Will God Really Provide For My Needs?

This week the third point in the sermon was to, “pray that God would provide for your needs.”  I would imagine that this point hit home with many of you this week as it did for me.  For many people, myself included, the year 2009 was an incredibly trying year in many regards.  I spent most of my time this past year with not enough work, not enough money, struggling to make ends meet and barely getting by.  However, in the midst of the “barely getting by,” I found God consistently meeting my needs.  Written on an index card above the place that I hang my car keys is Proverbs 30:8---Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.  I would see this statement everyday before I walked out the door in survival mode for the days and weeks ahead.  Many times I prayed that Scripture asking God to provide for my needs.

The interesting thing here is that tough times--like the ones we find ourselves in now-- have a way of clarifying what our needs really are.  And our Father in Heaven who knows us better than we know ourselves sometimes reminds us of those needs by stripping away the things we hold dear.  He places us directly at the intersection of poverty and riches and there we find our daily bread.  It is something to ponder that when we find ourselves at our lowest point, all we have left to do is cry out to Jesus.

Unfortunately for most of us, we don’t want to be patient and wait for Him to work; we simply need peace right now!  Just last Friday we received an answer to a prayer that we had been praying since the middle of last year.  This was an amazing exercise in diligence and trust for me.  Somehow through it all we knew that whatever the answer to this prayer, whether it is the one we hoped for or the one that we dreaded, God’s amazing peace carried us through. 

So asking God to provide for our needs doesn’t always mean that you will get exactly what you think you need.  In fact, more often than not we get something totally different as God brings us back to our true needs.  And through the struggle and the difficulty we grow in a closer and more intimate relationship with Him as He takes away all the things that we lean on that actually hinder our Christian walk.  Last year, I learned exactly what I could do without, but the one thing we cannot do without is a vital connection to God.         

Consistently turn to Him to meet your needs.  Continually align your priorities with those God deems important. I recently heard this statement in a sermon: “God cannot pour his riches into hands already full.” It has helped to remind me to be willing to let go of some things that tie me down and reach for the One that lifts me up.

Father, in these difficult days when so many are just trying to survive, remind us that you hold the world in your hands.  Help us to remember that you watch over us all the days of our lives and that some of the things we cling to the most are the most unnecessary in the Kingdom to come.  Give us what we need to get through this day and help us to see you as our Provider and our source of strength.