From the Pulpit: Trust and give thanks

If you could, take a quick second and read 1 Kings 17:1-6

Are you one of those people who likes to predict how the movie will end? A few context clues in the first half-hour, and you feel like you know where it’s going.

We all do that with real life. Your car dies without warning, and you don’t have the money saved to replace it. So your mind starts running scenarios. Maybe someone gifts you a car. Maybe you carpool and pick up extra shifts. Maybe you take out a loan. Before you know it, you have several ways this might work out. Psychologists call this prospection. Our brains are built to run simulations of the future before it happens.

Now put yourself in Elijah’s shoes. God sends him to confront King Ahab. That’s the guy who forsook the Lord for Baal, murdered a man to steal his vineyard, and hunted down God’s prophets. Elijah tells that guy, “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.”

As that scenario played out in Elijah’s head, do you think he imagined it going well? Probably not. And once he got out alive, God sent him to the Kerith Ravine in the middle of a drought. Not a city. Just a brook. How’s he going to eat?

Yet God provided in a way Elijah never could have predicted. Ravens brought him bread and meat, morning and evening.

And thus reveals the problem with our prospection. We aren’t God. We even lack imagination. Elijah could have spent a whole lot of energy worrying, but he never would have thought of ravens. When you anxiously spin as if everything depended on you, you are trying to take God’s place.

The good news is pretty simple. The Word of the Lord never fails, which means that you can trust God’s Word wholeheartedly – in all things. 

Why can you be confident that God will provide for you? Look to his biggest promise: Jesus. If God can bring about your salvation through self-sacrifice and reversing death, don’t you think he can do something as small as providing for you? And it’s not just his power that leads you to trust. It’s his heart. He loves you more than you can fathom. He is your perfect Father.

Jesus says, “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?” (Matthew 6:26)

So when you start running scenarios, bring trust along. Remember the Lord’s promises. Remember His goodness. Remember that he sees better scenarios than you could ever conjure up.

And be thankful. Focus your mind not on what you feel you lack, but on all the good gifts God has given you.