You Don't Have Enough (But God Does)

Where do you feel in your life right now that you simply don't have enough? You don't have enough time. You don't have enough energy. You don't have enough of the right ideas or maybe the resources. Maybe right now you're looking at someone else's success and you're thinking, as you look at their story, Lord, how did they get there? And how did they get started? And what do they have that I do not have? You are not by yourself. If you feel like you just don't have what it takes. And the truth is, I want to speak directly about this because that is a lie that if you believe it, then that lie will actually be the thing that stops you from moving forward and moving into what God has for you. I shockingly enough have people that will ask me, well, how did you do what you did? And it's because you have access to this, that, and the other. And I'm looking at them and thinking, uh, nuh-uh. I didn't start this by building big or having something big in mind. Anything that I have built is because God has chosen to multiply the little that I have. So I wanted to give you some thoughts to help you combat the lie that you don't have enough, and I wanted to give you some encouragement for doing what it takes for you to participate, because God wants you to be a participant. He doesn't want to just drop things out of the sky on your behalf. Um, he wants you to build your capacity, and your capacity is built by you being consistent and showing up for the little things. There are so many things now, as I look back in my life, that I consider, uh, to be crumbs, little crumbs. Me being faithful in small things that I did not know God had a plan for. I didn't know he had a plan for a YouTube channel. I didn't know he had a plan for me writing books. I didn't know he had a plan for me speaking. I certainly knew nothing about a membership. Just so many things. But what I can look back and see is that in those little areas that I like to call crumbs, God has used not my perfection and not my always getting it right consistently, but he has used my faithfulness to show up in little ways for what I did know to make contributions and investments towards what I knew not of. The notes that were saved on my phone, the ideas that were captured in the margins of my notebooks or my journals, these are the things that were raw materials that God has later built and multiplied into books or events or branding or all these fancy things, you know, community that I wasn't trying to orchestrate. So I want you to think about what you feel like you have too little of, and maybe the lie that you believe that God can't use what you have because it's too little. And I want you to first of all say, if I think I don't have what it takes or that God has not given me enough to multiply, that is a lie. So many of the things that I've been able to do in this season of my life were birthed when I was homeschooling 5 kids, um, working or writing late into the night, breastfeeding while I pecked out blog posts on the keyboard, sharing to an audience that there was no email list. There were all the people that I was going to BCC in my email. There are no little crumbs. There's no such thing. There are only crumbs of your desired, um, ability to show up and use what you have with trust that God can multiply it. So here's the first thing I want you to know. I want you to offer what you have, even if it feels small, because God is never going to ask us for what we don't have. He's always going to show up and ask us for the little we do hold in our hands. Many of us grew up learning in Sunday school about the 5 loaves and the 2 fish from the little boy who simply knew that Jesus wanted to feed the crowds and that there wasn't enough food or money to make that happen. But the boy showed up and he said, "Listen, all I have is 5 loaves and 2 fish. Do you wanna use it?" And what we find out in that chapter, John chapter 6, is that there were even leftovers because Jesus took what the little boy had that was little and made much. God also wastes nothing. He doesn't waste the little things. And it doesn't matter if the little things are your efforts. It is what you actually hold in your hands. It could even be your tears or hidden talents that people don't recognize, or you don't even think are talents. Your tiny beginnings— none of that, uh, God wastes. And all of it, even if it's little, he wants to use. Me showing up in the early days looked like writing blog posts. It looked like teaching at church. It looks like hosting women in my home and writing ideas down, um, in between doing the laundry. This is one of the reasons why it's so important to me that you write things down. It's one of the reasons why I've created journals and notebooks and planners and processes because I have seen in my own life, when I am willing to identify, steward, and treasure and nurture and cultivate the little thing that I have, God is willing to do much with it. But I forget what I have if I don't write it down. If you're like me, your to-do list is a million miles long. There's just always more to do than there is day. So I love checking things off, but let me tell you something, that's a problem. If you check off things on your to-do list, without checking on you, you are not living your life well. Listen, you've got to pay attention to your life. So I have created a tool that's a planner and a personal coach in one place to help you do just that. Let me introduce you to the Full Circle Planner. I meet you in these pages every week, at the beginning and the end of every month and every quarter, at the beginning and the end of the year to help you make sure that you're checking on you while you're checking things off your list. Because what good is your life if you do all the things, but you're not good? I want you to live a life you love. I want you to own your life, and I want you to pay attention to the life you've been given to live. How can you do that? Checking in on you, and these pages will help. Get your Full Circle Planner today. Before there were conferences and cohorts, there were handwritten notes. There were small emails. There were videos recorded, you know, with my old camcorder in a corner of a living room, whatever tech expertise I have now is because I've had to figure out