God's Wisdom In A Nutshell

Hello,

I’m going to share a very profound line from an old song from the 1970’s called “Seasons In The Sun” by Terry Jacks.

We had joy, we had fun

We had seasons in the sun,

but the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time.

In my last post I wrote about giving our dreams and goals to God instead of striving for our ideas of what will make us happy. Jumping ahead of God’s agenda is doing things out of season and we will find it to be an uphill battle.

For instance, if we are in the parenting phase of life- women need to work as little as we can afford in order to be home to raise our own children. No job-even those in the church- is an excuse for not caring for our own children. We will avoid many problems and gain much respect from our children and spouse if we prioritize our family, not only that, we will be in the center of God’s will on this subject.

“Give these instructions to believers so that they will be above reproach. If anyone does not care for their own relatives, especially those in their own household, he has denied true faith. Such people are worse than unbelievers.”(1 Tim 5:8)

God is telling us in this verse that we are not fully believing and trusting in His abilities to provide for us if both mom and dad work full time. We are not giving God the opportunity to work out our financial needs for us. God needs some space to work and He can’t show His ability to provide if we are taking care of everything.

Many couples want it all- the nice cars, a modern updated home, money for entertainment and all the expensive electronic devices therefore they both work full time. Some couples have the wife work full time because her health insurance is better. Yet this too is actually a lack of trust in God. There are Christian health sharing plans that are cheap and very helpful for all health needs and buying into one of these plans will allow a mom to be at home with her children. Refusing to trust the Lord with all that concerns us and instead submitting to the rat race in order to receive the lifestyle we think we need,  is doing seasons out of time. Meaning, everything in our life will be harder- we will be climbing a hill until our kids are literally out of the house.

The non Christian secular world will tell us that it is impossible to pay for everything unless both parents work full time. The Christian who has given their life to the Lord and chooses to follow Him has realized that we can trust the Lord. He will never lead us to poverty- actually- He leads us to abundance, but the caveat here, is our abundance will happen in His timing after we are fully submitted to Him.

God has conditional and unconditional promises in His Word that provide many blessings for us if we are walking in line with His teachings. In fact, He must provide for us because God cannot lie.

God is not human, that he should lie,
    not a human being, that he should change his mind.
Does he speak and then not act?
    Does he promise and not fulfill?(Numbers 23:19)

Here are a few of the Lord’s promises:

Let’s think about God logically for one minute. Why would God give us children and then send us to work full time, letting non Christian strangers influence them more than we do?  God knows how much money it takes to live in this world and He knows just what job will have family friendly hours while bringing home enough income. The bible teaches that we should love God first and then others and we cannot do that if we are chasing after money. Children are blessings according to Scripture.

“Children are a gift from the Lord;
    they are a reward from him.”(Ps 127:3)

If a mom is staying home to raise children or working on a part time basis in order to stay in step with the Lord’s guidelines- the Lord will step in at some point to provide everything needed, including- college tuition. God knows our needs better than we know them and He never wanted us to be left out in the “cold” so to speak working frantically to make ends meet. He died on the cross not only to forgive sin- but to show us His power. This power will be manifested in our life if we trust Him to provide.

Single mom have a greater challenge however, praying for the best job with family friendly hours is a prayer the Lord answers every time because it is in line with what He teaches. We shouldn’t be worried about college tuition, we need only to worry about the day at hand. God teaches us:

The follower of the Lord Jesus Christ must trust God to provide- EXACTLY like Abraham in the Old Testament had to trust the Lord to provide an animal to sacrifice instead of sacrificing his son Isaac. God will test us deeply at times to see if we trust Him and if we pass the test the rewards are many and vast.

Food For Thought,

Lisa