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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