Sometimes God blesses over and above, but more often He provides in small everyday ways. Looking back I realize how true this is. After all, we are only able to see God’s faithfulness in retrospect because when He calls us out to the deep, He only tells us about the promise but never the in between because He knows that He is able to take us through the in between and get us to the other side victorious.
Now God is faithful… This I know without a doubt. Even when I can’t see it, even when it doesn’t feel like so, I know deep in my heart that God is faithful. And I know, that He can be trusted. Like David I’d say, “I waited patiently for the Lord, He turned to me and heard my cry.”
In 1 Kings 17, we meet Elijah who tells Ahab that there won’t be rain for a few years. This is because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord. At this time, Ahab was king over Israel and he did evil in the sight of the Lord over and above all before him. (I Kings 16:30)
And the word of the Lord comes to him, saying, Go from here and turn east and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, east of the Jordan. You shall drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there. So he did according to the word of the Lord; he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, east of the Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning and bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the Brook. After a while the brook dried up because there was no rain in the land. And the word of the Lord came to him: Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.(1 Kings 17:2-9)
The brook was supposed to nourish him for a specific time and when it dried up, God provided another supplier.
Sometimes, like this brook, our suppliers may run dry and we may feel as though we’ve hit a dead end. We could begin crying by the brook wondering what becomes of us now that the only supplier we knew has dried up. This could be through retrenchment and you are wondering how the bills will be paid now that you no longer have a job, it could be the ending of a relationship that had the prospects of leading to marriage, it could even be the collapsing of a business or a partnership gone wrong.
But nothing ever catches God by surprise. He will always provide for us in the best way He knows how. We are only required to believe with a personal trust and a confident surrender and firm reliance in Him, holding Him capable of fulfilling exactly what He promised He would. In V. 14, Elijah reassures the woman of her not running out until the Lord sent rain on the earth. (For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: The jar of meal shall not waste away or the bottle of oil fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth) And true to His word, there was enough, every day for Elijah, the woman and her family until the day rain fell.
Sometimes we allow unbelief to creep in to our lives. We doubt God’s faithfulness, we doubt His having a good plan for our lives as He says in Jeremiah 29:11. We doubt His power that is made perfect in our weakness. Romans 5 encourages us to rejoice in our suffering, because in that crushing, character is birthed. We know that because of their unbelief, the children of Israel died in the wilderness. They did not make it into the promised land, not because God was unable to get them in, but because they doubted. They missed out on all that He was able to do in and through them. When we doubt, we miss out on all God has in store for us.
Let us then look to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith. Let us trust with a firm reliance, that when our supplies for the season run out, He will provide yet another supplier. Let us put our trust in the source rather than the supplies. And let us believe that God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we could ask, think or even imagine.
Love,
❤️
Quintessence
