God said to Moses, “I Am who I Am,” not “I have” or “I do.” (Ex. 3:14). In John 8:58, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” Once again, He did not say “I have” or “I will be” or “I do.”
God cannot be defined by something that can be gained and/or lost.
Richard Wurmbrand reminded us that “Jesus spoke Aramaic, a dialect of the Hebrew language. Neither in Aramaic nor in Hebrew does the word “to have” exist. So Jesus never pronounced this word. Jesus never said about anything that He “had” it. Therefore He could retain perfect joy when He was undressed to be scourged, since He had never said about His clothes, “I have them.” He had never said, “I have a body.” The body that was tortured was not His. He owned nothing.”
In essence, you cannot be separated from something you do not have. Those who own much think they control much, and they have the possibility that some day they will lose much. Those who own nothing can lose nothing, and the only way they hold onto anything is with an open hand.
The real blessing in life is not having something, but being someone. Therefore, the real blessings in life are available to all.
In the early church, this idea of being over-doing or having was clear. In Acts 4:32 it says this:“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.”
If we own nothing, all we have belongs to our Master, and we are bond slaves of the same Master, and then we act as servants, and not as owners.
Those who have much will one day lose much, and those who have nothing will lose nothing. Those who have nothing can be content and thankful in life, for they realize that everything “they have” they manage, rather than own, and their accountability will be in how they manage.
The idea of us giving anything to God seems rather hollow in that He is in need of nothing. The idea of managing what He has given us makes sense in that He makes what we have clearly demonstrate who He is and what He is about.
Those who own nothing but manage everything have no reason to be prideful, arrogant, or upset when circumstances change, and if we are, it demonstrates that we have yet to understand that we are not defined by our possessions, but by our Master.
