Is It Wrong to Want More? What the Bible Says About Increase

If you feel guilty for wanting your life to grow, you may have been taught that wanting more is evil. Plenty of believers cheer when God grows their faith, their mind, or their health. Bring up money, and some of them bail out.

So is wanting more wrong? Start with the question underneath it: who put that wanting in you?

Did God put the desire for growth in you?

God did, and growth is how He built life to work. Flowers bloom, make seed, and multiply. Dogs have puppies, and cats have kittens. Whatever is alive is built to keep producing. Humanity received the same design: “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).

Nobody has a problem with a field of flowers in full bloom. People enjoy lush, green growth and animals that are thriving, and they enjoy it because those things prospered. Growth is normal, and anything that increases is prospering. A farmer plants expecting a crop, and nobody scolds him for it. If that is true of a field, why would it be suspicious in your life?

Growth also reaches every part of you. God's life in you brings everlasting life and the mind of Christ. The fruit of the Spirit takes the place of anger, bitterness, and unforgiveness with love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness. God wants you well, and healthy relationships belong to the same picture. Resources belong on that list too.

Psalm 36:7-8 pictures the same design from the other side. Those who trust God find shelter under His wings, and they are “abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house” and given drink from “the river of Your pleasures.” The psalm calls it abundance, and it places that abundance in God's own house.

When does wanting more go wrong?

Desire goes wrong in two places. It goes wrong when lust is running it, or when it serves only you and your flesh and blesses no one. A bigger house or a newer car is not sinful by itself. The test is what the increase does for other people. If it blesses someone, it fits God's design.

Psalm 115:14 shows which direction God points: “May the LORD give you increase more and more, You and your children.” Look at what the prayer asks for. It does not stop at your basic desires. It asks for increase, and it reaches to your children.

Poverty is more than an empty bank account. It can be a poor mind, a poor emotional life, or a poor relationship, and the principle is the same on every level. Anywhere God's life and light are missing, something is lacking. A heart run by bitterness, crankiness, and unforgiveness is poor too.

A mind that sees itself as poor tends to build a poor life, and the people closest to you feel it. Settling for that is not God's best. A right view of God changes the picture.

So when wanting more shows up in you, ask a sorting question: what would the increase do? Would it serve your marriage, your kids, your church, or the people who need help? Wanting to do more for the people you love is not greed.

What should you believe about wanting more?

Start with your mind, because religion has told many believers that prospering is evil. Romans 12:2 says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” That pattern is corruption, loss, lust, suffering, sickness, and hardship. Your calling is not to copy the damage sin has done.

Which of your beliefs about money came from the Word, and which were handed down without anyone checking them against Scripture?

John 15:7 gives the next step. “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” Some believers answer that your desire must always match God's desire. The verse never says that. It says what you desire, and it places that desire inside a relationship: abiding in Christ, with His words living in you.

Notice what that kind of heart wants. Lust is not the problem there. The desire is to give and to bless. Someone who abides in Him and lets His words live in them wants to bless family, friends, a church, a ministry, and missionaries.

The real fear is not about money. Many people fear their own hearts and worry that prospering will strengthen the wrong desires. So the heart is the issue, not the money. Once your heart is set on giving and blessing, money stops being the main danger, and it becomes something you get to use to bless others.

Why does God want you to have more?

Is anything missing from God's house? Nothing is, since lack does not exist in Him. When lack shows up, it points to a gap in your fellowship with Him. If you see lack in your own life, do not come under condemnation. It means that area is still growing, or has not started yet, because you have not known better. That is why the mind gets renewed.

Lack also blocks God's blessing from moving through His people. Picture the people who would love to write a check to a ministry, an orphanage, or a hospital, and cannot. If God's people are unable to give, God has no way to get to others what He wants them to have. People in lack cannot be a conduit for it.

Some people swear off possessions as if that were more godly. That is religious confusion. God committed Himself to abundance toward you, and a vow of poverty tries to cut that off.

If God's life is real in you, it will show up in the whole of your life. You should not be getting poorer. Things should be growing, because God's life in anything makes it grow.

For more on the abundant life Jesus described, read The Abundant Life God Actually Wants for You.

God gave His Son without holding anything back, so do you really believe He is stingy with the rest? Romans 8:32 answers the question: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”

How does increase make you a blessing?

Increase gives you more room to do good, because you cannot give what you do not have. Jesus promised life more abundantly, not a life of barely getting by. Paul describes abundance for every good work: “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Verse 11 ties that enrichment to generosity: “while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God” (2 Corinthians 9:11).

You probably want to do more for a spouse, children, friends, and a church. Lack in the heart or in the bank account keeps that from happening.

Pick one belief about money that you have never tested. Put it next to these verses and see whether it holds up.

Go deeper: watch Free Indeed, Episode 149 on YouTube.