I’ve always considered God’s provision a sign of God’s approval. Perhaps that’s a remnant of my days swallowing the damnable prosperity non-gospel. Or perhaps its from places like Psalm 34:10, “The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.”
Now I’m not so certain. Consider this:
“For forty years I loathed that generation…” Psalm 95:10
That verse caught my attention. Especially as I thought about how it related to these verses:
For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing. –Dt. 2:7
What? “Lacked nothing”? I thought he loathed them. You mean he is still providing for them and making sure that they “lack nothing”? Weird. God even cared for things like clothes and shoes:
I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet. -Dt. 29:5
His Provision Doesn’t Equal His Pleasure
God wasn’t providing for the wilderness generation because he was pleased with them. In fact he loathed them. But he was providing for them because He is God and He is good. He’s still their Father. So he cares for them; and somehow I think He still loves them—even while He loathes them.
This leads me to conclude that just because God is providing for you it doesn’t mean that you are being obedient and pleasing to Him. It might just mean that while you are being a complete goober God is still faithful.
Manna isn’t milk and honey, or wheat and barley, or vines and fig trees and pomegranates. And water from a rock isn’t brooks of water or fountains and springs, flowing out in the valley and hills.
Conviction
This truth left me broken and repenting a few days ago. Here is something that I wrote in a prayer journal (otherwise known as a diary for a dude):
Lord, I want to pursue your pleasure and not merely your provision. I want more than shoes. I want You. I don’t want wilderness provisions because of my disobedience. I want your rest. I want your smile.
I’ve grown less passionate about the Lord’s pleasure. I’ve contented myself with His provisions (which are awesome)—but I’ve assumed that His provision means that He is pleased with me. I know that He’s ultimately pleased with me because I am covered in Christ. And I know that I don’t pursue the Lord’s pleasure by performance. But I don’t pursue it by passive disobedience either (James 4:17).
It’s this:
“God is delighted with our obedience when it is the fruit of our delight in him. Our obedience is God’s pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure.
The Israelites wandered 40 years in the desert because they didn’t trust in the Lord. They didn’t believe he could spread a table for them in the wilderness. My heart has grown similarly jaded and that scares me. I’ve been a fool that has contented myself on lesser things. So, I’m praying today that the Lord will remind me of this and stir up my heart to passionately pursue His pleasure.
It’s time I shed my wilderness sandals…
Here is something for you: Malachi 3:16 – 18 (ESV)
16 Then those who feared (respected) the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared (respected) the Lord and esteemed his name.
17 They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.
18 Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God and the one who does not serve him.
You are part of that treasured possession; rare and precious to the Lord. There are relatively few that care about what God thinks or respect him at all.