God Will Provide

To the reader: this is an article that I wrote quite a long time ago, but only now do I feel the need to publish it on my blog. I was reluctant to publish it, as this is a very personal experience for me that I didn’t think should be put out for everyone to see. Recently, though, I feel that the Lord wants it to be sent out, so here it is. It will hopefully do more good if it is available to others to read than stored away on my computer. Enjoy.

We are now at the end of one year and at the dawn of a new one, looking back on 2009 I now see the strongest message God has given me over the past year: God Will Provide. He has done so for me and my family in a truly miraculous manner and He has once more firmly confirmed His power and love for me. It all started with some truly nasty circumstances that I now see were ordained by the Lord for my instruction. The circumstances I found myself in were as follows.

I was in the first year of my Masters research in Namibia (which takes two years), while working for the organisation I was studying through at the same time. I had come to CCF on the specific conditions that I would do my Masters for two years, while helping CCF with day-to-day jobs when I had time – we had agreed that I would not have to pay them to stay there, but they would also not pay me for the work I did for them. This agreement worked well until I started running out of money, I had started the year with some meagre savings from the previous year and these savings were now coming to an end.

At around the same time I started struggling, my Dad was made redundant (my Mom did not have work at the time, either) and they had a mountain of debt to pay off. Their solution was to move to England where my Mom could get a job and then bring Dad over to get a job too. At this stage, I had not seen them for the better part of a year and if they did move (and with my financial difficulties) we would not be able to see each other for two or three more years, if not more. Although I had already resolved not to ask them for anything, I now knew that I could not do so as they had even more troubles than I did.

So, I had run out of money, my parents were unemployed and were about to leave for England permanently. I came to a point where I realized that I could no longer depend on myself or anyone else; I had to depend on the only One who never fails – the Lord God. So I prayed – for some way of getting money, for wisdom for my parents as they came to this very important crossroads and for their financial stability. I prayed that the Lord would take control of both situations and lead us by His will and through His grace.

I had faith the size of a mustard seed, if not smaller – just a tiny scrap of faith. This was all I could give to the Lord, but through the encouragement of His Word and many biblical teachings, I put my tiny scrap of faith in Him. I left my troubles and cares at His feet every day and prayed that He would give me more faith to allow me not to worry about what I had committed unto Him. I held on to the passage Matthew 6:25-34, but particularly verse 25 – “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” and 34 – “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Through these and many other scriptures, the Lord comforted me and sternly told me that I was not to worry about the things that I had committed into His hand. As I only had but a little faith this proved to be a battle, but in the end the Lord brought me peace as I laid all my burdens and cares upon Him. I finally gave up worrying about my parents moving away, knowing that the Lord would make their move either a success or a failure – either way, if that was the Lord’s will then it would be enough for me. I also placed my confidence in finally earning an income, although where I was at the time pointed to this being a nigh impossibility. The peace of the Lord laid upon me in such an incredible way that I would only ponder my troubles briefly and then be able to turn my thoughts away from the circumstances and towards the Lord.

In due time, my boss mentioned to me (I had decided that I would not ask for a salary, but rather wait until the Lord provided one) that she would like to pay me for my work, even though our previous agreement was that I would not be paid while I studied. At first, I received this promise with some hesitation, as I knew that others had been working in the organisation for longer than myself and had still not been offered a salary. Then I realized that even though my boss is an unbeliever, the Lord was using her to provide for me in a wonderful way.

The first sign of God’s provision came in the form of shoes (Matt. 6:28-30 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”). My strops had become so worn out in the past year of use that they no longer stayed on my feet when I walked – they had become little more that two flat pieces of rubber held very tenuously together by bits of material. It got to the point where it was so obvious that they were beyond repair that everyone at work could here me trying to walk in them from a hundred metres away.

One day, when my boss had come back from a trip to America, she told me that she had bought herself a new pair of strops/sandals; she was currently lending them to a friend that had forgotten to bring her own strops from America. She had not worn them yet, and her friend was due to go back to the States in a couple of weeks’ time. She told me that after that time, she would give them to me – if they fitted. It turned out that they were exactly the right size for me and possibly the most comfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever had. I thanked her profusely for her generosity and praised the Lord Almighty for His incredible providence; the God of the Universe had taken the care to give me something as small and seemingly insignificant as a pair of shoes.

Two months later, my boss told me that we needed to hold a meeting to discuss a job offer and a salary for my future time at CCF. We soon came around a table and they offered me a salary of more than I had thought they would – certainly more than I had ever earned previously and more than enough to not only cover my living expenses but also to save for the future. Once again, God did not just provide a little, but as in the words of Paul:

Eph. 3:20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

About a month before this meeting, I heard from my Mom that she had been to England and found that it was simply not going to be possible for them to move there permanently. She would come back home and try to find a job in South Africa. In the meantime, my Dad had been offered a part-time job that would at least cover their debts over the next few months. Once back in S.A., Mom started training to be an estate agent and soon thereafter found a job. They are now able to rent a house and my Dad has a strong prospect of being given a fulltime job with a salary that is good enough to pay off all their debts in a matter of a year. God had once more demonstrated that He had always been and would always be in control of every small detail of His children’s lives.

Now, as I look back on 2009, I am ashamed at the tiny bit of faith I presented to the Lord when faced with difficult circumstances. As Christians, we have the entire Word of God at our fingertips, which is simply packed with examples of the Lord rewarding His faithful servants and with reassurances from God Himself that He is in control. Even then, for this message to truly become real to me, the Lord had to put me through difficult circumstances; to get me to the end of my self-reliance and to bring me to the point where I put my tiny bit of faith in Him.

Matt. 17: 20 So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you”.

This passage was never entirely real to me, I always thought “Why would I ever want to remove a mountain, and how could you ever do that just because you have faith?” Well the Lord answered my question through my circumstances – He had allowed a mountain of worries, distresses and impossibilities to come up before me. I looked at this mountain and gave the Lord my tiny mustard seed of faith, praying that He would, by His grace, remove it from before me. This He did – He moved it even further and more completely than I ever thought He would. And through this He was able to grow my little mustard seed of faith, so that the next time another, perhaps bigger, mountain of impossibilities presents itself I will once more be able to put my trust in Him to remove it.

Ps. 37:5 Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.

I believe that the Lord allows these mountains to grow before us; He allows the odds to become stacked against us to the point where we are absolutely helpless without Him. When we turn from trying to fix things ourselves and simply rely on His providence, He is then able to rescue us in His own truly miraculous way. At the end of it, we can do nothing other than praise Him and glorify His name for what He has done.

One example of this was when Gideon faced the Midianites (Judges 7) with only three hundred men. The Lord told him to reduce his army from over thirty thousand men to just three hundred. By doing this, the Lord ensured that the odds were stacked entirely against Gideon and that in this way the Lord would receive the glory for the victory He gave. In the same way, the Lord may ensure that the odds are truly stacked against us so that when He rescues us we are absolutely certain that He has saved us and that He deserves all the glory, honour and praise.

Thus, if you are reading this now and you are in a difficult situation and everything seems to be going against you, remember the Word of the Lord – He will provide, even against all the odds.