Disaster: When Life Falls ApartSample

The Famine

When a disaster causes famine in your life, your first instinct may be to pull back. Stop giving, connecting, or pouring out.

A famine is precisely the right time to plant seeds. It sounds counterintuitive, right? Why should you plant? You may need that seed.

Giving your time, talents, or treasure is seed planting. When you provide a listening ear to the family member who calls at an inconvenient time, your co-worker who is hurting, or the store cashier having a rough day, you are sowing seeds despite your famine.

Using your talents to bless other people—especially in famine—is a great way to take your mind off your circumstances. You become grateful when you bless others. God does crazy multiplication: you end up with more blessing than you poured out.

Buying a friend a meal, continuing to tithe despite the job loss, or paying for the single mom’s groceries may feel hard and awkward in famine, but giving of your treasure when you are experiencing lack somehow leads to abundance. We can’t explain it; that’s just the way God works.

God has abundance for you. Even in famine.

When you don’t know how you will make rent, can’t find another job, or there is no earthly way to pay your bills on time, God is still the God of the impossible. The God of the miraculous.

Matthew 6:33 promises that if you seek him first, he will add all you need. The way through famine is to plant seeds and trust God.

Seek him first. Keep planting. Keep your eyes on the Mountain-Mover, not the mountain.

Those seeds you sow are your future harvests. No matter what lack you face today, God has all you need. Continue pouring his blessing on others and watch his blessing return to you. Abundant and overflowing.

Prayer: Father, it appears to my human eyes that I don’t have enough. But I know if I have Jesus, I have all I need. Please help me keep my focus on you and your promises. I know you can get me through this famine because you are the God of abundance, which is what you have for me. You have everything I need, no matter how my life has come undone. I trust you to meet all my needs! In Jesus’ name, amen.