Abundant Sufficience

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith. God is good and always thinks of us and our future generations. He guides and provides for us. God gives commandments not to control us, but to lead us to freedom and righteousness. Through faith in Christ, we can find fulfillment and be who we were designed to be. God is our sufficiency in every situation. We should praise and rejoice in Him, knowing that He has a plan for us and our descendants. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Genesis 50.20-21 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive, as is happening today. Now therefore, don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones. He comforted them and spoke kindly to them. God is good. So very, very good. We are selfish. It's okay. We both know it's true. We don't mean to be, but we are. It isn't always a malicious selfishness, but everything we do, we filter through a me lens. We tend to look at our problems. Sometimes we extend that worry to those around us. We are capable of very generous actions, but usually we are first and foremost in our minds. It's the way humans are, even parents. Parents are selfish like the rest of us, but we worry about our kids too. That isn't selfish, you say. I'd do anything for my kids. Now that might be true, but deep down, are we more concerned with how what happens to them impacts us, or are we purely concerned about them? We hurt when they hurt, so we don't want them to hurt because we don't want them hurt or because we don't like feeling our hurt for them. You see, when mankind fell, we traded selfless service for selfishness. No matter what varnish we put things on, how much we help or have a heart for others, humankindness is always tinged with self, but it isn't the way God is. God thinks of us and our kids, and our kids' kids. He is always forward thinking. Genesis 17, 7. He's forward thinking without sacrificing being cognizant of the past, even as he thinks of us and our kids' kids' kids. He's thinking of those before, our parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents. He's thinking of all he said to them, all he promised. He thinks of the relationship he had with past generations, current, and future generations, not just for you or for me, but for all of us, not just the saved, but also the sinner. Somewhere in everyone's past is a believer, someone who walked with God, talked with God, and was promised of God. His words are good forever, Genesis 9, 12-13. And he never, ever neglects a promise, Isaiah 55, 10-11. He is above selfishness. He thinks beyond a single person without leaving that person out of his thoughts. It is amazing and almost unfathomable, Isaiah 55, 8-9. He has all of us in his thoughts and plans all the time. He never forgets or leaves any of us alone. If you take a trip into the book of Exodus or Deuteronomy, it talks of God's faithfulness again and again. Deuteronomy 7-9 says, We think of our offspring. God thinks of 999 generations after us and cares for each and every individual all along that web of family and always with our best in mind, not his. You see, he is righteous. Nothing we do will improve him. Nothing we do will help him. He is. He guided the Israelites out of Egypt and watched over them, book of Exodus, teaching them what to do and what not to do in order for them to live their best lives and be conquerors in the land he was leading them to, a land where they were meant to rely on him and let him guide them. He wasn't doing it because he needed our worship. He was doing it because he loves us and because he loves us because of what he is in his nature. He deserves to be praised. He's not doing it for praise. Praise is just a natural thing that happens because of who he is. He wanted to guide them. He wanted to help them. He wanted them to rely on him so that he could give them the answers to the problems that would come up, to the circumstances they would find themselves in. And he told them that. Later in Deuteronomy 17, God also talks to them about kings. When you have come to the land which Yahweh your God gives you and possess it and dwell in it and say, I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me. That's 17 verse 14. That doesn't happen for decades upon decades upon decades, not until 1 Samuel chapter 8. But when they reached there, when they got to that point, the nation does indeed demand a king. And God tells them again, it isn't a good idea, but they insist. And he knew hundreds of years before that and he told them what would happen. But he had a king in mind and a successor to that king and all the other kings. God knows the future and what we are going to choose, but it is still our choice, free will. But God sees the result ahead of time and makes a provision for our choices that we freely make. Well, what about that commandment thing? Do this or I'm going to. Isn't that about making us do what he wants? Isn't that eliminating real choice? Choosing to be crushed or not to be crushed isn't much of a choice when a hammer is above your head. Well, he gives us commandments so that we can live in freedom and righteousness instead of bondage and selfishness. It isn't a threat. It isn't a demand from him. It isn't about making us do what he likes so that he is happy. Look at salvation. Salvation