Why Your Jealousy Might Be a Sign You Have a Poverty Mindset

What's the thing in your life that you desperately want God to change? Is it a cycle of insecurity, your personal health and fitness, the courage to get over your fear of speaking in front of people? Perhaps it's that you're longing for reconciliation in a particular relationship? I know that when you're in a season of waiting and holding onto God's promises, that one of the most painful things is seeing someone else walking in the very breakthrough you'd give anything to have. It feels like salt in a wound, and if you're not careful, you can allow this to magnify your perceived lack.

Today I want to tell you that this thinking is not helping you in any way, and in fact, it could be keeping you from your breakthrough. What if I told you that the thing you're jealous of might very well be the answer you're looking for?

In a nutshell:

• When you're trying to change your life, you have to change the way you think first.

• Let's use the illustration of money as an example. Let's say you're broke, and you've been broke your whole life, and you come from a family who has been broke, and your grandparents were broke... and you pray and ask God to deliver you from being broke.

• Then the next thing that happens is that God sends "Johnny Rich" into your life, and he has the car you want, the house you want, and basically everything you want.

• In this scenario, if you have a poverty mindset, you're jealous of Johnny and you don't receive anything from him. However, if you realize that you can't become anything you haven't seen or heard, then you realize God's actually using Johnny to show you what's possible.

• When God puts an example of your promise in front of you, He's not trying to make you miserable; He's trying to show you what's possible.

• God is no respecter of persons and if He did it for Johnny, then He'll do it for you! However, you can't become what you haven't seen or heard.

• Oftentimes God sends an answer in the picture of something He wants to do in our lives, but if we have a poverty mindset we respond by being jealous of it instead of embracing it.

• You were made like Jesus, in God's image ... However, it isn't until you see Him that you become like Him (1 John 3:2) . The same thing is true in other aspects of life. You can't become something you haven't seen!

• When you pray for a change then He'll send you a picture of a change. He'll send you people who have what you want, not so you can take it from them but so you can get it from Him.

• If you want to change your life, you have to change your thinking. If you want to change your thinking, then you have to hang around people who are thinking right. 

Activation for the Week

So this week I want to challenge you to take a hard look at your life with this question: what answers has God already put in your life that you've looked at with jealousy instead of gratitude? There's no shame in admitting it, and in fact you can't actually conquer what you will not confront. Our response determines whether we are postured for increase or relegated to lack.

So, take the answers He's put in your life, which likely have come in the form of people who have the very thing you want, and thank God for them. Make a list of the things you appreciate about the answer God has given you, and then posture yourself to learn, to see and to hear so that you may become.

Get your hopes up as you watch this week's video: