It’s Not What You Don’t Have. It’s What You Have.

A good friend of mine is an accomplished artist. He has sold many paintings for thousands of dollars. At one point, he was struck with bell’s palsy. It affected his right hand, the one he paints with. You can imagine the fear and panic. Suddenly, one’s means of making a living is taken away.

One morning he sat down at the kitchen table and made a list of all the things God had blessed him with. The list grew to 25 things . . . and then He wept, the full realization of God’s benefits breaking through.

When he realized how God had blessed him, it changed his prospective; it gave him a new outlook on life.

As a young man in hgih school, I had all the things that should have made me happy. I was a star athlete. My letterman’s jacket was heavy with metals. I was a member of a popular rock group and we made good money playing for dances. Dad bought a flashy car that I could use on dates any time I wanted to . . . and my “heavy” letterman’s jacket” seemed to attract pretty girls.

Still, I was empty and unhappy, the God-shaped vacuum inside seemed to get more and more acute. Little did I know a classmate had been praying for my salvation for more than a year. During this time my thoughts kept gravitating toward some very weighty questions. “Who was I? What was I here for? Where was I going? What was life all about?”

The prophet Haggai lived among the Israelites at a time when God was not a priority in their lives. Their focus had become materialism, the pursuit of wealth and “things.” This is what He wrote to them:

You eat, but do not have enough;

You drink, but you are not filled with drink;

You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm;

And he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes.

Haggai 1:6 NKJV

Look around you. Does this not describe America. Are we not on a course to acquire things? Does materialism not dominate how we live, move and breathe?

But in the end, things wil not satisfy the longing of the heart, because God has created us to love Him, to have an intimate relationship with Him.

Observe . . . The richest people in the world are often the most unhappy. John D. Rockefeller was asked, “How much money is enough? He replied, “Just one dollar more.”

Jesus said, “. . . One’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”

Luke 12:15 NKJV

At another time, it was evidently meal time, and his disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi eat.”

He replied, “I have food to eat which you do not know.”

Therefore the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.”

John 4:32-34 NKJV

There is nothing so fulfilling as to be in the Lord’s service, to be partnering with Him in things that have eternal significance.

As to life in general, if we are always focused on the things we don’t have . . . well, let’s be realistic, isn’t there always something we don’t have that we wish we had. So our lives can be an unending pursuit of that one thing that we don’t have . . . and really, that’s no way to live.

We may not have what our peers have, or the neighbor down the street that has a prestigious job and makes more money, but that doesn’t have to affect our happiness or contentment. There is no contentment that surpasses a meaningful and intimate relationship with God. My advice to you is, get to know Him, because . . . He’s really awesome.

By the way . . . my friend eventually regained full use of his right hand, and he’s still pumping out amazing paintings.

Photo taken by Lorraine