All I have needed your hand hath provided

For several days God has been speaking to me about his faithfulness and prodding me to listen to the old hymn Great is Thy Faithfulness.  Although I listened, I did not hear. Eventually I was concentrating enough to hear All I have need thy hand hath provided which sank into my brain and spirit. 

So often our upbringing and past circumstances can continue to negatively affect us years later even after we have been born again into our new life in Christ. I was watching an early episode of Call the Midwife and an elderly brother and sister could never really shake off their workhouse upbringing.  For the Israelites, God may have brought them out from slavery in Egypt in one night but it took much longer to get Egypt out of the Israelites. For years they continued to behave like slaves.

When my husband and I became Christians over 30 years ago, we were in debt and very poor at money management.  Over the years we learned to be better stewards and givers of the money we had but we always seemed to be bumping along the bottom of the pond. We had enough – just. Gradually as we learned to trust God more and more, things continued to improve.

However a few weeks ago, I realised that my old fears of never having enough were still lurking in my heart. In a multi storey car park, I reversed our car into a large pillar. I just hadn’t been looking carefully enough.  There was a big dent on the back bumper and the rear light fixing was smashed. I was distraught.  I knew we could probably afford to have the car repaired but it was just such a waste. Why should my husband or God have to pay for my carelessness?

I kept confessing that God was our provider and even though I now know all will be well and we wont go into debt over this, God wanted to deal with my deep seated fear of not having enough.  Finally the truth of All I have need thy hand hath provided hit home.

God does not want to provide just those things necessary for life nor even for those ‘extras’ that his grace and kindness want to bless us with. He is our provider for everything – including repairs to our car due my lack of attention. I can trust God’s provision for everything because it all comes from him in the first place. As the Matt Redman song says:

We have nothing to give that did not first come from your heart

We have nothing to offer you that you did not provide

Every good, prefect gift comes from your kind and gracious heart

And all we do is give back to you what always has been yours.

Everything comes from God and what we do is spend it, use it or give it. God is not like an expenses account that will cover some things but not others.  God covers it all – the good things, the bad things and the stupid things.  He will constantly help us be better stewards because he can then trust us with more which will bless us and others. That has been our experience but God knew that fear still lay hidden in my heart.

As Joyce Meyer said Fear always tells you what you’re not, what you don’t have, what you can’t do, and what you never will be. God wants us free from all fear so we are free to love and free to give.  It may take a pillar in a car park but God is constantly working to liberate us from the fears of our past.  

Pleasing God

Without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. Hebrews 11: 6

I want to please God.  However this is not because I am fearful of displeasing Him. I’m not. If we are worried about displeasing God, it is usually because we fear punishment when we get things wrong but God is not going to punish us even if we are disobedient.  All the punishment for our sin was taken by Jesus on the cross. We do not have to fear it any longer. 

For sure - disobedience hampers our relationship with God but it does not terminate it even temporarily.  God does not want us to walk in sin and he will do all he can to help us repent and ask for forgiveness but not because he is waiting to punish us but because sin is harmful to us and our relationship with him.

Despite all their shortcomings, the only time Jesus even rebuked the disciples was after he had risen from the dead and then it was ‘for their lack of faith and stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen’ (Mark 16: 14). The next reported words though were ‘Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.’ In order for them to do this effectively they needed to believe that he had risen from the dead. Their unbelief was stopping this happening.

Unbelief is the greatest hindrance to a powerful, effective Kingdom life because it robs us of faith.  Faith pleases God so to walk with God by faith, we must let God do whatever is necessary to root out unbelief in our lives. 

 Unbelief makes God measure up to our experience and understanding.  If I can reason and understand all that God is doing, he is very small indeed. I am resolved that I will not let my Christian life depend on my experience but on what the Word of God says. If my experience does not measure up then it has to change not the Word of God. If I pray for the sick and they are not healed, then I must persevere till they are, not give up.

Years ago we were not seeing the breakthrough in our finances that we believed the Word of God promises us. We took our wallets, cheque book, cards, bank statements and prayed over them breaking the hold of lack, insufficiency and debt in our lives and calling forth the promised blessings of God. There was not an instantaneous break through but there was a change and we gradually started to prosper. We made our experience line up with the Word of God not vice versa.

I know I have hardly started to experience even a tiny fraction of some of the things in the Bible but I must persevere till I do. I must resist the temptation to give up when it becomes hard and instead carry on till I get the victory. 

I want to please God and so I must walk by faith.