It is an easy thing to say that God is in control; that He is working out all things for our good, and supplies our every need. It is another thing entirely to live that out.
My grandfather was a child of the depression in Evansville, Indiana. His father was killed when he was only two years old and his stepfather was an abusive alcoholic. Granddad dropped out of school in the sixth grade and went to work. When the Korean War broke out, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was 18 years old. As many 18-year-olds going to war back then, he decided to get married. My grandmother was sixteen when he somehow convinced her to marry him before he went to war. He was in Korea for 18 months rising to the rank of staff sergeant and was awarded the silver star for a reason he never would tell us. He left a boy but returned home a man—a man with a wife and a daughter.
My Mom was born while he was fighting. Not long after, three more kids came and he went to work at a refrigerator factory to support his little family. Somewhere along the way a man from a local church started knocking on my granddad’s door every Saturday morning to ask him if he knew Jesus. Every Saturday, Granddad would tell the man to go away. This went on for eighteen months. Every Saturday morning. Finally, just to get the man to leave him alone, he agreed to go to church the very next day. He loaded up his family of six in their station wagon, went to church, and his eternity would never be the same. Granddad met Jesus that day.
Not long after that, he felt the call to the ministry-to be a pastor. He believed that anything worth doing doing it right. So, he took his sixth grade education and attained his GED, then earned his bachelor’s degree from Indiana State University, and finally his master’s degree from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He served as a pastor, a minister of education, a church planter, and a missionary faithfully for the next 30 years until he retired.
When he got married, he was just a scared kid going off to war doing what he thought he was supposed to do—get married so that you have something to fight for and someone to come home to. He had no idea the journey that God would take him. A journey that started with one man stubbornly knocking on his door every Saturday morning for a year and a half, annoying him into going to church. When he married my grandmother, neither one of them had any idea what they were doing or what they needed from one another. He didn't know enough to ask God to provide, but God still provided.
My grandparents were the most perfectly complementing two people I have ever known. God knew exactly who my granddad needed, even if he didn't. As he drove back and forth to Louisville for his seminary classes, my granddad would listen to his textbooks on tape. The problem was, books on tape were not yet a thing. My grandmother would record herself reading his books. Listening to his wife was how he read his books, passed his classes, and prepared for ministry. Praise God for persistent door knockers and praise God that He knows far more than we possibly could and provides for us in perfect power, perfect wisdom, and perfect love.
We are limited, finite creatures that struggle to meet even our most basic needs on a day to day, moment to moment basis. I cannot remember all the ways that I have failed. We have been given the opportunity to trust in the only thing that can possibly supply our every need and desire and so often we trade that for our own idea of what we need. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perhaps most importantly here, all-loving. He wants to give us everything we need, and, in fact, has given us everything we need:
“Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!”
(Luke 12:24-28)
God loves us far too much to not give us exactly what we need—no less, but also no more. In his perfect love and perfect wisdom, He provides and provides perfectly. God knows us better than we know ourselves and with that knowledge, gives us everything we need. It is up to us to not just trust that, but delight in it. He created us—all the peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, and quirks—and He alone knows how to take care of us. When things are tough, challenging, or painful, that is just God providing a means for us to trust in Him and grow. When times are easier, maybe that is a time to rest and be refreshed. In every season, however, we can take heart in knowing that there is a purpose, and God is making a way for us to serve and glorify Him.
If we need proof that God provides, we just need to look to Jesus: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32).
Trusting in God means trusting that He gives us all we need. It means being filled with all His fullness. It means having courage to do what He has called us to, boldness to share His love, and peace and joy in every circumstance. At the end of the day, all we really need is Jesus. If Jesus is all we have, then we have everything.