August 27

If God has made peace with you and has forgiven your sins, you can always afford to trust Him completely for everything you need. Two things will help your faith as you exercise it. God gives His children more than they will ever need. When God pardoned you He gave you His Son. And "how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). When a father gives his son the whole orchard, it is absurd for the child to ask for one apple. "All things are yours," and "ye are Christ's" (1 Corintians 3:21, 23), God assures the Christian.

On the other hand, a wise father may bequeath a huge estate to his child-- but not let him control any more of this inheritance than he can manage properly. In the same way, God gives believers a right to all the comforts of life, but His infinite wisdom proportions out smaller amounts for their actual use according to the needs of each soul. Thus if you shoud have much less than someone else, this does not mean God loves that person more, but that He cares enough to supply according to your ability to profitably use. We pour a drink according to the size of the cup; the wine which fills the whole cup would be spilled if poured into a smaller vessel.

Though unbelievers will soon stumble into hell, His providence reaches them while they are still on earth. Does He really feed these unclean ravens? And cause His rain to fall on their fields too? Then how can He neglect a believer? If the king regularly feeds the traitor in his prison cell, surely the child in his castle shall not starve either.

In a word, if God in His providence takes such good care of the ungodly, if He "so clothes the grass of the field"-- a symbol of the wicked man-- "which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" (Matthew 6:30).

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