Birds and Flowers

Photo Credit

When Casey & I got engaged, he had been working at the Call Center for about two months & I was unemployed. It's not like we weren't eating or anything, but we weren't exactly rolling in cash either. How exactly we were going to afford furniture for an apartment, let alone a honeymoon, was a mystery to us. 

As time went on, God provided these pieces of the puzzle for us, from places we couldn't have known about if we'd tried to figure it out. A free bedroom set from friends of friends. Free furniture from different family members. The way He kept surprising us like that---it made me a little bolder in my asking. I started asking Him to provide for our honeymoon. And He did. "Whoa! God can do that?"

By the time our wedding day rolled around in late July (side note: Happy 2nd anniversary Casey Ray---plus a week and a day), what had already been a sweet passage of Scripture to us, was now our life. You can actually find the Scripture in two places---Matthew 6, and Luke 12. Birds and flowers. Jesus is like "Look! Look at the birds, and look at the flowers---they don't do  ANYTHING and God feeds them and clothes them...and you are worth so much more than they are!"

Matthew 6:33 says "Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well." That's it! That's it?? That's all I have to do?? Just seek God, seek His kingdom, and He already knows what I need and will delight to provide it, as a Father delights to care for his daughter? Yes. That's it.

I love how that verse (in Matthew 6) is followed up in Luke 12. Verse 32 says "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Wow. (Another side note: if you struggle to understand God as your Father, and you want to hear an amazing sermon on this verse, go look up John Piper's sermon on Luke 12:32 at www.desiringgod.org---for me, it was life-changing.). So, not only do I not have to worry about my Father God providing for my physical needs, but I also don't have to worry about the one thing He's told me to seek (His kingdom) either, because it's His good pleasure to give it to me! Amazing.

God is still Very much teaching (ingraining?) this to us. I would guess, mostly, because we forget it so quickly. We spend over our budget, like we did this month. OVER budget. And we don't know how it's gonna work out, but I hear God whispering to me each time we're faced with a choice to trust Him or hold onto our money more tightly --I hear him telling me to trust Him. That's it---just trust Him. And then I find a $20 bill I had stuck in a journal from college graduation, and a $10 bill in the backseat of my car (I don't normally have cash in my car, so don't ask me for a ride hoping to find some). And then I get paid more than we expected for the month (the extra pay equal to the amount we went over budget). So, I realized this morning that to God we were never "over budget". We were never "in the red". He knew EXACTLY how this would all pan out. And that is why Matthew 6:31-32 says "So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?'or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them."

This is so freeing! God sees the big picture. I don't. I can trust Him as my Father to provide for these needs, and so I am liberated to solely seek His kingdom and His righteousness! Let it be Lord.