GOD IS YOUR BENEFACTOR
Friday, October 07, 2005
All the commandments which I command
you this day you shall be watchful to do, that you may live and
multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to
your fathers. 2 And you shall [earnestly] remember all the way which
the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to prove you, to know what was in your [mind and] heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 And He humbled you and allowed you to hunger and fed you with manna,
which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make
you recognize and personally know that man does not live by bread only,
but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:1-3 AMP
You might think you know what’s in your own heart, but you do not
really know until you are tested. When you are humbled by your
circumstances—by life—and when everything else is stripped away, what
is left is the essence of YOU! The hardest things you go through will
be the things that define who you are. How will you respond? Will you
be bitter or will you be better? Will you allow God’s Word to govern
your life; your choices; your circumstances? The sword of the Word of
God is sharper than a two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12) and will cut down
deep on the inside of you and reveal the thoughts, intents, and
purposes of your heart. Growth involves change and you can only change
the things you know about.
God is not the author of the negative things that happen to you, just
as it was not His choice for Israel to wander in the desert for forty
years, but the Lord will cause your own heart to be revealed to you,
through these things, so you can change, so you can grow, so you can
make the adjustments, so you can make corrections to your direction—so
you can walk in liberty and in blessing.
Unless you have been through a tough time, suffered hunger, and been
fed by the Lord with manna, you may not come to realize that man does
not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth
of God. If you do not remember that God is the One who took care of you
when you could not take care of yourself, then when He blesses you and
promotes you, you will think that your ability and talents brought the
blessing. You will forget God; you will forget what He has done; you
will forget that it is HE Who gives you the power to get wealth and the
power to succeed. You will think that you did it yourself. You will
forget that God is actually the One who has empowered you to walk in
blessing and success as a fulfillment of a covenant promise He made
with you. You need to acknowledge the blessing of the Lord in your
life—you owe Him your thanks and appreciation.
If you are going through a hard time, and you want to gain the victory,
you will need to humble your heart before the Lord. The attitude
adjustments you get when you humble yourself under the mighty hand of
God during the hard times—if you remember the lessons learned—will
carry you through the good times. You need to humble yourself even more
when you are prospering and succeeding, so that you do not become
arrogant and lose what you have—or worse—lose yourself, by moving away
from and then rejecting the Lord.
Possessions, position and prestige are not the answer to all of your
problems. Things cannot make you happy because no matter how much a
person has, they inevitably want more of it. Only the Spirit of God can
truly satisfy your heart. When your contentment comes from your
relationship with God and you look to Him and trust Him in and through
all the circumstances of your life, whether good or bad, you will be
truly happy and blessed and free!