Don't Forget the Lord's Provisions

Acknowledging God

Follow in My Ways

The Lord Will Provide

Deuteronomy 8:11-20 The Message

11-16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,
the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness,
those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
19-20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I’m on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You’ll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn’t obey the Voice of God, your God.

For Reflection

God owns all that there is.  God has entrusted us with God's creation. We are the stewards of God's world. We own nothing but are responsible for managing God's resources. God intends for us to share God's resources equitably.  When Christ fed the 5000, he used what was available, blessed it, and gave it to the hungry crowd.  They fed until their hunger was satisfied and there was much left over.    
Have confidence in the promise of God.  Share God's largess, each getting what he or she needs so that no one goes without that which is necessary for security and comfort. Life in the Kingdom is not a zero-sum game where some build up their stores at another's expense.  The family of God is marked by compassion, grace and an equitable distribution of God's resources.

Pray

Pray for the poor in spirit so that they shall know the grace of God.  Pray for those whose lives are stunted by impoverishment so that they will have hope. Pray for the marginalized so that they may rest in the family of God.

Forward to a friend