My fearless two-year-old will often leap off whatever ledge she can climb up to and assume I’ll catch her – whether I’m aware she’s about to jump or not. Fortunately, she’ll learn. As we get older, we gain experience (sometimes painfully). We learn the relationship between gravity and the hard floor, whether that’s actual or metaphorical. As a result, we minimize risk and develop contingency plans. But somewhere in this normal and healthy process of learning to make wise decisions, we convince ourselves that we’re in control.
This is a myth, and our lives are worse when we buy into it. We turn our hair gray worrying about things beyond our control, and wearing ourselves out trying to meet our needs apart from God. “Thy will be done” is not something we pray naturally.
So I can sympathize a little with the Israelites in the desert – and so should you. We almost always take the familiar and predictable. They were halfway willing to turn around and go back to slavery because it was known and familiar instead of putting their faith in a mysterious and faceless God who could not be controlled or manipulated.
And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
– Exodus 16:2-3
But God was patient, and he began to teach these people that He was trustworthy. The next morning, the Israelites awoke and gathered a mysterious God-given bread – enough to feed their family for one day only. They would repeat this for forty years, and God would faithfully provide it each morning until the day they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. They had to learn to trust Him to provide their daily bread.
It’s Monday – the start of a new week. What do you need Him to provide today? Do you trust Him to provide it? Pray with me that we’ll have “the faith of a child,” and not just the familiarity of experience. Faith means letting go of the myth that we’re in control and admit that we need Him far more than we realize. He alone is the source of all that we will require today.
Sovereign Lord, loving Father – “give us this day our daily bread.” Give us the courage to walk by faith in Your promises, instead of retreating to the make-believe security of the familiar. And as we go out in faith today, meet our needs… because if You don’t, we can’t provide it for ourselves.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
– Lamentations 3:22-23
Add Your Comment