everything on my own. The key is not having it all. The key is to start where you are, to use what you have, and to do what you can. That's something that Arthur Ashe said long ago. So you've got to ask yourself, what are your 5 loaves and your 2 fish? The thing that you just have, the thing that you're just holding. It could be a skill that you haven't named, a passion that you've downplayed, a tiny idea that won't go away. It's a feeling that feels too simple, which often if it's simple to you, it's probably a gift in other people's eyes. You don't want to despise it. You want to offer it. Instead of looking at it and saying, "This is so small." Zechariah 4:10, "Don't despise the day of small beginnings." "This is so small. This is no big deal. Anybody could do this." That is the language of someone who is not treasuring, cultivating, nurturing their small things. Instead of using your words to downplay what you have, do what the little boy did with the 5 loaves and 2 fish. Simply say, "This is what I have." and offer it. You need to understand that faithfulness is a multiplier. So again, going back to the first thing that I said, if you can remember that you offer what you have, even when it's small, trusting that God wastes nothing, then you want to choose to have faith that your offering, coupled with your faithfulness in offering your offering and saying over and over again, here's what I have, here's what I have, God, use it, God will multiply, and he will multiply your consistency, not your grand gestures. When we would go on vacation as kids, my dad wanted to get in the car and drive. I mean, if he could have driven nonstop from Dallas to Maryland where my grandparents lived, I'm telling you, he would have. It's because my mother was like, Tony, we got to get out of the car. Tony, we got to stop for gas. Tony, let's stop and see, like, there's a, a billboard over there, and let's go and see the stalactites and the stalagmites and all of that. Or let's go and go to an amusement park, or let's get off and see this historical thing. My mother made sure that we consistently enjoyed the trip because my dad was into grand gestures. I just want to get in the car and get there. And God is like, no, before you get there, before the big thing, or you seeing that I've connected the dots in your life, before you can see from your own experiences that I cause everything to work together, I just want you to enjoy the journey. I want you to enjoy the journey and not get weary of just being along for the ride. Galatians 6:9 says, don't get weary in well-doing. Matthew 25:23, a master said to his slave, good work, you did your job well, but I want you to be my partner. So this picture that we have about God is that he is like, if you will just bring what you have, don't get weary, don't do grand gestures, don't try to make the trip in one fell swoop, because that's how we get distracted and discouraged. We want things to happen immediately and quickly and then one and done. And God is like, no, I have you along for the ride. Enjoy the ride and don't get weary of the ride. Just keep showing up knowing that eventually you'll get there. And also, I want to partner with you and I want to do this with you. I want to enjoy the journey with you. It's not about arrival, it's about along the way, how we grow and change along the way. Back when I had, you know, like 30 people on my email list and, um, they were in my BCC because there was no such thing as an email list provider that I was using, um, back when I was hosting small Bible studies in my home, back when I was responding to every email myself one at a time, back when my audience wasn't 1,200 or 12,000 but it was 12 people in folding chairs in my living room or at the church. I can look back now and see, because I had no grand idea of what God would do, I had no thought about 100,000 followers on YouTube, I was just doing the next thing and doing that consistently as I could in the cracks and crevices of motherhood. And now I I can look back and see that that consistency, that asking God, like, who do you want me to minister to in this email? What do you want me to say in this email? What am I teaching at this Bible study? Who do you want me to invite into my home for these next 6 weeks? How can I show up with what I have? Which often was very flurried and frantic because I had 5 kids. That consistency, even inconsistently because I was mothering 5 kids, that was an act of worship, not a performance. And let me tell you how the enemy will trip you up with not having a lot or having small things. He'll make you think it's about the performance. It's about how you show up, how many people are following you, how many people reply to your email, how many people are on your email list, how many people are in your community. And God is not about that. God is about seeds. He's not about the forest, he's about the cultivation of seeds. Because when we cultivate the seeds, the forest takes care of itself. When you plant consistently, water consistently, steward consistently, multiplication is inevitable. So instead of focusing on the effect or the result of multiplication. Focus on your seed and know that the efforts that you make that are small, repeated day in and day out, yield a big result. Atomic Habits talks about this idea of small changes over time and how they compound. If you improve yourself just 1% a day, the author says, you will be 37 times better in a year. So where do you need to stay faithful? Even when you being faithful feels unnoticed, feels small, feels insignificant? What rhythms or routines do you need to recommit to? Because you nurturing the small things is how you actually see seed grow. And even though the next right step may be a small step, identify it. Because what if it's not about taking dramatic leaps? God is the multiplier, right? But he requires your faithfulness in order to do that. We girls just need time. Time to get away. Time for a little quiet. Time to be still. Time to quiet the noise. And this is why I put on any event that I do to give the girls, including me, time. 2026, that time looks like being on a cruise for a long period of time so you can actually inhale long enough to hear the heartbeat of your soul and laugh and have a good time in the sun. I want you to join me on the