Will God Provide? (January 25, 2004)

I just heard Pastor David Jeremiah on WMBI talk about how God provided for his wife and him when he was in seminary. They were so poor that they lived off 21-cent macaroni and cheese dinners, but whenever they needed money for food or bills there was always just enough. The point he was making was that if you trust God, he will provide.

I am one of those for whom God has provided again and again, and I praise him for it. More than once in the course of schooling or ministry or transition we have been close to the brink - unable to go one more month before we couldn't pay the rent or mortgage - but God always provided what we needed, sometimes with exquisitely dramatic timing. Glory to God!

But does God always provide like that?

I have struggled with this question for years. Recently I saw a news special that focused on a poor man dying of AIDS in an Asian country. He got AIDS from an infected needle used to draw the blood that he gave in order to get money for his family. They wept as they gathered around his deathbed. His wife also had AIDS now, and would probably soon follow him. She anguished over what would happen to their children.

I don't know if that man was a Christian, but if anyone said “He can't be, because such misfortunes never happen to people who trust God,” I would have to say, "You are mistaken." Hebrews 11 records the stories of great saints who suffered and didn't get provided for and then just died. Though I have always trusted God and have never used drugs nor been sexually immoral, there is nothing in my theology that says I could not, like that Asian peasant, get AIDS through no fault of my
own and then give it to my wife and then leave my children orphaned.

I find in myself then an attitude opposite to that of some Nazarenes in Jesus' day. They complained that the residents of Capernaum got miracles while they got none (Luke 4:23). But it is like I am in Capernaum, wondering why I have been provided for so lavishly while others have had to sell their blood for food and die as a result. I ask "Why?" - but from the standpoint of one who is privileged and
blessed rather than abused and destitute.

Here is what I conclude as I mull these thoughts. First, we must never be jealous or angry when others get provided for and we don't. We should be happy for them, and rejoice with those who rejoice. Second, we must never be selfish with the blessings we have received when others have been denied them. To whom much is given much is required. Third, we must never assume that our goodness inspired God's provision (callously dismissing unlucky sufferers as "getting what they deserved.") Fourth, we must praise and thank God when he gives us good things, and continue to trust and worship him when he does not. And fifth, we must remember at all times that this life is not all there is. Eternity awaits where wrongs shall be made right. In the meantime, imbalances both outrageously generous and outrageously cruel remain a
feature of our world, where they provide constant tests which we must pass by submitting our wills, expressing our gratitude, and maintaining our faith.