I wrote of various proportions of faith in my last post. Let’s take one of them and consider it more closely, “Oh ye of little faith”. (Matt. 6:25-34)
The needs that Jesus spoke about in his address here are food, drink, and raiment. He knew the people wrestled with acquiring these things despite the many promises God gave to care for them
Ps. 37:3, 25, “ Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed….”
Directed to seniors as well as young people, I often recited the following words during my youthful struggles. Verse 25, “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” This passage is one of my all-time favorites.
I was learning to trust God during those early days as I struggled to earn degrees and eventually a living. Those were hard times the Lord led me through.
How wrongly directed are we when all we can think of is what to eat? Is that obsession ever satisfied?
Ecclesiastes 6:7, “All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.”
Job also had it right on this score.
Job 23:12, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.” He definitely had his priorities straight.
Paul, too, knew the true content of God’s kingdom. It’s not as so many prosperity teachers will tell us today.
Romans 14:17, “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
Imagine that, telling yourself, when you are hungry, to not sweat it because God’s kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, not a meal. Believing so, will that feed you? I don’t think that is how we’re to look at this. Surely a singleness of mind is important, but no one wants to exist on a starvation diet.
Jesus realized people get hungry, for when they followed Him throughout the countryside desiring to hear the Word, He fed five thousand.
At the same time, going without food may very well be the Lord’s way to humble and prove us as he did the Israelites.
Deut. 8:2-3, “ And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”
The needs that Jesus spoke about in his address here are food, drink, and raiment. He knew the people wrestled with acquiring these things despite the many promises God gave to care for them
Ps. 37:3, 25, “ Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed….”
Directed to seniors as well as young people, I often recited the following words during my youthful struggles. Verse 25, “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” This passage is one of my all-time favorites.
I was learning to trust God during those early days as I struggled to earn degrees and eventually a living. Those were hard times the Lord led me through.
How wrongly directed are we when all we can think of is what to eat? Is that obsession ever satisfied?
Ecclesiastes 6:7, “All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.”
Job also had it right on this score.
Job 23:12, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.” He definitely had his priorities straight.
Paul, too, knew the true content of God’s kingdom. It’s not as so many prosperity teachers will tell us today.
Romans 14:17, “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
Imagine that, telling yourself, when you are hungry, to not sweat it because God’s kingdom is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, not a meal. Believing so, will that feed you? I don’t think that is how we’re to look at this. Surely a singleness of mind is important, but no one wants to exist on a starvation diet.
Jesus realized people get hungry, for when they followed Him throughout the countryside desiring to hear the Word, He fed five thousand.
At the same time, going without food may very well be the Lord’s way to humble and prove us as he did the Israelites.
Deut. 8:2-3, “ And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”
