Christian Devotions
By Ross Freeman
God is With Us in Our Adversity
“And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness to humble you and test you to know what was in your heart , whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)
1. Though bread failed and food was just about non-existent:
God fed the people with manna. Their every need was supplied. Jesus teaches us to trust the Father for the supply of our needs. (Matt 3:25, 34)
2. To see God in secondary causes:
God’s word is a truly creative and nourishing principle, in ordinary bread as it was in the extraordinary supply of manna. It is not bread as something subsisting independently, but bread as the product of divine power possessing properties which the word of God imparts to it and upholds in it, which is the staff of life and the object of our prayer.
3. To believe in God acting above nature as well as in it:
If God wills life to be sustained He can sustain it in other ways than by bread. He is not tied to one set of means. He can act independently of means altogether, the creative word being sufficient to sustain.
4. To recognize in man the existence of a higher life than the physical:
The physical is not the ultimate in our lives. We do not live by bread alone. A higher life is found in depending on God’s word, in obeying it and abiding by it, whatever the consequences you find yourselves in. At times the physical may have to be given up so that the spiritual can be saved.
5. The manna was to teach the people on the dependence on His word:
Manna was given when God’s people were hungry and worried, it was given daily; its only guarantee of continuing was God’s promise, it was therefore to keep them depending on His sure word.
Life’s discipline brings us to the same understanding that man must live on the promise proceeding out of the mouth of God. (Matt 4:4) Jesus defeated satan’s insinuation that He must use His miraculous power or perish by resolving to continue trusting God.
In a similar way to how He operated during the 40 years in the wilderness, God will supply all our need to equip us for our journey and calling.
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