Sister Circle Cruise. It's April 26th through May 3rd, and you can find out more by going to thesistercircle.com/cruise. I hope you make space for you and join me there. Now, the third thing is God also multiplies what is surrendered, not always what is strategized. Now, I'm a believer in strategy, y'all, and as much as I have a love-hate relationship with marketing— it's fun until it's not. I hate repeating myself. I hate saying sell, buy, go to this site to get 20% off. I hate all that. Strategy, though, is important because we wanna be good stewards of what God has given us. But what is more important than strategy is surrender, because surrender unlocks the supernatural multiplication in your life. I'll never forget when I wrote She's Still There, and I'm gonna read something to you out of it. But I wrote She's Still There, and one of the people who I asked, and I couldn't believe he said yes, who I asked to write an endorsement for the book was Bruce Wilkerson, who wrote The Power of Jabez. And when he emailed me back, he said, May Jesus multiply your marketing. Because there are some things that we can do by strategy, but there are many things in your life that will only happen when you are fully and completely and totally surrendered. And you need to remember that because some of us are out here striving and scratching and forcing when really Ephesians 3:20 is clear. It's now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all you can ask or think. Proverbs 3:5-6 is clear. Trust God with everything that's in your heart. Don't try to figure out everything on your own. So there have been many moments in my life where I'm trying to figure out how am I being a good steward by exercising strategy. And then there are times when I have strategized my brains out and nothing is going the way that I want it to go. And you know what? That's a signal for me to do revisit surrender. What am I surrendering? What do I need to surrender, God, that I have not been surrendering? What is happening with the team, with the business, with the money, with my time, with my content? What is happening that should not be happening, or what should be happening that's not? How can I release control and get back to to being a partner, um, not in crime, but in creating amazing things with you. You know, when I tell God, I will steward the work you've given me and allow you to handle the outcome, that's where true multiplication, true supernatural multiplication lives. You know, there's a season when a closed door can actually position you for a multiplied door later, and often surrender is the key. One of my favorite passages, 2 Kings chapter 4, because it's the widow who's doing her best to keep her life afloat and to keep her kids from being whittled away into slavery to pay her husband's debt. And many scholars think she was married to the prophet Obadiah. And why, if Obadiah was a good prophet, did, you know, was she left in squalor and debt? We don't know. What we do know is that she was married to somebody who was a priest, and when that priest died, she was struggling to take care of her kids. And God said to her through the prophet Elijah, go get empty vessels. So she sends her kids to go get empty vessels, and then the prophet says, now take your little bit of oil and I want you to pour that into these big jars. And she was like, are you serious? And he was like, yes, because the little that you have— and I always keep a bottle of oil on my desk because I'm, you know, part Kojic— maybe not this small, but she definitely had a small vial of oil, and that filled all the jars. So much so that she was able to pay off her debt and be able to live on the rest. Why? Because God multiplies supernatural surrender, which normally involves doing something that doesn't quite make sense. Because our surrender creates space for God to do miraculous, unexpected, unseen, never-before-experienced things. God will fill whatever you make room for. And often in our humanity, we don't make room. We want to do what only we can do. We want to put our hands to the plow. And I'm a person who's all about goals and productivity, and so there's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes our own goals and our productivity gets in the way. Because he's like, lay it down, lay it down. I would like to do something, but I can't if you're in the way. So God is not asking for your perfection or your production. He's asking for permission to show up and be God, and he's not going to force himself on you because he's a gentleman. So I want to give you an invitation to ask yourself, how can you surrender? How can you be faithful? And how can you identify the small things and offer all of that, all of that to the Lord. I want to read you a, a little bit of this because this is a symbol of my life where I'm looking at small things and realize later that it's in the sacrifice of my small things that other things were born. I didn't have much, just a full bed, a dresser, a small circular glass table with two cheap chairs and a 27-inch JVC television and a rocking chair. My first apartment post-college was 850 square feet, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. I was on cloud nine to be in my own place with my daughter. Happy and broke. My plan was to take my time saving money and slowly fill the space with a twin bed for my preschooler, a few furnishings, and a couch on which to sit and watch that 27-inch TV. Since I only had the rocking chair, I bought a couple of large pillows so my girl could sit on a soft spot on the floor and watch Barney. I wanted to shoot Barney. I Love You, You Love Me. That song just about drove me nuts. I sat in that rocking chair with my daughter sitting next to me on a pillow, and she would dance around the room to Barney songs and made our little spot work until I could do something to improve it. I had big plans for one day having a space where my social circle could come hang out. I dreamed of the day when I had an area for everyone to sit and a spot for anyone who walked through my doors to feel comfortable. I imagined hosting a slumber party for my daughter and visiting with the other mommies when they dropped off their girls for overnight fun. But I figured that all of that would have to wait because I had nowhere for anyone to sit. One day though, I