“And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”   ~Philippians 4:19

God always gives us what we need in order to do His will, that’s a guarantee. There’s a story in the Bible about a widow and her little son. They had all but starved to death when a prophet came to town, and that’s when she learned God will always take care of us.

1 Kings 17 starts out with God telling Elijah, the prophet, to go and stay with a woman who would provide food for him. When he arrived he asked her to make some biscuits for them to eat. She told him that there was only a small amount of flour in her barrel, just a handful! But she did what he said, in faith, trusting him because he was a prophet of God. She pulled out her mixing bowl, measured out some oil and went to the barrel to get the flour. As she dipped her cup in she scraped the bottom to get the last handful of flour. She then dumped it into the bowl. In faith, she bent over a second time to fill her cup again, and as she dipped her cup in, more flour appeared. This story ends with the following verse.

”For thus says the Lord God of Israel: The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.”   ~1 Kings 17:14

This verse rings out so loud and clear to me. God is telling us that He is with us in everything, He will always provide for His children. All we must do is believe and then act in faith. We must act even when it doesn’t make any sense—especially when it doesn’t make sense! If we believe but don’t act, what will this lack of faith produce? If the barrel has flour in it and we refuse to act because we can’t see it, we will never be able to receive the blessings that only come with faith. Our works of faith are actions of trust, the willingness to do something based solely on faith!

“What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? Faith without works is dead.”   ~James 2:14

Dip your cup into the empty barrel and know that God has enough flour to meet all of your needs. Stop worrying and fretting every time something appears to go wrong, and know that God is still in control.

Pray for everything, but always end your prayer with this one little phrase . . . "above all, Lord, I ask for your will".  Then be willing to accept it!

That’s the rub for me, accepting His will over mine. However, knowing that God has the playbook for all eternity certainly does make this a lot easier. Understanding and accepting that His will is far better than mine also helps me concede.

So, to answer the above question, will God always take care of us? The answer is, yes! However, there is a great difference between our needs and our wants.

Yes, He will meet our prayerful needs requests, but He may not fulfill all of our desires. Hopefully, God’s reason for this will make it easier to accept. Since God knows all, sees and foresees all, we can rest assured that He has our very best interest at heart in every unanswered prayer. We can be at peace with whatever situation He might allow in our lives because He knows that we need to gain something from the experience.

This was a hard one for me. I have learned this lesson over and over again and have finally come to terms with this reality. I know that no matter how out of control my circumstances might be, God is still in control and is working everything for my good! My only duty in every situation is to stay in nonstop communication with Him, trusting that He will always have my back.

I pray all the time, I talk to Him and then I listen. When I pray for things I want, He always asks me this same question, “What do you need?” And I always answer with the same answer . . . ”Nothing, God, nothing.” The truth is that I have everything I need, maybe not everything I want . . . but at the moment He asks me that question, I’m honestly in need of absolutely nothing!

Greed is the primary cause of most of my wants. I want a better set of cookware or a nicer pair of running shoes, or maybe a long vacation on a tropical beach. And I have no problem asking God for all of these things, but I truly don’t need them. I know He loves me and wants to give me nice stuff, but if there is a lesson I need to learn by not having something, I will graciously accept that as well.

I refuse to get upset anymore when things don’t go my way. I’ve finally learned that He is much wiser than me, He is all loving and He only wants what’s best for me. God is far more concerned with the long run. He is much more focused on my eternity than He is in the few years I’m here on this corrupted earth.

But it’s so hard to step out in faith…

Yes, it definitely is, but sometimes God allows things to happen in order to get us to grow our faith. He allows situations that will force us to step out in faith. Think about it this way; Jesus prayed to His Father to provide for all of His needs, even for His food and shelter. But if He then refused to take an offer to go to someone’s house for a meal, would that be faith? If we ask God to help us, to meet our needs, but refuse, out of pride, to accept help when it arrives, we are not living in faith.

If we truly believe that God will provide we must allow Him to do so as He sees fit, take what He sends, and say thank you to Him as well as whoever He uses to help meet our needs. Letting pride get in the way of any blessing from God is simply foolishness.

Like the woman with the empty flour barrel, we too need to walk in faith no matter how contradictory something may appear. We must stop falling into Satan’s trap of believing only what we see and trusting only in ourselves. We have to learn that faith is believing in what isn’t visible—trusting in what we can't see. If God wants us to eat biscuits, He will provide the flour!

“…Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me; and afterward make some for yourself and your son.”   ~1 Kings 17:13