is not about not going to hell. Salvation is about getting to go to heaven. See, this whole thing is about us being created to be a certain way and not being able to achieve all that we can. Not being able to be satisfied in our whole selves unless we do those things too because they are our spiritual heritage. They are that which we are meant to do. They are the water in which we were meant to swim. Not doing them, not conforming to righteous thought, righteous behavior, and righteous belief. It's like a fish leaping out of the water and trying to exist in an office job in Manhattan. It just won't work. And on our own, we will fail every time. We just don't have what it takes. But like a fish in a scuba suit, we have a way to success presented to us by grace. Through faith, we can find true fulfillment in Christ Jesus who gives us His righteous spirit. It isn't God commanding us as a dictator commands. It is God pointing out the black and white truth of things. It is God showing us the only way that we can be 100% happy, 100% fulfilled, 100% what we were designed to be. Pure, holy children of Yahweh on high. It is God showing us how we can enable ourselves to stand always under His blessing and enjoy His provision. Have you read Psalm 104? You want to talk provision? You can't talk about provision or the goodness of God without Psalm 104. Particularly, I like verse 28. Yahweh, how many are your works! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your riches. There is never a shortage of good things that God has for us. Small things, big things. He likes us to have many good things, full of your riches. The verse doesn't specify material wealth. It doesn't say richness of spirit as we meditate and pray with solemnity. It says His riches, all of them, every kind, every single type, and way to be and have richness, all of it. That is humbling and amazing. You know what it should stir in us? Not debates about rich versus poor, not theological structures of how to receive. No, it should stir praise. Simple, straightforward, and heartfelt praise. As it says in verses 33 to 34 of that same psalm, I will sing to Yahweh as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have any being. Let my meditation be sweet to Him. I will rejoice in Yahweh. I will rejoice in the Lord in what He does, however He wants to do it, because He has me, and I know He has me. He had my ancestors, and He will have my descendants. How can we be afraid if we really listen to these verses? How can you be afraid when you're in the hand of someone who sees hundreds of years into the future of your choices and the choices of your descendants and then makes a plan for it? We get confident when we know what the weather will be tomorrow. We lay out clothes and get all prepared proudly. We have it going on. How much more does God have it going on? How can we fear when God is our partner, our shield, and our provider? Not just our provider, but our children's and our children's children's children, all while remembering and fulfilling the promises from a thousand years ago. Do not fear. God provides. In fact, look at the name God calls Himself in Genesis 17-1. When Abram was 99 years old, Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless. God Almighty. Almighty God. El Shaddai. That is the name of God here. It will depend on your translation, which one is used. A literal translation of the Hebrew verse is closer to, I am He whose godliness suffices for every creature. Therefore walk before me and I will be your God and your protector. So every time you see this name in Scripture, God Almighty, Almighty God, El Shaddai, whichever translation of the Bible you're reading, it means His sufficiency. You can put His sufficiency in that place because God is our sufficiency in every situation, in every way. That is mighty provision. Think about it. Every verse that shows up, He's saying, I am your sufficiency. So every verse where it shows up is an opportunity for us to look to Him and say, how do you want to provide for me in this situation? What is your sufficiency so that I can take it from your outstretched hand? Sufficiency. That is prosperity. Never-ending sufficiency. The absolute fulfillment of the need. Don't fear. Lean into God. Cleave to His ways and let Him be your sufficiency. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Revelation 1, 4-8. They say that introductions, first impressions, are very important. As introductions go, this one is a doozy. God, Father and Son, is described as He who loves us and who is and who was and who is to come. Both the beginning and the end. Alpha Omega. And through all of that time, God loved us before we were, after this world is gone, while it's going on. His love will be steadfast and strong. Love that brings us into the family of God Himself. Love that appoints us to a calling and a service. Love that includes us in what it is and what it will be. While educating us to what it has been. All of us. None meant to be left behind. A place for all who choose to inhabit their place. All of us. Now that's some kind of love. As we close, remember that you have worth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us. That God has sent His only-born Son into the world that we might live through Him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.