You Don’t Know What You Have

For in him you have been enriched in every way – in all your speaking and in all your knowledge – because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. – 1 Corinthians 1:5-7

I remember talking with a friend over the phone a few weeks ago. She complained bitterly about her life. Nothing was going right for her. I did not understand her position because I knew her and her family. After what seemed like hours listening to her whine and complain, I decided to help her count her blessings since she did not know how. I reminded her that God has indeed been faithful. She had two healthy children who were doing well in school. Her husband was a man who is not afraid to serve God in private and in public. She was healthy and gainfully employed. She confessed that there is nothing she has asked from God that He hasn’t done. She has just simply forgotten how to be grateful. Unbeknown to her, she was beginning to lose a grasp on what she actually did have and instead was focusing on what she did not have.


Many of us believers are so deceived that we don’t know who we are and what we have. There is nothing more painful to see than a Christian trapped in the past. We are so busy looking in the rear view mirror; we have failed to look ahead through the windscreen. God has declared that through His Son, Jesus Christ, we are new creatures, yet we insist that we are still our old selves. We refuse to realize the gift that we have and the promises God has for us. When we become born again, we get the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who guides us into a whole new truth. If we tap into the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, we give our lives the opportunity to get the full benefits of the change that has come to our lives in the person of Jesus Christ.

Being a believer must not make us delusional. Change will take time. For our entire duration in this realm, we will have things in our lives that are not perfect. The key is not to allow the imperfections become the main thing that our lives are about. Besides all the things that are not going as we’d like, there are many more that are. Knowing what we do have and being grateful to Almighty God for those things will dictate how we view our lives.