Introduction
This morning during worship service Pastor Chris shared a story about my son Emery and God’s faithfulness through a trial we had with him. When Emery was eight months old, he had surgery for craniosynostosis. This condition causes the sections of the skull to fuse too early, which can lead to brain damage and other issues if not addressed quickly. My wife and I were worried for our son, but we knew that God is in control, and that He has created the good days and the bad days (Ecclesiastes 7:14) and that He causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God (Romans 8:28). This did not give us an assurance that Emery would come through the necessary surgery without incident, but it did give us a peace that even if God had done something differently, and we lost our son, that it was part of God’s plan. We knew we could not be angry with God, but needed to be in prayer. Below are some of the thoughts I had written down not long after Emery’s surgery.
A Glimpse Into the Past
Oftentimes, I find myself wondering, what does it mean for God to provide for me? There are so many different answers given to this question! I find myself lost in the chaos of ideas around this issue. Does God provide for me physically? Does he provide for me emotionally and spiritually? Is God’s provision simply part of His divine plan, achieving his goals, and not focused on me? What does it really mean for God to provide for me, and how does he do it? There have been several events in my life recently that have helped me to better understand the answers to these questions.
Why don’t we start from the beginning, as all things do? I never thought to ask myself, “How does God provide,” until recent events prompted the question. However, in the past I think I assumed much about the way God provides. For example, growing up in the church I did not have a relationship with God, and simply assumed He had no provision for me. I thought, “I am just here with a God who created and abandoned me, and there is nothing more to it than that.” After I came to have faith, this obviously changed. It didn’t all happen at once, but I began to hear different ideas about how God would provide. Some sounded reasonable, others not as much. Some said that God provided for me physically. With faith, such as tithing, God would return to me in kind. So is tithing meant only for a return to me? Some said that God provided protection for me. Is he keeping me well? I seemed to get sick too often for this to be true. Is he protecting me in other physical means? I still bruise and bleed, it can’t mean that. As far as physical provision, I was lost.
So does God provide for me spiritually and emotionally? This seemed to match much more closely to what I read in the word of God. However, I still didn’t understand what it meant. I still felt sad, lonely, depressed at times. I still felt anxious, overwhelmed, worried other times. And even to this day, I still feel disconnected from God, weak in my faith, and lost on what is truth. How is God providing for me then? Why does it seem like no matter what I do, I feel like God is only there in the good, and gone in the bad. Am I only feeling like He is there in the good because I already feel good? There has to be an answer! God wouldn’t just leave me, like I had believed in my youth, would He? Despite my questions, I continued in my faith, believing that God would reveal the truth to me in time, which I believe He did.
The Circumstance
Previously this year, I was relying on things rather than God. Things I thought God had provided for me, or given to me. I was relying on my church, which I thought was in a great position of growth. I was relying on my job, in which I felt security in its income and my position. I was relying on my family, which I loved, and knew that God would keep them for me. “Maybe this is how God provides,” I thought. “He doesn’t provide for all of us the same, but these are my provisions.” I loved my place in life, and things were going well. God was noticeably good. Yet, I still felt those negative emotions. If things were so great, why did I feel them? I didn’t have the answer. God decided to give me the answer in a manner I was not expecting. He decided to take away what I had.
First, the church. As we began to grow again, our pastor’s father passed away. Most people in the church had never met him, but there was a ripple effect through the entire church. Or at least it appeared that way. As our pastor grieved, and began to slowly feel burnt out in the weekly grind of preaching and working, while never truly having a chance to mourn, our church seemed to slowly chip away. Several elders suddenly left the church and our members began leaving. The church felt as if it was on the rocks. Our pastor had to admit to the church that he was completely burnt out. He was not sure how much longer the church could continue without everyone stepping up to help. Being an elder at the church, more responsibilities began to fall on my shoulders. I initially viewed it with a great amount of anxiety and horror. How could I possibly add to my responsibilities? I already felt like I was doing so much! I went from preaching once every few months, to at least once a month, and during one period as many as four times in three weeks! This was on top of working a full time job outside of the church. It was a completely different world for me. I felt like I didn’t have time to obsess over my teachings. I went from feeling extremely nervous and filled with anxiety for a month before my time to preach, to having at times only a day or two, or even just an hour or two for preparation! Of course, these times were not ideal, nor planned, but in the absence of our pastor, someone had to step up. I quickly learned that I loved to preach the word of God. Delivering a message of His love, mercy, grace, justice, sovereignty, and so much more awoke within me a spiritual fervor that I didn’t know existed! In what should have been the most anxious, stressed out, and burnt out season of my life, I found myself praising God all the more, delighting in His word and His ways!
