Renovating Your MindSýnishorn

After God delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians in a miraculous fashion, the Israelites soon became worried as they found themselves in the desert with food and water reserves running low. “In the desert, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death’” (Exodus 16:2–3, NIV). From their point of view, the Israelites saw no hope for tomorrow, so they grumbled and complained about their situation today.

In response to their grumbling, God told Moses that He would provide for His people—but to test their faith in Him, God instructed His people to only gather enough food for that day so they would have to trust Him for tomorrow. And therein lies the challenge of faith for the people of Israel and for us today—to have faith that God will not just abandon us in the deserts of life, but that He will provide for all of our needs every single day. This must have been a very hard thing for the Israelites to do . . . to see so much food and yet only gather enough for one day, trusting that God would provide for tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on. How many of us would have gathered some extra food “just in case” God failed us tomorrow? Yeah, I would have, too.

It is actually our concern for tomorrow’s needs that causes us to stumble today. We worry about things that have not even come to pass yet; all the while, we miss out on the blessings that we are given today. The Bible compels us over and over again not to worry about tomorrow, but rather, focus on how God has provided for this day. We are to leave tomorrow to God, knowing that He is the same God tomorrow that He was today. As the old saying goes, today is the tomorrow that we worried about yesterday, and all is well. 

It’s in these moments of testing that we need to ask ourselves, “Has God ever failed us? Has His goodness ever stopped? Has there ever been a time in our lives that He has not provided exactly what we needed and when we needed it?” The answer to all of these questions is a resounding no, yet we still worry about tomor­row, don’t we? My wife Michelle and I often talk about how the other shoe never drops with God. Even though we expect an end to God’s goodness after the immense bless­ings of today, it never comes. Truly God’s faithfulness and His goodness toward us endure forever.

In Hebrews 13:5 (NIV), God says, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” If you look at the Greek root words here, there are five negatives used. So this verse actually reads, “I will never, never, never, never, never leave you; I will never, never, never, never, never forsake you.” What do you think God is trying to tell us?