Coming soon to a couch near you! We’ve been booking some intimate home shows in the Portland area this summer and are looking for some more homes to invade. So if you would like to host an Acoustic Living Room Concert please let us know!
Jehovah Jireh
The second verse of this song relates to the passage in Matthew 6 where it admonishes us to pay heed to how God cares even for the birds of the air and provides for their needs. How much more will He, and has He already done for us?!
You said to ask and seek and knock
And the door would be opened
To seek first the kingdom of God
And all shall be added
For the birds of the air neither sow nor they reap
Yet you always take care of them
So much more have you done for me, Lord
I know it can sound like a flimsy platitude when you are in the midst of wondering where your next meal could be coming from, but I have been there and time after time I have seen God provide in ways that would seem implausible or even like a highly fictionalized movie script! We have had times where the money has simply run out and we don’t have the funds to buy groceries or pay bills, and God has provided.
This is not to say that bad things don’t happen in this fallen world, or that there are many who do go without food and starve. I know it breaks His heart and ours to see children and others in need around the world and down the street. Perhaps we should take the tugging on our heart as an opportunity to give out of the abundance we have been blessed with, to be His hands and feet to those in need around us.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? —Matthew 6:25-27
I wonder if sometimes He allows us to come to those “end of our rope” type circumstances, so we can better learn to rely on His power and give Him the glory for providing; rather than grow complacent and believe we are doing just fine on our own steam without needing Him! The first verse of the song leads off with this concept:
Lord, help me to rely on You
Lean not on my own understanding
Deny myself and choose
To pick up my cross and follow
…
Jesus goes on in the same passage to exhort us to remember to seek and knock, to strive for the things of God’s kingdom and He will be faithful to take care of the rest. It is so freeing once we realize that every good and perfect gift comes from God, and that He will take care of our needs without us worrying fearfully.
I know I still struggle with this sometimes when we fall a few months behind on the mortgage and wonder if we will be able to keep our home, as has happened to so many in this uncertain economic time. So far, every time He has come through in miraculous ways by bringing extra consulting projects my way, or through the benevolence of our church family and friends.
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 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. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. —Matthew 6:28-34
But again coming back to Paul’s statement of being content in both plenty and in want, if it is part of God’s will that we lose the house and are displaced; we can be confident that He has a plan and that He will still provide. Perhaps it is His will that we be cut loose from being tied down to be free to step out in faith in missions, or to be led somewhere that is a better plan for our lives.
I’m not saying I’m perfect and that I don’t still have worries and fears that try to knock on my door, but I know that God’s love is perfect and that it can cast out those fears (1 John 4:17-19).
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