While this was going on over several months, I also lost another of the three things I relied on. My assurance of my family. Before you think the worst, nobody actually died. However, the fear of death was there. My son, who was only born seven months before, needed a major surgery. Our pediatrician recommended we see a specialist for his head. It was slightly misshapen. Upon seeing a specialist we found that he would require surgery on his head due to his skull fusing prematurely. His current condition was not yet serious, but if untreated, it would cause damage to his brain. He needed surgery, quickly. The doctors explained that they would need to cut open his skull, break apart the fused areas, and reset his skull’s position. They would also need to place a plate in his head to cover the new gap they would create. There was risk of severe damage to his brain during the surgery, and a pediatric neurosurgeon would be required to help ensure nothing happened to his brain during the operation.
Again, I was faced with a situation that seemed helpless. Worry and anxiety should have filled my heart with this news. My seven month old son needs surgery on his skull? How can I find any comfort in this time! It is impossible! Yet, I did not worry. Even the doctor was shocked. She informed my wife and I that normally the parents begin to cry when they hear this news. We both knew that God was sovereign over all things, and that if anything happened to our son, it was part of God’s plan. It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be sorrowful or grieve if the worst had happened. But what it did mean is that God’s will is most important. If this is His will to send us through this, He has a reason. We may not see it in the moment, but it does not change the truth. I now had no assurance in my family always being there, or being protected from harm. Yet, I felt comfort and peace.
Finally, God took away my financial security and job security. Shortly after the beginning of the spiral downward of our church and our son’s surgery, which he thankfully made it through in the best way possible, I lost my job. How could this happen now? Church is becoming tough, I am trying everything I can to fulfill my role there. My family is well, but my son still has some time for doctor’s visits and monitoring left. How am I going to afford our rent? How am I going to pay for further surgeries he may need? How am I even going to pay for the appointments he still needs? I had felt as if my position at my company was so safe that I had extreme comfort in it. Now it is gone. I am out of work, my son is recovering, and my church is in desperate need of a spiritual awakening. All of these things are piling up! What am I to do?
The Provision
Once again, God provided for me. Not in the ways I thought he did, but by revealing to me how he does. By showing me that I can rely on nothing in this world but Him. Hours before I had been let go, I was asked to preach the following Sunday. After hearing the news, I thought to myself, “There is no way I will be able to go through with this. I have too much on my mind! I have too many things to figure out!” However, since I had already agreed, I decided to push through the difficulties. I read the verses I had to teach on, wrote all my notes, and I created my outline. I was teaching out of John chapter one, verses nineteen to thirty-four. As my main points, I had: 1) Humility in Service; 2) Authority from God; and 3) Reverence to God. My message was about a man who had nothing, lived in the wilderness, died from capital punishment after being thrown in prison for his ministry, and who lived every moment of his life pointing to Christ. He did not expect anything to be granted to him, but desired for the messiah to be known.
How does God provide? Well, I can tell you that he doesn’t provide for us worldly possessions or a good life. Matthew 16 says:
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and WILL THEN REPAY EVERY MAN ACCORDING TO HIS DEEDS. 28 Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”
God has not come to provide for our every desire. It is true, He provides our basic needs, but these needs are much more trivial than we like to think. Most of the things we ask of God, or expect Him to give us are far beyond what he promises. What he does promise to provide for us is our soul. He gives us eternal life! As we are forgiven and washed clean by His work on the cross. Our belief gives us forgiveness of sins and life everlasting! What would it profit us to gain the world and lose our soul? This is not the desire of God, to give us our desires.
