Living in Abundance: Leaving Fear Behind

“God created you for good!” Let it sink in for a minute. Repeat the phrase five to ten times, “I am created and designed for good.” 

Notice your initial reaction. You may experience a sense of gratitude. You know this is your true, created state. For others, your gut reaction is one of unbelief. You have suffered and these words ring hollow. You’ve experienced trials, difficulties, and incurred great harm on your journey through the world. When you say these words, you question their validity.

Both reactions are natural. Each response reflects your experience of the world. It also reflects your understanding and consciousness of God. Your lack of trust in these words may be warranted. The human world can be harsh and demanding. You face inequities and struggle in daily life. The negative events you have experienced are bound to leave scars on your soul. As a result, your consciousness directs not towards your highest good, but a constant spiritual survivor mode. 

Title: Post Work Ride, Author: Perfect Zero, Source: Flickr is licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0

This is what spiritual trauma looks like. Your consciousness separates from God. Through the pain, scars, and suffering incurred during your life; you have lost your vision of a loving God. Just like an abused dog comes to expect harshness from humans. You forget a prosperous life is available to you.

There is something more! There is a plan for good in your life. The original plan was never based on suffering, lack, and poverty. The original plan had your good mapped out from your very first breath.

God’s Original Plan for Abundance: Eden

God designed paradise for you. His original plan for humanity was based in the Garden of Eden. In the garden, humanity and God lived in harmony and happiness. God created the garden for your fulfillment, well-being, respite, and restoration.

Life in the garden was abundant! God filled the garden with plants, animals, fish, and birds. God entrusted humans to “be fruitful and multiply”. The garden provided humankind with supply and sustenance. In safety and security, humankind prospered as families. These families would eventually form into groups, organizations, communities, and nations; each nation reflecting the image and plan of God. The garden was a world filled with justice, peace, prosperity, and abundance.

There was no shame in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve communed with God daily. They reflected the true image of God. God imbued Adam and Eve with the powers to create, manifest, and sustain God’s new creation. Humankind was to walk and commune with God in the Garden. They became co-creators with God in paradise.

Paradise flowed in the natural rhythms of work and rest. Phrases like hustle culture, burnout, and exhaustion fill our modern dialect. In the garden, God ordained rest and restoration from the very beginning of creation. God established a rest cycle by declaring the seventh day a time of personal restoration. 

The negative events you have experienced are bound to leave scars on your soul. As a result, your consciousness directs not towards your highest good, but a constant spiritual survivor mode. 

Humankind had a key role in developing, sustaining, and expanding God’s creation. Yet, humans were not enslaved drones! God valued humans as co-creators, while acknowledging the importance of their health and well-being. In Eden, there were no demanding supervisors or toxic work environments. The work and rest cycles of Eden flowed for the highest good of humanity.

These are just a few glimpses of the goodness that awaited you in Eden. God was good! Creation was paradise! Humankind had an active part in propagating and sustaining the new earth. However, humanity stepped out of this goodness. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of good and evil, forcing humankind into a new conscious state.

Humans still possessed the co-creative powers God imbued on them in the garden. However, a competing system of consciousness manifested: a consciousness of fear, selfishness, and shame. For the first time, humankind had to choose between two conscious states.

This dilemma of consciousness has never ceased since the fall. Individuals, families, businesses, and governments choose daily which consciousness to live in. A consciousness of love and creation leads to abundance, prosperity, and well-being. A consciousness of fear leads to selfishness, lack, and poverty. There is a deliberate choice to be made! Unfortunately, most inadvertently choose fear, continuing a system of lack, poverty, and scarcity.

A Choice for Abundance:

Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son is a beautiful allegory, reflecting our choice between love and fear. The parable introduces a wealthy landowner with two sons. His estate is prosperous and plentiful. His animals are healthy and productive, the agricultural crops produce generously, and his servants valued. Jesus uses the parable to draw your attention to paradise, the original garden of Eden.

