I am in training.
When I started my job, my employer sent me for a week of training at our operations center. A few weeks before, I received several emails with instructions on where to book my hotel, directions on how to get there, items I needed to take with me, and the most important one, how to submit an expense report when
I returned to be reimbursed for what I had paid out of my own pocket. I did all they told me to do without once worrying about how much my credit card was going up because they said I would be reimbursed. I believed them. I trusted them to keep their word to me as their employee. The company took care of my needs for the week because they wanted to ensure I concentrated on the training that was critical for being successful at the job they’d hired me to do.
As I continue to walk through this current season of my life, I am learning more and more every day, God has placed me in training. He is training me to trust Him more. He is training me to be content. He promised in His precious word that He has “a plan to prosper me and not to fail; to give me a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11).
Over the past few weeks, God has shown me that while I’ve been looking forward to all He has planned for me in the years ahead, I haven’t been paying attention to the smaller things He wants to teach me along the way. My focus has been too broad. I have been fixated on the future…thinking I’d just wake up one day and all that He promised would have happened overnight. Somehow there would be a deposit into my checking account, from an unknown source, to pay all of my debt in full or my manager would come to me at work and tell me I was receiving a bonus for a job well done. I thought He would snap His fingers, my debt would be paid in full, and all my worries would be left behind me in one fell swoop! The problem with that last sentence? The first two words…I thought…
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”
~Isaiah 55:8-9
I believe, with all my heart, God could have chosen to orchestrate the events of my life to accomplish the exact scenario above. But what would I have learned? Yes, it certainly would have reaffirmed to my heart that He is my Provision and only He could have done it but it wouldn’t teach me (or train me) to live within the provision He’s already given me, would it? If He just miraculously erased all 
my debt, why would I need to trust Him day to day? I would be debt free but knowing me as He does, it wouldn’t be long before I’d be back in the same hole then we’d be right back where we started. Truth be told, I have been here, in this hole, more than once in my life and it’s time to learn to trust Him for my needs and not American Express.
If you read my last post, Details, Details, Details, I wrote my ex has stopped paying alimony. Had I not been so angry and taken it to God right when it happened, He would have shown me that it was He who allowed it and was just part of His overall plan. Instead, I spent money on an attorney who basically told me to wait until he owed me a huge debt then “go after him”. Those words didn’t set well with me. When she said it, I realized I had allowed my pain and anger to control my actions. I didn’t want to “go after him” and realized that God didn’t want me to either. I felt very convicted as I returned to my car after that meeting. I was out $150 and had accomplished nothing. As I sat there, He whispered to me, as He so often does, when He can get me quiet enough to listen, that He wants to be my provision. He wants to take care of me. He removed my ex from my life for a purpose and He didn’t want me relying on him or his money. Pursuing him later for a huge debt would only prove to stir up anger and resentment within my heart and line my attorney’s pocket with a grand sum. How does that bring honor and glory to God? I wiped my tears with resolve in my heart that I had nothing to fear.
When the children of Israel were delivered after 430 years of slavery in Egypt, they took provisions with them that would sustain them for a period of time. God had already brought them through the Red Sea and they were living in the wilderness. When the provisions they’d brought with them ran out, the people grumbled against Moses and said they would’ve been better off had they stayed in Egypt because, at least, they had food everyday. They had been delivered from slavery just long enough to forget what was bad about being enslaved and only remembered what they were missing. Seems they’d already forgotten they were forced to make bricks without straw, not to mention the whips they encountered from time to time. (Exodus 16)
I have heard this story hundreds of times in my life and have wondered every time how the children of Israel could have had such a selective memory. How they could only focus on what they were missing and not how badly they were treated. How every day they cried out to God for deliverance and yet when He did just that, all they wanted to do was go back. I don’t wonder how or why about them anymore because God has shown me over and over that I am exactly like them.
I cannot tell you how many times, during this season, I have wanted to return to “Egypt”…
Perhaps he’s changed, God. Maybe he’s realized that he really does love me and can’t live without me. Maybe we can start all over and work through our differences…we did have some good times…it wasn’t all bad…
Selective memory.
The enemy uses it against all of us. It’s his plan to keep us from trusting God in the present by keeping our minds focused on the past or keeping us fixated on the future. I have been doing both and I have been unsettled, confused, and, at times, worried. God wants us to do the same as He instructed the children of Israel to do as they walked in the wilderness. Trust Him for our provision. Day by day.
“Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow My instructions.”
That evening, quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer (1/2 gallon) for each person you have in your tent.”
Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.” ~Exodus 16:4; 13-16; 19; 31 (NIV)
When the children of Israel saw the frosty bread flakes on the ground for the first time, they had no idea what it was. God’s provision rained down from heaven itself and because it was different from how He had provided for them in the past, they didn’t recognize it as His provision.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been just like that in my own life. God’s provision may come in different forms. He doesn’t want us to rely on a system because then we’d trust in the system. He wants us to trust Him. No matter what form His provision may take.
