Devotional - Providence

Devotional

Big Picture God provides to fulfill needs

• Q: When you are hungry, where do you get your food? Allow answers.
• Q: Do you ever get to cook in the kitchen with your mom or dad?
• Q: Where do you get the food in that goes into the things you make in the kitchen?
• When we cook in the kitchen, we use ingredients to make meals. We either grow those ingredients in our gardens, hunt for that food, or often purchase it in a store.
• In our verse, the Israelites didn't have a garden or a store, or enough animals to hunt.
• They were discouraged because they left lots of food back in Egypt when they fled captivity. They forgot the promise that God made to care for them.
• They cried out to God -- and He answered their cries by miraculously providing food in the form of manna and quail, and He continued to do so.
• This is Providence, the idea that God provides to take care of our needs. Notice that he provided to the Israelites even when they were ungrateful.
• The promise is not just to the Israelites. In Matthew 6:26, Jesus teaches “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
• You are important to God, who love and cares for each of us. He can be trusted to provide what we need.
• When we need something, we should pray to God for it.
• God will always provide for our needs. He does not give us everything we want. And sometimes He fulfills needs in different ways than we expect.
• We can trust His goodness to care for our needs. He knows our needs in ways that only He can.