Saturday, June 25, 2011

An Example Of God's Perfect Provision

My family and I are about to hit the road for the weekend but I wanted to leave you with a small example of God's provision. Yesterday I was saying how we often waste time by trying to do for ourselves what God is willing to do for us. What we come up with falls short of the perfect provision of our Lord. I have a wonderful example of that to share with you.

We don't own a car, being perfectly content with our bicycles to get around town. However, there are a few occasions when we need to borrow a vehicle to go further distances. We prayed and God provoked a brother in love to lend us his van. We are very thankful for this because it is a wonderful vehicle to drive. However, there is only one slight problem; it has a CD player instead of a cassette player. No, we are not stuck back in the dinosaur age, carrying around with us bucket loads of cassettes but neither are we stuck in the age of CD's. We are Ipod people who use a special cassette that attaches to our Ipod, allowing us to use the vehicle's speakers. Therefore, no cassette player, no Ipod.

Driving home from picking up the van we discussed this problem to try to discover a solution. This was important because driving with 4 children for 6 hours it was important to have entertainment. We love listening to audio books and it keeps the kids occupied for hours on end. I thought that if we could get a power converter we could bring along some extra speakers to plug the Ipod into. My wife agreed so we decided we would stop at Best Buy on the way home.

The thing was, it was already very late and the stores in our city close at 9 PM. Weird, I know. So I hurried through the traffic and pulled up in front of the store for my wife to jump out. But just as she did they pulled the gates across the door. We missed it by a few seconds. Dejected she climbed back into the van. I thought we should try Wal-Mart because sometimes that store has later hours and they were just across the street. So we rushed to Wal-Mart but as we pulled into the parking lot I saw that the store sign was off meaning they were closed. But my wife noticed that people had just gone into Future Shop, so I made a quick right and pulled up in front of the door. She jumped out just in time to see them lock the door. Completely defeated we decided to head home.

Arriving home I parked the van and started looking around in it. I crawled into the back to see how we would sit the children and what kind of room they had. I was looking in the storage compartments to see how much room they had for their books and toys when I noticed something in the last compartment. I pulled it out to get a better look and discovered I was holding a power converter. I held it up for my wife to see as I sat in the back of the van having a good belly laugh over the perfect provision of God.

Not only had God provided the van we needed but he threw in the little extra things to make it a pleasant trip for everyone. Where my wife and I wasted time running around trying to provide for ourselves, our Lord had already given what we needed. That is my point; we often waste time and energy chasing after things Jesus has already provided us with. Often, when we decide to pray about it, he simply opens our eyes so we can see that he has already answered.

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31-33)

They are not just words; they are the perfect promise of Jesus. If we truly love him then we know we can trust him. He provides far greater things than power converters, this was only an example of his perfect provision. He provides everything you need. He only asks us to trust him. Caste your burden on Jesus today; declare your love and trust; and allow his wonderful perfect peace to be the thing that occupies your heart today. To God be the glory!

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