk of outpacing God. Imitating others leads to burnout and confusion, but acting from revelation produces peace, presence, and prosperity.
4. Know Your Financial Season
When it comes to financial contentment, knowing your season is vital. Whether you’re in a season of waiting or intense activity, divine direction and revelation make it much easier to feel confident and content.
As you practice partnering with God in your finances, you’ll become better at gauging the pace at which He wants you to grow. Are you in a winter of waiting, listening to God, and making plans? Or are you in autumn, where the budgeting, investing, and business planning you did in the past is producing an abundant harvest?
You’ll never know everything that God is up to. However, having a measure of revelation about your financial season will result in living an abundant life. As you confidently walk in God’s favor, you’ll experience the internal, spiritual abundance that comes from an active relationship with your heavenly father.
Through applying knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to your finances, you’ll experience external abundance as well– having enough to be generous and “abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8)
