Christian Living
“You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; The river of God is full of water; You provide their grain, for so You have prepared it” (Psalm 65:9 NKJ). Mankind was designed to receive its provisions from God and no one else. It is God’s natural order of things. Not only is it God’s order for mankind, but for nature itself. God takes it upon Himself through the prayers and obedience of His people to provide every sustenance that makes up our lives, as well as nature itself.
The birds of the air and lilies of the field live in this great God-given order and flourish. They have no problem with God being their provider, it’s just us humans that sometimes do. The birds of the air and lilies of the field do not have any problems with God’s order. Why? Because they have never sought to understand and see if they could do it on their own. But, we took the bite out of the forbidden fruit and now we have all kinds of questions, inquiries and suspicions of God. The birds and lilies never ask God if or why He provides for them, they are just simply glad He does. They go through snow storms, ice storms, sand storms, thunderstorms, lightning storms and at times it may not look like He will come through and provide, but He always does because of one thing; He promises He will “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5, NKJ). So they endure their little hardships with joy and confidence knowing that their Great God will keep His word to feed and clothe them. They are so faithful and trusting of God (okay, this is of course metaphorical) that He will provide for them, that Jesus Himself used them as an illustration for me and you on how we are to count on our Father for all our needs and anything else we could ever think of (Luke 12:22-31). Truly, the only simplicity in life is to believe in what God says to us through His word about who He is and what He means to do for us, but it’s awfully hard to learn this lesson. But the great thing is, God wants us to learn this lesson and will teach us if we are willing, so we can live out Luke 12:22-31. God is patient if we are willing.
But we are always seeking out the “knowledge of” how our Father will do this providing. “Will He really come through for me, and if so, how? Lord, have you forgotten me? Yep, I'm pretty sure He has forgotten me.” So on and on it goes until we get to the point where we have finally convinced ourselves that He really won’t provide for us, so we begin to provide for ourselves. Thus God’s order for the time being is being bucked, we are at wits end and completely discombobulated along with everyone else in our lives, and there they are; the lilies just growing ever more beautiful and the birds chirping, saying to themselves “those stupid humans.”
It's imperative to us as children of God to learn that we ourselves cannot possibly provide and keep ourselves in the secure, peaceful certainty that always marked our Lord when He was Son of Man, knowing that His Father would always provide for Him. We may laugh at this, but Jesus didn’t. Rather, He was absolutely amazed at our lack of confidence and faith in the Father. We are to walk as He walked in this world. Not just in conduct with others, but more so, in the same faith and confidence He had in the Father.
This is absolute foolishness to the world, but to us, it must become the greatest reality of our lives. What reality? The reality that God is actually real, personal, and a God of His word. It does take an abandoning of ourselves to believe God is who He says He is, because He will test us on this. He will allow circumstances to strip us of all self-sufficiency and self-control, where we will either look up and tell God that no matter what, we are going to count on and believe in Him to provide for us, or we will melt down and may even realize that we don’t really trust in God at all. It’s a harsh reality to come to and may even break our heart at times (which may be a good thing, because it means we care about Him). But if we do come to realize that we do lack a real trust in God to provide for us, remember, He really is patient with us. If you are God’s child, He will not give up on you and He will even help you in your lack of trust in Him “help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24, NKJ). But we have to repent of unbelief. This is not talking about salvation, but rather growing up into a real relationship with God and how He designed it to be between us and Himself.
The truth is, is that it is much more heroic to stand in faith in God that He will provide for us than to go out and “get our own.” It also does so much more for our relationship with God in furthering our faith and love to Him, including furthering His purposes for our lives. Faith always leads to more faith, just as confidence begets confidence, “building yourselves up on your most holy faith” (Jude 20, NKJ). So let us commit ourselves to quit asking so many questions of God, do not be suspicious of how or if He will provide for us, and just trust that God loves us enough that He will in fact do so. Because of sin, being suspicious of one another is understandable. But being suspicious of God, His word to us and His character, is a sin in and of itself, because there is no sin in God, “in Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5, NKJ). We have no excuse not to believe and put our faith in Him. But again, He will have compassion and help us if we take this, and His heart on this matter, seriously. Seek the simplicity of Christ and seek to delight your Father, by actually believing Him and that He will provide all you will ever need.
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