God of Provision

There are countless stories in the Holy Scriptures of God miraculously caring for and providing for His people.  A favorite of mine is in Exodus 16, when God provides daily food for the Israelites in the wilderness in the form of quail and manna.  This story is remarkable not only because of God's active hand of provision in the lives of His people, but also because of the context it occurs within.

Think of the circumstance.  God had just saved the people from slavery under the Egyptians in the Exodus through the Red Sea and out of Egypt.  He (the Lord) has just given them sweet water to drink by casting a log into the river.  And yet the people are grumbling and complaining that God has led them into the wilderness to die of hunger and that it would have been better if they would have just stayed in Egypt.

But God, who is rich in mercy and compassion for His grumbling people, determines to provide for them daily food of quail and manna to sustain them as they make their way through the Sinai peninsula to receive the Law.  And on the first day, when God provides all this for the people, they are so stunned that they do not even know what to do, so that Moses has to tell them that God is providing for them.

You see, God wants to provide for us.  He truly does.  And His desire has far-less to do with any goodness or righteousness that is within us and more to do with who God is and that He is a God of love and compassion.  And even as unbelieving as the Israelites were, and later became, God was faithful and fervent in His compassion and care for His people just as is faithful in His provision to His people still to this day.

This is as wonderful for us today as it was for the Israelites in the wilderness.  God has, does, and will provide for us in our very time of highest need.  The appropriate response to this is humility, reverence, thankfulness, and utter praise.  For God has no obligation to care for us apart from His goodness.  Therefore, we should be in awe, full of praise and thankfulness at the provision of God!

The Pacific Gospel Mission

Since 1877, the Pacific Gospel Mission has cared and preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the men and women of Chicago.  The mission was founded and funded by George and Sarah Clark from the very beginning and would quickly become a mission of massive size.  As a result of the increase, the Clarks, who had been bearing the cost of the mission, were unable to fund it any longer.

Despite their best efforts to fundraise, the financial burden came to a head to such a degree that if the Clarks did not garner the money, the mission would have to close its doors.  The Clarks spent the whole night on their knees in the house praying that God would provide the money to save the mission.

In the morning, when the couple emerged from its Morgan Park home, they looked with awe at their yard.  Filling the yard were hundreds of the highest quality mushrooms.  This was made even more remarkable because not only had there never been mushrooms in their yard before but it wasn't even season for them.  The couple spent all morning picking the mushrooms, then brought and sold them to the chefs at the Palmer House, the famed hotel.  The Pacific Gospel Mission was able to keep its doors open, all because of the providential hand of God Almighty.

The essence and point of this story is fairly self-evident.  God is a God who provides for those who earnestly seek after Him.  This is one of the keys to the Christian life.  No matter our circumstance, if we are seeking to live in the center of God's will and we are worshiping Him in faith and humility, He does and will bless us for our faithfulness.  Let us then continually and persistently come to God with our requests, big and small, so that we may be blessed by the Lord!

Praying Persistently

Think of this all-too familiar scene:

A parent is pushing the grocery cart as fast as they can through the store, navigating it like a needle and thread, sewing through the aisles and getting just the essentials so as not to be there any longer than needed.  The reason for their frantic but focused speed is because they have a loud, obnoxious child at their heels, incessantly begging for a piece of candy.  

With every expert weave of the cart and stop to dump product into the basket, the child makes the same whimpered plea, "Mommy! Please, just one!"  On and on the battle rages, the mother determined not to give in to her child and the child knowing that if he plays this game long enough he'll wear her down and get the candy.  By the time the mother and child get to the register, the kid is eating the aforementioned candy and the mother is harried and hoarse from yelling under her breath.  Persistence pays off.

There are two passages of Scripture that speak directly to the necessity of persistance in prayer (Matt. 7:7-11; Luke 18:1-8).  In the first, taken from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that believers ask, seek, and know so as to see, find, and gain admittance.  The primary purpose is the pursuit of God's presence but it is also a matter of perseverance in prayer.

God does not simply want us to come to Him like a vending machine: fifteen minutes of prayer for a trinket, an hour for a new car.  Instead, we are to ask Him, to seek after Him, and to knock on His door with the persistent tenacity of a loan shark.  There is a progression to the pursuit of God and we should be aware that God does not ever grow weary of our pleas for His grace and provision.  In fact He encourages that we ask in His name and remain like a branch to His vine (John 14:12-14, 15:1-17).

The other relavant passage in this regard is Luke 18:1-8, recounts the Parable of the Persistent Widow. In it, Jesus paints a picture of the value of persistent prayer and the need for consistency in pursuing God to provide for us.  God desires for us to come to Him for our provisions, for our desires, and for our cares.  But to do so in persistence.  Therefore, let us come to God like the child wanting candy in the grocery store, knowing that He does not grow weary of our badgering.  Praise be to God that He cares for us and wishes for us to come to Him for every need with a perseverance that is powerful!

Christian Contentment in a Consumer World

There's an old story that goes something like this:

A mother and her son were walking through the woods one day when a storm fell upon them.  Within minutes the two were being bombarded by blasting wind and pelting rain within a tempest.  Suddenly a funnel cloud began swirling around them.  The mother clung to a tree while her son was clinging to her.  The woman was holding to the tree so tightly that she barely noticed when her son was swept away by the tornado.  She began to cry out to God, saying in a loud voice, "Oh Lord, please bring me back my son!  If You bring Him back I'll never ask for anything and I'll worship you for the rest of my life!  Please Lord! Please."  Immediately her son fell to the ground as the storm subsided.  He was unharmed as the mother ran to him to comfort him.  She kissed her son's face and hugged him tightly.  Abruptly, she withdrew from her son and looked him over before looking back up to the sky and said, "He had a hat, Lord. Could we get that too?"

In a world that bases satisfaction on how much and how many, the biblical model of contentment seems even more relevant to understand and apply today.  Our understandings of contentment are so influenced by the consumer culture we liv in, that is inundated with planned-obsolescence and short-lived shelf life.  For Christians, though, God is the ultimate source of our satisfaction and contentment.  Once we claim this, it will not only change how we deal with consumerism, but also how we will deal with our own state of contentment.

God is the source of our contentment.  Because our contentment is based on an eternal and sovereign Lord, our contentment is always secure.  This flies in the face of the temporal contentment of the World.  Instead, we find our pleasure, our satisfaction, and our contentment in being in relationship with the Holy Lord.  Claiming this contentment requires that we draw closer to the Lord in praise and worship.  Remembering that we rely on a Holy Lord in all thankfulness is the essence of contentment.

While there are many Scripture passages that speak about contentment (Psa. 16:2; Pro. 15:15, 19:23; Job 1:21; Matt. 6:25-34; 1 Tim. 6:6; Heb. 13:5).  But the most important Scripture about contentment is Paul's exhortation in Philippians 4:11-13.  The point Paul makes, and that we should agree with, is that because God is the source of our contentment we should always be content in any circumstance void of abundance or poverty.  Let us then be content and thankful, praising God for His provision and grace!