Do you feel like you have enough? Enough money? Enough time? Enough love, enough of all the things you need to make life work? In October we hold our annual giving campaign here at Lakeview.

Our theme is: More Than Enough: Living with Financial Wisdom, Courage and Peace. Think back on your own financial life. How did you learn financial wisdom? Did parents teach you or did you have to learn it the hard way?

Our theme Bible verse for this year is from 2 Corinthians 9:8

“And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.”

Jesus tells us that our life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. Yet the constant messages in our culture are that our life does consist in the abundance of our possessions & that you don’t have enough. Jesus says you have more than enough. Jesus knew that the cares of the world have a way of choking us. The lure of wealth, what promises to give us life and make us feel like we are really living it up, sometimes those promises choke the life out of us. We can end up in debt or make poor financial choices because our advertising and consumer culture always urges us to want and buy more. Or we feel unhappy with ourselves because we don’t own all that others seem to own. Our social media world is constantly hitting us with images of friends or others who look like they’re taking the perfect vacation, eating the best meals, wearing the best clothes, showing that they seem to have perfect kids and grandkids. There is a lot of illusion in our culture that works to entice us or leave us dissatisfied with who we are and what we have.

Jesus also tells us that when you trust God you will always have more than enough. God has such abundant love for us. God knows we are made for generosity, for sharing the love and blessings we have been given. We’ll talk frankly about these issues and finding our source of joy and happiness in knowing God always gives us more than enough. We can be generous in our giving to the church because of the ways God cares for us. I look forward to sharing these messages with you in the month ahead.

In faith, Pastor Dave