Scripture Reading:

Proverbs 3:5; Matthew 11:29; 1 John 3:10-11; Romans 6:1-23; John 14:16

Please comment below with your conversation with God and/or insights from today’s Scriptures.

You can answer the following:

1. What are the Scriptures telling you about provision?

2. If you can, name some ways God has provided for you?

3. What is your prayer to God regarding provision?

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God’s Got It | Lemuel Ayudtud

“He’s got the whole world in His hands,” is an old song children used to sing back in the day. It speaks of the sovereignty of God over the lives of everyone. The “tiny, little baby,” in His hands, “you and me, brother/sister,” in His hands, “mommy and daddy,” in His hands… the song could go on naming all types of people expressing the care and sovereignty of God for all of us.

God is sovereign which means He does what He wants to do. He reigns and rules over the elements, the universe, and everything in between. Even before there were planets and stars hanging stringless in the dark, emptiness of what was to be the universe, God existed sovereign over all.

His voice, as we know it, probably more like His thoughts, boomed across the immense expanse when He said, “Let there be light.” Like an explosion of unfathomable proportions, new things began to form. Particles and matter and microscopic objects appeared then joined and fused themselves together, hurling themselves to God’s predestined spaces and places.

The speed of the creative process brought heat and fire and vapor and gas, enlightening the once dark void. Like candles in darkened halls, these balls of light flickered as their gasses were pulled together as a result of the power of God’s creative voice. However long it took, who really can tell, but the Bible records it as but a day to God. Wow!

Imagine the immensity of the process! Imagine the frenzied activity of a once empty universe filling with planets, suns, galaxies and everything in between. Just imagine yourself watching this. Overwhelming, right? Now imagine your daily concerns.

Often times we do not see God as the sovereign, creative, all powerful God that made the earth that we stand in. We measure Him according to our finite abilities and might and bring Him down to our levels. Yes, He became a man like you and me, so He came to our level, but even then God couldn’t help Himself.

While in human form He healed the sick, raised the dead, turned water into wine. He walked on water, commanded the waves and seas to calm, made hands grow, and demons to part. He took 5 loaves and 2 fishes and fed 5000 and more. Even at Calvary while hanging on the cross, He expressed His sovereign power to tell the thief beside Him that he will be with Him in paradise. And, of course, the pièce de résistance, the tour de force, crushing death three days later after the grotesque crucifixion. God couldn’t be and He can’t be contained!

Considering it now, it’s pretty funny to me that God even in his humanity was sovereign. God can’t help but be who He is: God! That means everything we will ever need is found in Him. Every concern, every turn, every care, every worry, every hope, can be met by God.

In His sovereignty is His power of provision. Since He is all powerful, then there’s nothing that He can’t provide. Whatever your needs maybe, He can meet it. There’s nothing out of His control and oversight.

The question, of course, is: then why all the pain and suffering? If God’s provision is connected to His sovereignty, then why do we experience the downs of life? Why are there seeming gaps in His provision? If He’s “got the whole world in His hands,” then how come the world is in an upheaval and why are people in need? My simple answer is that all of that is a response of God’s cosmological creation against the disobedience of God’s anthropological creation.

The world and everything in it is resisting against us. It quakes and shakes at times because of it. It howls and blows at times because of it. And one day God will allow the elements to pay us back for the pain we’ve caused it through our disobedience.

In all of the universe the only creation that resisted the will of God is man. We read in the Scriptures that as a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, thorns grew where there was once none and labor became painful whether it was work or pregnancy.

We can just look at the animals in the wild, they bounce right back up after they deliver their babies and most of their babies bounce right up upon delivery. The trees grow without much effort, the winds blow without resistance, the seas don’t run out of water.

Because of our mother and father of Genesis, we are now where we are and experience what we experience. Yet, and despite it all, God commends His love towards us. He keeps and covers us. He meets our needs when we exercise our faith. Man, even the wicked has the sun and the rain being provided for them.

And whether we understand it or not, He’s keeping the elements back from destroying us—putting fear in animals so that they keep from overrunning us and even, given enough training, they may obey even us. (Instead of killing us like the weaklings we really are, animals remain in boundaries and in their spaces by instinct.) The seas end up on shores, the winds don’t blow the way they do in other planets, the earth’s skies protect us from the blazing heat of the sun.

But all of that is really nothing compared to the Provision that He is to us. He is our rest, our peace, our joy, our hope. He is our health, our wealth, our hiding place in times of life’s storms. And the magnus opus is that He is our salvation from the weight of sin that condemns us. This same salvation will ultimately save us from the wrath of God that is to come. That’s right, God is even keeping us from the day of vengeance. So whatever your needs maybe, God’s got it.

Lord, help me to trust in Your sovereignty and provision. Help me to continually rest in Your care for me. Teach me to yield to You my concerns. Help me to know, really know, that You are God! I ask this in Your matchless Name, Jesus, I pray. Amen.