The landowner’s younger son desired to “go to the far-off country” (Luke 15:11, WEB). The son asked for his inheritance and left the abundance of his father’s estate. This is the choice Adam and Eve faced in the garden. It is also the choice we face in daily life. 

The son chose a consciousness focused on self-centeredness and egotism. Initially, this feels freeing. You may decide to act outside of God’s creative order. However, this choice in consciousness leads to a path of destruction for yourself, others, and all of creation. When choices, both individually and collectively, are decided in this state, it produces lack, need, and scarcity. 

The prodigal’s abundant inheritance transformed into poverty. He hit rock bottom and took a position as a servant feeding pigs. Unlike the prodigal’s inheritance, your prosperity and abundance renew in the Garden of Eden consciousness. Your prosperity is based on God’s supply. However, when you elect to take your consciousness into the far-off country; God is no longer your divine sustenance. Your inheritance dwindles and your wealth becomes subject to moth, rust, and thieves. 

When you return to the consciousness of love; your identity, your life, and your purpose heal

Once the inheritance ran out, the prodigal lamented his situation. While tending to the pigs, he had ample time for contemplation. He realized he was living in the wrong consciousness. He repented, changed his state of mind, and returned to his father’s care.

However, the prodigal’s suffering scarred his soul. His pain skewed his worldview. He could only imagine returning to his father as a lowly servant. Fear, lack, and poverty changed his view of his father, his world, and of himself. He could no longer see himself as an heir… he lost his identity and purpose.

Despite the prodigal’s skewed self-concept, the father received his son in love. While the son was away, the father lived in a continual state of love, abundance, and prosperity. The father still recognized the prodigal for all he was created to be. The father remembered his son’s identity as heir to the kingdom. He saw only goodness and potential in the prodigal. The father ran to him, embraced him, welcoming him back into abundance.

You have a choice between two states of consciousness: love and fear

When you live in a fear consciousness, you lose your identity. God designed you for a good life. The pain of living in fear consciousness distorts who God created you to be. When you return to the consciousness of love; your identity, your life, and your purpose heal. As Christ noted, "The thief (fear consciousness) only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I (love consciousness) came that they may have life and may have it abundantly" (John 10:10, WEB).

That is the beauty of this parable. The prodigal transformed from fear to a state of love. The son was welcomed and restored with open arms. He gave his son the best robes, signifying a full restoration of position and status. A ring placed on the prodigal’s finger represented reinstating the prodigal’s identity as the father’s heir. His father slaughtered the best calf, symbolizing the son’s renewed access to the very best in life. His father’s kingdom was once again his sustenance and supply. The son was no longer a prodigal, but a restored heir to the abundance and sustenance of his father’s kingdom.

Restoring Your Eden Abundance:

God’s original plan for you is good! However, through living in two systems, you experienced pain, disparity, and inequity, resulting in a consciousness of fear. As a result, you only act in your self-interest. You fight to protect meager resources instead of living in God’s abundance. This was not God’s original design.

You have a choice between two states of consciousness: love and fear. The consciousness of love plants you in the kingdom of God. In the kingdom, you enjoy the richness of God, and all God has planned for you. In God resides your true identity, power, and purpose. However, if you choose a consciousness of fear, your life becomes based on lack, threat, scarcity, and loss. 

Consider how you stepped out of Eden. Every day provides choices and opportunities to act in a fear or love consciousness. With each decision, you choose a life in the metaphorical “far-off land”, or a life centered in the Garden of God. To transform into a life of abundance, you must repent (change your mind). From this transformation comes your power to change your life and restore your purpose.

The father could only see the true identity of his son. In the father’s abundance, he saw the true and virtuous nature of his son. From a perspective of wholeness, the father viewed his son as he created him to be. It is only when you choose to live in a love consciousness; you can see reality as it is. A reality filled with abundance, prosperity, and the rich life that God planned for you.

Written by: Heath B. Walters, Ph.D.

Copyright © April 13th, 2023, by Heath B. Walters, DBA Spiritual Life Resources, All Rights Reserved.

Reference

Word English Bible (2022). Web Online. https://ebible.org/study/

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