Jennifer Blacklock

Visiting the ocean, there’s really no way to miss God’s lavish abundance. Standing on the shore and looking out over the vast expanse– that’s really the only word that describes it properly- I just marvel at the size and volume.

It’s incredible. Wave after endless wave repeating a roll and crash onto the sand. If you let it, it will make you worship. Romans 1:20 says “Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God”. Our souls were made to worship our Creator, and there are experiences that just draw it out of us. That unending ocean is one for me. It just shouts of God’s provision and abundance. You don’t describe the ocean as “some water”, no, the ocean is “Vast”. “Enormous.” “Endless”.

Even the shells are countless. When we visited Florida, that first morning, the kids and I ran up and down a section of beach picking up every shell we could- for about 15 minutes. We soon realized there were far too many shells for us to keep picking up every one. There were thousands. Tens of thousands. Millions.

The sand on Indian Rocks Beach is white- in the pictures we took it looks like were standing in snow. The reason it’s white is because it’s made of shells. Billions and millions of pale, sun-bleached shells pounded by those endless waves until it produces a fine powder almost as soft and cushiony as snow. And year after year this process keeps happening, little by little. So there are tiny particles of shells along with small chunks of shells, then larger pieces broken up that are on their way to becoming sand.

By the second and following days, we would walk over hundreds of shells searching for the “best” ones, passing over most of them because there were so many. They were so abundant that we could take our pick.

God is abundant. Fully sufficient. He has everything. He is everything. He is fully trustworthy, perfectly just, and richly merciful. Nothing is “too much” for Jesus to handle.

Here are just a few of the many Bible verses about the fullness of God’s abundance.

2 Corinthians 9:8 “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, so that you may always have complete sufficiency in everything, and have an abundance for every good work and act of charity”

Ephesians 3:20-21 “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Philippians 4:19  “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

Psalm 23:1 “the Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”