As I reflect back on how God took care of me during my 35 year marriage, I know, without a doubt, He protected me from things I can only imagine. Even when I wasn’t aware of what was happening in the unknown, He was. He was preparing a way of escape even when I didn’t recognize it as such. He gave little hints along the way and I believe I truly knew it was coming but stayed in denial for a long time. When He saw that it was enough, He revealed His plan and delivered me. His provision, at that time, took the form of protection. In my grief, the enemy took advantage of how vulnerable I was and constantly triggered my selective memory as a way to keep me longing for “Egypt”. I was bombarded with good memories of the imposter I was married to so I’d long to return to what was comfortable and familiar. God had provided a way of escape, had delivered me into freedom after years of mental abuse, yet there were times, I longed to return to my old life. Just like the children of Israel.
I’ve seen God’s provision take the form of protection in my past and I’m seeing it take the form of preparation for my future. He’s already there. He’s preparing the way for me to walk into it…however, the preparation for the future starts with the here and now…in the form of prevention.
God knows me. He created me. He gave me the desires and longings of my heart. He rooted deep within me a great desire to share Him with others. To share the grief, the healing, the pain, the joy, the heartache, and the triumphs of walking through life with Him in this fallen world. If He hadn’t allowed all of those things to touch me and then teach me from them, I wouldn’t be able to share them with you. I am humbled and consider it a great privilege to be used as His vessel.
However, God also created me with free will. Free will to choose other means to attempt to soothe the ache in my heart…to make me feel better…to make me happy….free will to choose retail therapy instead of revelation therapy. (Just being real.)
I am in training.
While I trust God is in control of my future and is preparing the way, it goes to a whole different and deeper level when you get down to the day by day. Somehow it was comforting to tell myself…
God has it all under control. He’s preparing the future for me and it’s going to be amazing. I just know it. He’s going to make a way for me to get out of debt and everything is going to be okay. I know He won’t let me fall and He will not fail me. He has a plan and He will show me what to do.
But, I didn’t recognize it when He showed it to me. It just felt like loss and uncertainty. It surprised me and, at first, I didn’t understand.
It started with the loss of my alimony. In my finite mind, I couldn’t see how I could live without it since I had acquired such large debt as a result of the divorce. And, besides, didn’t he owe it to me after everything he did to destroy our family? (I have to share it all; good as well as bad.) I did manage to live without it and have paid every bill on time since. God has made my income stretch, as only He can do, even with my bad attitude.
Last month, as I was going over my budget, I realized that my income was not going to cover everything that was due before I would get paid again. But then I remembered I have a pretty high credit limit on my credit card so if I needed to put groceries and gas on that for the time being, that was my answer. A few days later, I received a letter from my credit card company informing me they’d lowered my credit limit…to exactly what I owe.
With my credit card plans being dashed, I knew I needed to talk to God and be honest with myself. He was patiently waiting for me to realize my plan wouldn’t work and to give it to Him, as I should’ve done from the beginning. I’m just like His other kids who wandered in the desert because they wouldn’t listen. When will I learn?
Since then, I have taken steps to cancel things I can live without. Subscriptions and such that were charging money that I could put towards something else. And God has honored all my efforts and has “crowned them with success” (just as His word promises in Proverbs 3:6) with little things like…
A monthly payment being cut in half through no effort of my own.
Manna.
My annual property tax amount being cut by more than half to make a significant drop in my mortgage payment.
Manna.
My son receiving full-time hours at his part-time job.
Manna.
My bank combining two large loans into one and giving the option of bi-weekly payments that are smaller and more manageable…
Manna.
God has not changed. He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). What changes is us. What changes is how we see Him. We see provision as something we get. Something that is supplied for us. Something given to us. But what happens to our faith when God’s provision takes the form of prevention? What happens to our faith when He allows loss instead of gain?
That’s exactly what God has revealed to me in the past few days. His provision for me today, in this present season, is prevention. He has prevented a few of my plans for His own. He wants me to believe Him for today and trust Him for tomorrow.
Manna.
I do not know what you’re trusting God to provide for you today and I do not know what form it will take. But I do know this. He absolutely will be your Provision. You might not recognize it at first for what it is but talk to Him about it and He will show it to you. Be open to whatever method He chooses through which to be your Provision. Don’t put God in a box as I so often do. He is so much bigger and so much mightier than we realize.
Two years ago, I thought my life was over. I had lost my marriage, the man I loved, and my home practically overnight. I had no idea what to do or what would happen to me. The only constant in my life at that time was Jesus so I clung to Him with every ounce of my being. I couldn’t see past the day in front of me and He gave me the strength to make it. One moment. One step. One day at a time.
Manna.
Today, I’m in a different phase in this current season but He’s still providing. He’s still the Constant in my life. I may not see honey flavored frosted flakes rained down from heaven into my backyard (although I completely believe it could happen) but I know He will provide.
He is Faithful and True.
He is Manna.
In whatever form He chooses.
He is Manna.
Provision. Protection. Prevention.
Modern Day Manna.