SUPERNATURAL SUPPLY OF PROVISIONS

“Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?” – Psalm 78:19a

The LORD God is our Great Provider, the Ultimate Source of SUPERNATURAL SUPPLY of PROVISIONS: “You prepare a table before me…” (Psa.23:5a). Oddly, many of His people have not learned to know Him as El-Shaddai. They have not entered into His Banqueting house, like Israel in the wilderness, where manna fell like rain, and water flowed from the rock! The doubters asked: “Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Behold He struck the rock, so that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed. Can He give bread also? Can He provide meat for His people” (vv.19-20). God’s response: “Yet He had commanded the clouds above, and opened the doors of heaven, had rained down manna on them to eat, and given them of the bread of heaven. Men ate angels’ food; He sent them food to the full” (v.25).

In the account of John 6: 1-13, the Lord fed multitudes with five loaves and two small fish. Andrew doubted how such little amount of food could cater for a great multitude: “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?” (Jh.6: 9). But, we learn few critical lessons:

• The Lord knows what to do to meet every need in our lives.

• Our little turns into much when God’s hand is upon it. The moment the Lord took the loaves and thanked the Father, the miracle of multiplication began, and as the disciples distributed, the little food continued to increase in their hands!

• The Lord provides abundance, but He doesn’t encourage waste: “So when they were filled, He said to His disciples, “Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost. Therefore they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten” (vv.12-13)!

• We serve the God of abundance, not scarcity: “For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks or water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing…” (Dt.8:7-9).

Despite the promise of abundance, God wants us to learn contentment. He wants us to love and trust Him the Provider, rather than idolise the provisions. When Israel “tested God in their heart by asking for the food of their fancy” the consequence was fatal! Psalm 78: 29-31 reveal: “So they ate and were well filled, for He gave them their own desire. They were not deprived of their craving; but while their food was still in their mouths, the wrath of God came against them, and slew the stoutest of them, and struck down the choice men of Israel.” Prosperity, wrongly applied, has a destructive dimension: “For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them” (Pro.1:32).

For the Christian, contentment does not depend on what we have but on who we have within and on what we have in Him. It has been said that man is made with a God-shaped vacuum and his heart will be filled either by God Himself or the things of this world (idols). Jesus, living and reigning in our hearts is the foundation of supernatural contentment. Paul explains the secret of Christian Contentment: “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil.4:11-13).

Christian Contentment is more than a concept; it is a Person – Christ Jesus living in me and  through me, as I daily yield to His Spirit flowing through me to the glory of the Father (Col.1:27; 2:20; Eph.5:18).