God's Supplies

I was watching a video on Facebook that's really funny, but I thought it was interesting enough to blog about, so here goes.

There was a man standing on the bank of either a lake or a river (I couldn't really tell), holding a good sized net in his hands that he was dipping into the water to catch fish. The fish were jumping up and all around him as he stood there.

As the video progressed, the man kept dipping and dipping, catching more and more fish.

At one point about mid-way through the video, you could clearly see the net was full of enough fish for him, but he just kept dipping, gathering more and more. The weight of the fish was causing the long handle to bow a little in the middle. The man seemed oblivious to that fact and kept dipping, faster and faster to get more and more fish.

Finally, either when the net was too heavy or when his eyes were satisfied, he stopped and pulled it toward him. As he tugged on the heavy haul, you could almost see his face light up at the prospect of getting his hands on all those fish. He was "in the zone" as they say; delighted with what he'd accomplished by gathering more than he needed.

Just as he reached for the net, the entire bottom broke and all that he'd struggled with trying to get for the past few minutes was suddenly gone. Everything that he'd chased was gone! All that work, greedily moving the net quickly through the water to get as much as he could, disappeared in an instant.

Wow, what a life lesson there is in that.

The net he had could only hold so much fish, but he allowed greed to get the best of him and he tried to catch more than what he was equipped to handle. He should have gathered only what he was in need of at that moment, and the next day, gone back out and got what he needed for that day.

There are a variety of reasons we, as humans, do that. Maybe it's because of greed, maybe it's because we get excited about the prospect of catching more than we thought we would have, maybe it's because we've had lack in our lives and now we want all we can get. It could be any of those things.

But the fact remains that we should only take what we have need of for that particular moment in time and trust God to provide the rest for the next day.

There are many examples of this in God's Word.

Remember the Israelites?

When they were wandering around all that time, God made sure that they had enough food to sustain them EACH day, He provided manna for them and instructed them to gather ONLY what was needed for that day. You can read the story in Exodus 16 and see what He did for them, it's really fascinating.

I'm not saying that we don't have to work and save our money because it's what we have to do to live-work. But I am saying that God wants us to depend on Him to supply all our needs and not be greedy.

He can do it. He knows before we even ask, what we have need of. He doesn't want us to sit around and worry about what tomorrow holds because He CAN take care of us. I've seen so many people do what the man with the fishing net did. I've seen them have the ability to get from God what they need each day, but somewhere along the way, they saw the potential to "catch" more. The more they saw around them, like the man watching the fish jump about, the more they coveted it all. So they began to gather and hoard up things and money, until one day, like the man, their bottom fell out and they were left with nothing.

If the man had only stopped with what was sufficient for him, then he'd have something. But he didn't, he allowed what he saw, the lust of the eye, to cause him to covet and that caused it all to fall apart on him, leaving him with nothing at all.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather have the amount that God designated for me to have and be happy with it than to have a great deal in my hand at one time but end up losing it all because of greed.

God's will is that we depend on him for what we need each day, not on our own strengths, because He is able to be strong for us. We don't have to wear ourselves out taking care of ourselves. God can take care of us.

I know I say work hard and Dream Big and I mean it, but don't work so hard that you think you can do it on your own. You can't. Allow Him to send you what you need and be happy with that.

Much love,

Christy

Helpful verses:

Matthew 6:25-34; Hebrews 13:5; Philippians 4:19; Exodus 16;

2 Corinthians 12:9; 1 John 2:16; Ecclesiastes 5:10; Luke 12:15