I have been desperately searching for a job the past two weeks without any success. It goes without saying that it’s been discouraging. Combined with the fact that I am in a new state with a new home without knowing a soul besides my parents, I have often slipped into feeling sorry for myself. Often while moping over my “difficulties” God would bring to my mind Matthew 6:33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” with “these things” referring to material necessities. Rather than heeding His instruction I focused on myself and my apparent inability to grasp stability and financial security. When I should have been running to His word, I chose to be inconsistent in the time I spent with Him. Because that’s always helped SO WELL in the past. I have to laugh at myself sometimes, I really do. But anyhow, this morning in spending time in the Word I picked up Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest. The entry for today, May 16th, was so poignant and applicable that I feel it is imperative to include it. The title is “The Habit of Wealth” and it is a reflection on 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 4 which calls us “partakers of the divine nature.”
We are made partakers of the Divine nature through the promises; then we have to “manipulate” the Divine nature in our human nature by habits, and the first habit to form is the habit of realizing the provision God has made. “Oh, I can’t afford it,” we say—one of the worst lies is tucked up in that phrase. It is ungovernably bad taste to talk about money in the natural domain, and so it is spiritually, and yet we talk as if our Heavenly Father had cut us off without a shilling! We think it is a sign of real modesty to say at the end of a day—“Oh, well, I have just got through, but it has been a severe tussle.” And all the Almighty God is ours in the Lord Jesus! And He will tax the last grain of sand and the remotest star to bless us if we will obey Him. What does it matter if external circumstances are hard? Why should they not be! If we give way to self-pity and indulge in the luxury of misery, we banish God’s riches from our own lives and hinder others from entering into His provision. No sin is worse than the sin of self-pity, because it obliterates God and puts self-interest upon the throne. It opens our mouths to spit out murmurings and our lives become craving spiritual sponges.
When God is beginning to be satisfies with us He will impoverish everything in the nature of fictitious wealth, until we learn that all our fresh springs are in Him. If the majesty and grace and power of God are not being manifested in us, God holds us responsible. “God is able to make all grace abound”; then learn to lavish the grace of God on others. Be stamped with God’s nature, and His blessing will come through you all the time.
How proud and arrogant I am to think that I am in control over my life and what I do and the money I make. I love God’s personality, it is so amazing, He just forces me to rely on Him alone which is of course the best thing for me. Then, when I am finally, totally trusting Him, He gives me the things of immensely less value that I need on this earth. As frustrated as I get with it sometimes, when I stop looking at myself and lift my eyes to see the big picture, His plan and timing have always turned out to be best. So here I am waiting. And I am content with it because somehow, someway, my God will supply all my needs. I will just seek Him first above all else.
