Trusting God is Enough for Today

You could smell the fried chicken as we walked out of the restaurant, but we pranced out as if nothing was unusual.

When I was in college my friends and I never had enough money to go out to dinner…unless it was all-you-can-eat night at Wilbur’s Barbeque. On those nights, we gathered our pennies and ate until we hurt. We filled our tummies with fried chicken, hushpuppies, barbequed potatoes, coleslaw and banana pudding. I can almost taste it years later. Then, when we thought no one was looking, we slipped the leftover chicken and hushpuppies into our oversized purses…enough to last for a few days. I’m sure we weren’t fooling anyone as the aroma followed us out the door.

OK, so I know this might not have been the right thing to do. It was a long time ago. Sorry, Wilbur. But today, I was thinking about us fried-chicken-smelling poor college students, as I read God’s commands to the Israelites in the wilderness. Remember the story?

God freed about 2 million Israelites from years of Egyptian slavery. They crossed the parted Red Sea on dry land and headed for the wilderness. After a few days, they grumbled against the LORD, and wished they were back in Egypt where they “sat around pots of meat.” Yes, they preferred slavery to the known, rather than freedom in the unknown. As we say in the South, “that will preach.” But let’s talk about the food situation. Here’s what God said:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.” (Exodus 16:4-5 NIV)

Now let’s skip down to 16:17-20.

The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.

Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”

However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.

Moses wasn’t the only one mad at Israelites who hid the food. God was angry because they didn’t trust Him. He gave them a test, and some of them failed miserably.

Which brings me to my own issues with trusting God. Do I trust Him to provide for me today? Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. But today? What keeps me from believing that God is enough and will give me enough?

Didn’t Jesus tell us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread?” Not weekly. Not monthly. But daily.

Here’s a truth we can hang on to. God will never put us in a situation in which He is not enough or will not give us enough. He is more than enough to give us our daily bread, whatever that bread may look like in our individual situations.

In the New Testament, we read the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 men plus women and children (Matthew 14:13-21) and the 4,000 men plus women and children (Matthew 15:29-39) with just a little bit of bread and a few fish. When did the meager pieces of bread multiply and become enough? When it was put in Jesus’ hands. When will our “meager pieces of bread” (what we do have) become enough? When we put them in Jesus’ hands.

Jesus doesn’t just give us what we need. Jesus is what we need. He is the bread of life.

Father, thank You for giving me what I need to face each day. Help me to not worry about tomorrow but trust You for today. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

What are you trusting God for today? Leave a comment as a declaration!

Digging Deeper
Corrie Ten Boom once said, “Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.” One of the ways we can stop worrying is by shaping worries into prayers and giving them to God. Check out these resources for powerful and effective Scripture-based prayer.