God Is Good Enough for You

Spiritual Wealth

Two lines feed my faith: I am good enough for God (only through Christ, of course--explained in previous posts on this future book on divine affirmation) and God is good enough for me. Many Christians don't live in the reality of how God is really and truly good enough for us. Meditating on the spiritual riches made available through Christ is an essential component of building a life of joy and worship. No matter how bad things seem to be on earth, the spiritual riches we enjoy are enormous. Every sin, every addiction, is founded in not believing God is good enough for us. We think we need something more. We don't. He is enough.

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“I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

Psalm 81:16 NRSV

David Cheriton, a Stanford professor, cuts his own hair. He drove a 1986 Volkswagen Vanagon for years until he splurged on a used Honda Odyssey to accommodate his children. If you watched him drive home, you’d see him pull into a colonial-style house that he purchased over three decades ago. He flies commercial and even reuses his tea bags. You might understandably conclude that the guy is trying to conserve as much of his university salary as he can to prepare for retirement. Stanford pays better than most universities, of course, but still—it’s teacher’s pay. Right?

If you read Forbes or Investment Daily, however, you might know that Cheriton was one of the early investors in Google, as well as several other uber-successful companies, with the result that his financial net worth today is reported to be over fifteen billion dollars.

Yes, that’s “billion” with a “b.”

Here’s how much “just” ten billion dollars is: if David decided to give you a birthday present of one million dollars cash, it would cost him about .01 of his net worth (that’s one one-hundredth of one percent). It would be a rounding error he wouldn’t even notice.

But Cheriton’s house, his clothing, and his vacation habits are less than that of many who earn a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.

You could do a fascinating study on the “quietly rich” amongst us. Every now and then we’ll read news stories of people who had modest jobs but who left a million or two to their favorite charity upon their death.

This book is about an entirely different kind of “quietly rich” people who live among us. The difference between many of these people and David Cheriton is that some of these people don’t realize how wealthy they are. Cheriton knows he’s rich. He might even be insulted by Forbes’ quote of fifteen billion, knowing that perhaps it’s even more than that. When you amass that much money, it usually grows rather quickly.

The people I’m talking about have enormous security, unshakeable hope, and every reason to make every minute a party if only they understood how unbelievably well-off they are.

But often they don’t.

Maybe you’re one of those people. What if you are richer—much richer—than you realize?