Monday, January 12, 2015

How Carefree Are We?



Yesterday my pastor started a short series of messages about stewardship – encouraging us not to love and serve money, but to love and serve God first and foremost.  His sermon reminded me of how well God provides for us if we just get out of his way and allow him to!  We live in one of the most affluent cultures in history.  As a result, we truly can provide just about everything for ourselves without God’s help.  So I think we sometimes miss allowing God to provide for us because we are too busy taking care of ourselves.  In our culture, it is easy to depend more on ourselves and our money than we do on God.

I find it interesting that Christians are willing to trust God to provide for their souls but often find it difficult to fully entrust their physical needs to him!  I think one of the reasons for this has to do with the way in which God chooses to provide for us.  Sometimes God provides for us in miraculous ways, and sometimes he uses more common, everyday means.  If we are always looking for miracles, we may miss the common ways he works; and if we are accustomed to thinking in earthly terms, we may miss a miracle God wants to perform.  Learning to truly trust God’s provision for us involves accepting whatever method he chooses at any given time and being content with the outcome.  Stories in the Old Testament like Abraham (Genesis 22:1-14) and Joseph (Genesis 50:20) help us to see that God’s way of providing is always best.

Trusting God’s provision and obeying his calling on our lives should produce obvious and tangible results.  If we trust God fully to provide for us, we have the freedom to be generous with what we have been given; and God’s generosity with us should lead to our generosity with others.  When we trust God to provide for us, we don’t have to worry about running out of resources.  As Jesus pointed out in Matthew 6:25-34, it is possible and desirable for us to get rid of being preoccupied with earthly things and to relax and live free, unfettered lives where we can be truly “carefree”.  This allows us to share generously with others whatever God has given us, whether money and other earthly possessions or spiritual gifts.  When we trust God to provide for us, we can focus our attention on more important things – toward God and others.

“Lord, You are more precious than silver
Lord, You are more costly than gold
Lord, You are more beautiful than diamonds
And nothing I desire compares with You.”
(Lynn DeShazo, ©1982 Integrity’s Hosanna! Music) 

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