was talking to my aunt, my mom's sister Elizabeth, and I was sharing with her about my some days. I told her about everything I planned to do later after I'd made a little bit more progress in my life and could properly show hospitality. She told me something I've never forgotten: do what you can with what you have. Don't wait for the day when you have the right couch, the right coffee table, or the right seating arrangement. Don't wait until you have an eating area for a sizable dinner party. Don't delay making memories or sharing your life with friends. Do what you can to live your life well with what you have. And I'm reminded even this day of a friend of mine, a good friend— we've been friends for over 30 years— Jay Lynn. And she and I, we reminisce the old days, and we still to this day talk about her coming to visit sitting in the rocking chair with us, talking and having a great time, drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream. And when we sit together today, we reminisce about how we sat together, me on the floor and her in the rocking chair, sipping and having great conversations and developing a friendship we still enjoy today. Why do I read you this? That's from Chapter 14, Rockin' Hot Chocolate. Do what you can with what you have. It's a getting older and older, but it's still a goodie, I think, if you've never read it. Because now I can host, now I can have 30 people over for a first Sunday dinner, now I can make memories with my family, and now I can host my son and his friends, and now I have room for my 5 grandchildren and my 5 children to come over. Now I have room to host Christmas and Thanksgiving at my home with all the people. But do you know where I practiced hospitality? Do you know where where people learn to be comfortable in my home? Do you know where I gathered God can multiply? From yielding what I had, from being faithful to use what I had, even when what I had was small. That principle has worked in my hospitality, it has worked in my writing, it has worked in my speaking, it has worked in friendship, it has worked in business, it has worked in money management, it has worked in my relationships with even the people that work with me and for me. Everything is a branch from either hard lessons learned and then resulting faithfulness, or my decision to cultivate. I love to write because I love to write. And cultivating that small thing is why I had illustrations for a book decades after I'd even thought about some of the things that I put in my journal. So what do you need to remember? You need to remember that God doesn't need you to do the whole thing. He wants you to be faithful with small things. He wants you to pay attention to the small things, and then he wants you to be ready to surrender when he needs to put his hands on it to multiply it. So what are you holding on to too tightly? Or maybe where have you been trying to force things to move forward instead of being surrendered? What outcome do you need to hand back to God today? Because sometimes multiplication doesn't look like money or numbers. Sometimes it's about peace and wisdom and opportunity and clarity and confidence and influence. It's so important that you remember God will multiply what you offer, what you steward, and what you surrender. So for me, this all did not start with strategy. Before there was strategy, there was simply a seed. And what I did consistently, not perfectly, but over and over again, was to offer the seed. God has done the multiplying. Your little is not lacking. Your little is simply leverage in the hands of a very powerful God. He will multiply your faithfulness. He will multiply your stewardship, and he will multiply what you surrender to him. So I want you to think about this, and I'd love for you to answer me in the comments, regardless of where you're watching or listening. Hit me back, reply, and let me know how this motivated you or kind of brought something to light in your eyes. Where is God nudging you to offer the little that you have, to stop belittling it and just say, here you go, Lord, you can have it? What small act of obedience can you recommit to today and be faithful to that? How can you step back and say, Lord, I've tried every door, no doors are working, I surrender, and I'll let you do what's clear is different than what I'm doing? Let me pray over you because I think this is one of those things that you're going to wrestle with, and I want you to have clarity. Lord, would you help take what feels small in our lives— the ideas, the gifts, the courage, the time, the steps Would you take those things because we wanna place them in your hands? Would you multiply them for your glory and for the good of the women that are watching and listening, for the women who are trying to grow and to honor you as they live their lives, for the woman I am because I'm the woman I'm speaking to every single time I open my mouth. And would you help us to release, to offer, to surrender, to be faithful, and watch you Do what only you can. And then when you do, help us to be mindful to say thank you and to give you the glory for what you only could have done. Because often it's the Lord's doing and it's marvelous in our eyes. Listen, if you are thinking, how do I do the things that are in my hands? How can I honor God with what I have that's small? Take a minute, get quiet, do some journaling, write it down, and take the journey with me. Make sure that you, uh, comment or like this actual episode, share it with someone else that you know. If you want to do the work with me, make sure you have a planner because I ask all the questions in there and provide all the space for you to stir up your soul and think about what's important. But everything that I do is created to help you think about it so you can do something different. And whether it's just the YouTube channel, my Inner Circle membership, the products that I'm making available to you, I want to challenge you to do the work. Don't just listen and be a passive bystander. Do the work. Get on your knees and pray about it. Do the work. Share your conviction from watching the episode. Do the work. Because it's in you doing what you can with what you have that will cultivate and nurture the soil of your seed. All right, y'all, take care, and I'll see you next week.