When we think that God’s provision includes things like a healthy family, a great job, a wonderful church, or anything else that comes along with whatever you imagine the “good life” to look like, we think incorrectly. God has never promised any of these things to us. In fact, he promises us the opposite is more likely. Matthew 10 says:
21 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. 22 “You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.
Even believers are not safe from family division! It is guaranteed that the word will divide. If this is so, why would we have security in our families in any way? It is God we are to rely on, not our families. It is God we are to rely on, not our careers. We are promised hardship in the faith. The call to follow Christ is not an easy call, and few will take up that call.
God provides, and has always provides for us in a spiritual manner. He saves us from the eternal damnation that we deserve in our sins. While we were once slaves to sin, we are no longer. We are now slaves to Christ! Our new nature is to serve and honor Him and Him alone! So what are we to make of our possessions? Our families? Our careers? What are we to say of our circumstances? Did God not also provide these for us? The answer to this can be complicated. On the one hand, everything is part of God’s plan. On the other hand, God does not give to us based on our level of faith or on how much we deserve something. So yes, God had provided me with my job, my family, and my church. However, the provision of these things were never meant to last forever. Nor were they meant to sustain me. They were simply meant to bring me into the season of life God had planned to bring me into. You could also say God gave me those things with the intention of taking them away.
We learn from the book of Job that God did not give to Job because of his faith, nor did Job’s faith come from God’s provision of possessions. The two are separated in the book. Job had faith in God because of who God is. God provided for Job because God’s plan involved Job having possessions. Job loses everything, yet still praises God. He never lost faith because he understood that God is not the God of good living, but he is the God that gives eternal life. He is the God that forgives sin. He is the God that brings justice to sinners.
What we cannot do is think , “If God has not given me worldly possessions, then I must not have had enough faith.” Nor can we think, “When I receive many things it is because God has gifted them to me because of my faith.” God gives and takes away as He desires in order to bring us exactly where he needs us to be in life. This is why men like Job and Paul can praise God in the worst moments of their life. This is why Paul, while in prison, continues his ministry as best he can. He understands God has provided for Him all that he needs. Faith, forgiveness of sin, and the promise of eternal life. Anything on top of that is extra. What this means is that we can be thankful to God for all that he has given us in this world, but must be ready to let it all go in an instant, knowing he has given it to us for His will, not for ours. We must use every possession, every season of life, every opportunity and every letdown for His glory. If I am at a place in my life with no security, where am I to find it? Am I to try and mend the broken pieces of my life? Am I to stress over finding a new job, or keeping my child safe, which is impossible? No, I am to rely on my God and King! I am to worship Him in the good and the bad! I am to accept every new day as a gift from God, and even if that new day brings about circumstances that I do not understand, I know who my God is, and how he has truly provided for me. That gives me joy, peace, and strength to make it through each and every day.
I learned that God’s provision for me and for everyone who believes is in what Christ has already done. As his faithful servant, I am to expect nothing of this world. It is hard to shift my thinking to this mindset. Nothing in life is guaranteed to me. Nothing in this life is mine. It is all His. He has given it to me, and he can take it away. So in every struggle in life, I must continually rely on Him. I must continually offer all things to Him. So when I go through struggles I know where to turn to for joy and peace. Whether it is in the rough times with relationships, the times when I don’t know what God has next for me, or the times when it seems like God has abandoned me, I have the joy and honor of turning to my God as my rock and my foundation for purpose, meaning, and true provision.
Conclusion
I wrote this in the summer of 2018. It has been several years, and I have only grown more sure of this. God worked through that time to help my understanding of who He is. Emery is doing well after the surgery. He still has a few years of monitoring to make sure his skull is forming properly. The doctors have let us know it looks like He will not need further surgeries. My wife and I thank God for this every day. If you are struggling with the circumstances of life, don’t run from God or blame Him for your situation. Instead, turn to Him for peace and comfort.