Word of Encouragement (3/8/2021)
We have been talking about what to do when God answers our prayer. I hope you see the importance of considering this matter in our relationship with God. We cry out to God when we are in need but we may not properly thank Him when He actually answers our prayer. Last week, we talked about the importance of not forgetting God’s answers to our prayers and how it is beneficial for us to remember all God’s blessings. Now, let’s talk about proper stewardship of God’s blessings.
You know how it is. You pray for something out of desperation and God graciously answers your prayer. Even though you wanted it so badly, for a moment, you can’t believe God actually answered your prayer and you are so thankful. You feel an instant boost in your trust and confidence in the Lord. But that feeling of spontaneous gratitude and jubilation doesn’t last very long and it is so easy to forget how God has just blessed you. It is not right that our gratitude to God should be so short-lived. And it is to our spiritual disadvantage that we should be so quick to forget God’s blessings. We need to do better in our stewardship of God’s many blessings.
Think about praying for a job. Our vocation is such an important and huge part of our lives. When God provides us with a job, it is a huge blessing. But we know that just because we get a job doesn’t mean that we live happily ever after. Many blessings from God, such as a new job, require our faithful stewardship. When God grants us a new job, we need to start working. There may be a brief honeymoon phase, during which you are so excited to work again. But, of course, working is not easy; it can be quite demanding. So, we start complaining about our job, for which we gave thanks to God and rejoiced not too long ago.
It may be that it was not a good fit. And it is even possible that God in His perfect wisdom did not mean it to be our permanent job. Even so, God doesn’t make any mistakes. It was meant to be a perfect job for us at that moment and there were lessons we had to learn from it to prepare ourselves for a better, more permanent job. That is why we should not be too quick to complain as if God tricked us into something bad.
Think about the Israelites in the wilderness again. They cried out to God because of the cruelty they suffered under the Egyptian bondage (Ex. 2:23). God heard their cry and provided a deliverer in Moses. With many signs and wonders, God brought them out of Egypt. But coming out of Egypt didn’t mean that they could settle in the promised land right away. The Israelites had to journey through the wilderness, which was not easy. But they quickly forgot how horrible it was in Egypt and began to complain about the challenges of getting through the wilderness to the promised land. Journeying through the wilderness was a necessary part of their deliverance. Yet, they complained and complained. They even wished, more than once, that they were back in Egypt!
Do we do the same? We get so bogged down with little things (the challenges we have in our job) that we lose sight of the big thing (the job as God’s answer to our prayer)? When we think about the difficulties of not having a job at all, shouldn’t we be thankful that the challenges we face at work are there precisely because we have a job? And maybe those challenges are there so that we can continue to rely on the Lord rather than go astray in our self-sufficiency? And maybe, even when we pray about the difficulties we face at our job, we should not lose our sense of gratitude to God for giving us the job in the first place.