Scarcity Is Lying to You
Then the word of the Lord came to him: Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.
1 Kings 17:8–9 (NIV)
This text takes us to Zarephath, a Gentile town outside Israel’s covenant boundaries, deep into the third year of a devastating drought. A widow is gathering sticks at the city gate, preparing what she believes will be her last meal. She says she has only a handful of flour and a little oil left. She explains that she is going home to make one final cake for herself and her son. They will eat it, and then she expects they will die. That is not exaggeration. It is resignation and calculation. Scarcity has gotten loud enough to sound like the final word over her story.
Then Elijah interrupts her conclusion with a command that feels impossible. Make the meal, but bring him a loaf first. The audacity of it exposes how loud scarcity speaks when you are facing lack. It doesn’t only affect what you have. It affects who you become. It convinces you to think small, lower expectations, settle for less, and decide that abundance must be for other people and survival is your portion.
But scarcity is a liar. It lies about who God is, what God has, and what God is willing to do for those who belong to Him. The widow’s limitation is God’s invitation. What looks like scarcity to you often looks like opportunity to God. The voice that needs to be loudest is never the voice of your limitations. It is the voice of the limitless One who owns everything and who has promised to withhold nothing from those who walk uprightly.
Scarcity may be loud, but God’s Word is louder. Scarcity may be persistent, but God’s faithfulness is more persistent. Quiet the noise by refusing to rehearse it. Stop introducing yourself by what you do not have. Let God’s sufficiency interpret your facts, shape your vision, and strengthen your next step.
What Is That to You?
Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, “But Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me.”
John 21:21–22 (NKJV)
There is a photograph that hangs in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. It is a famous image from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, with Tommy Smith and John Carlos on the medal podium, fists raised in protest. But if you look closely, there is a third man on the podium. His name is Peter Norman. He decided he would stand in solidarity with them, supporting their protest. History remembers Smith and Carlos. Peter Norman, though—most people don’t even know he ever existed.
Norman paid a dear price for his choice. When he returned to Australia, he was ostracized by his own country’s Olympic committee. History says he was excluded from the 1972 Olympics despite qualifying multiple times. Somehow, he scratched out a living as a butcher. He eventually became a gym teacher, but he never received the recognition his athletic achievements deserved. And here’s what makes his story so haunting: Peter Norman spent years watching Smith and Carlos receive honors, invitations, commendations, and accolades, while he essentially remained forgotten to human history. Same podium, same Olympics, same protest, different destinies.
But Norman never demanded to know, “Why them and not me?” He understood something many of us are still learning: Your calling is never contingent upon somebody else’s recognition. Your destiny is not diminished by somebody else’s elevation. Your assignment from God cannot be measured by comparing your journey to another person’s path.
That is precisely the noise Jesus confronts on the beach in Galilee. The apostle Peter has just been restored and recommissioned, but he makes a mistake that feels familiar. We stand on the beach with Jesus receiving our commission, hearing our calling, understanding clearly our assignment, and then we turn around and we measure what God is doing in somebody else’s life. And when that happens, our focus shifts, our clarity clouds, our certainty begins to waver because we’re no longer listening to what Jesus is saying to us about us. We’re now obsessing over what Jesus might have said to somebody else about them.
Peter hears what Jesus says about his path, the cost, the future, and then he turns and sees John. “Lord, what about him?” That question is the trap. It’s comparing your cross to somebody else’s crown. It’s when you start to measure your assignment against somebody else’s anointing. It’s when you start calculating your sacrifice against somebody else’s success.
Jesus answers with a correction that silences the noise. “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow Me.” In other words, don’t turn away from your own assignment to obsess over somebody else’s path. Don’t let comparison steal your attention. Don’t let somebody else’s story drown out what Jesus is saying to you.
One Thing Silencing a Thousand Distractions
Not that I have already obtained all this… but I press on… one thing I do…
Philippians 3:12–14 (NIV)
In a world full of noise, competing voices, and endless distractions, spiritual maturity demands singular focus. Paul is writing to believers surrounded by pressure and performance, but his aim is simple. The human heart is not designed for divided devotions. When you try to focus on a thousand things, you end up fully devoted to nothing, not even God. Noise can fragment the soul and scatter one’s affections and dilute one’s worship.
Distraction is one of the enemy’s primary weapons against spiritual growth. Satan does not have to make you an atheist to neutralize your faith. All he has to do is keep you busy, keep you distracted, keep you overwhelmed, pulled in a thousand directions. If you don’t deny Christ, you can still drift into ignoring Christ.
So Paul names the antidote. It’s the “one thing.” It’s the exclusive obsession. It’s the magnificent fixation. Christ alone is the pearl of great price. When the “one thing” becomes central, everything else fades into background noise.
From “I Could” To “I Will”
So he got up and went to his father.
Luke 15:20 (NIV)
Jesus tells a parable about a son who leaves his father’s house, wastes what he’s been given, and ends up broken and starving in a far country. When he finally comes to his senses, the story turns on one decisive movement: He gets up and goes home.
Before he moves, he measures his current life against what he knows is available with his father. The capacity to measure my current situation—not against those who are worse off than me, but against what’s actually possible and available to me—is key. It’s about the comparison that calls me upward and not the comparison that comforts me in my persisting compromise. That kind of comparison exposes the lie of “good enough.”
Once that comparison is made, the turning point is a choice. “I will arise and go back to the Father.” Not just “I could.” Not just “I should.” So many people are stuck in the valley between “I could” and “I will.”
But the text says he got up. He moved. He started walking.
And the hope of the passage is not only that the Father receives him. It’s that the Father comes toward him. The Father doesn’t wait for you to get all the way home. If He knows you are trying to get there and sees you out in the field, He’s willing to come out there and get you.
So the path is clear. Remember what is possible with God. Move from thought to decision. And trust that the Father will meet you on the way back home.
Stop Trying to Chisel Yourself
It is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
Philippians 2:13 (NIV)
Holiness is not self-improvement.
Think of the image of a rock quarry. Ordinary stones everywhere, until a world-renowned sculptor sets up shop. The sculptor chooses a stone and chisels away everything that does not belong, revealing something magnificent that had been hidden within the stone all along. The stone did not make itself beautiful. The stone simply yielded to the master’s hands.
Compare that with another stone, frantic and damaged. It’s covered in self-inflicted chips and cracks from its desperate attempts at self-improvement. And despite exhausting effort, it’s worse than when it started. The conclusion lands hard. Transformation isn’t the stone’s work. It’s the mason’s. The stone’s part is to simply remain still and trust his hands.
That is the correction for spiritual striving. We have all been like that second stone. We have been living our lives, trying so hard to make ourselves holy, to chisel away our own flaws. But holiness is not achieved by frantic fixing. You and I become holy not through our striving, but through God’s transforming work in each one of our lives.
The message is simple: Stop trying to fix it yourself. Put the responsibility for fixing you back where it belongs. Put it all in the Lord’s hands, because He can handle it. Trust that He can shape us to be exactly who He intends for us to be. Holiness is yielded life. It is surrender to the Master’s work.
