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My God will supply.

written by Michael McBane

I know at times I can write in such a way that steps out of every day reality. I go to this extreme because I am attempting to pull us towards the true provision found in Christ. If we are to be a source of restorative redemption in this next season we must prepare. It is the content of the parable of the ten virgins. The oil we must gather is not storing up practical assets but understanding who Jesus Christ is. Truly understanding who He is. But understanding is only truly knowing Him and His incredible desire to love us. It is grasping that it is not what would Jesus do but what did Jesus do. This must be our foundation, our substance, this must be our reality. If it is not then we can not reveal it. We will demand something else like moralism, or legalism.

We can love because He first loved us. We can forgive because He has forgiven us. We can serve because He has laid His life down that we might live. Many if not most Christians believe this but somehow somewhere we have been programed to live elsewhere. We treat  the saving grace of Christ as if it where a 12 step program, it is not. It does not depend on us in any way. It is what Christ has done for us. We step into His fullness everyday. It is historic and present and eternal.

If we accept this amazing grace fully we should be able to comprehend what I will attempt to present in this particular scripture. In Philippians 4:19 Paul writes, “My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

Now as we consider this scripture I want to also present this text, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me”. Philippians 4: 13.

Before Paul writes these verses he speaks of being able to live confidently in prosperity and in humble circumstance. He has lived fully while practically hungry but admits to times of abundance. He speaks of suffering. But he is not stumbling, he has not felt forsaken, he does not lament in bitter refrain. And he writes from prison.

I have often written about living beyond this earthly domain but I may have been reaching for something that was not far but within. I have all that I need to live this life and it is the Christ within me. It is the abundance of grace and mercy that overflows continually towards me. I am able because He has gone before me.  Elementary? Perhaps but few that I know wear this has their possession.

All the teaching about God wanting us to prosper is quite often misleading if not wrong. I have come to think and have always leaned this way that first we must see, must understand, must know beyond all that the supply God will supply is Himself. There is nothing else. It all begins with Him and it will end with Him. All of life is held in Him and is defined in and through HIm. Not texts about HIm but His person. I have asked, God did Paul have something that I have not? the answer was no. So the Lord has been continually confronting me with statements about His love for me for years over and over. And it was as if I was forced to see my sin in odd ways so that He could reenforce this over and over. He said, you must get this, It is my love for you not what you could do to make me love you. I am that I am. I am your substance, your provision. I am.

So these prayers that God asked me to pray starting in the 1980’s  about asking Him to be my substance and provision  I see much clearer today. They were a preemptive correction on the issues of my misapplied seeking.

I believe so many are waiting for God to do something but He is wanting to first unravel us to such a degree that we see nothing but Him as our supply. Understand this please, Him not what He might give practically or in any manor of life, Simply Him. This must be so if we are to reveal God to a world upside down.

So if we know that Christ is our supply then we to can live in His strength in all that life brings. Grace is held in the moment. Its treasure is a constant contained in the mercy we have been given to drink the cup of His grace. 

In 2 Corinthians 12: 9, we are told “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Paul is giving us a key to life. Power is perfected in weakness. Weakness demands that we live through the strength of Christ. It releases the oil of gladness that comes in the revelation of God’s holiness. Here we are drawn to the heart of a disciple that knows what His discipler would say before he utters his words. Because he has touched his heart. This is also revealed in the relationship Jesus had with His Father. He so knew Him that they partnered as one as Christ was obedient to the heart of His Father.

Let me reenforce this thought with Paul’s text from 2 Corinthians 4: 7 through 12. “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of His power may be of God and not ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted; but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus sake, that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.”

Let me ask this, how was Paul compliant with death so that another might know God more fully? Because he understood that Jesus had first given His life for Him. GOD LAID HIS LIFE DOWN FOR HIM! In this sphere of knowing that was weakness empowered. It was love manifesting. Paul did not pronounce who he was in some declarative self promotion he allowed Christ to serve in the attributes He had come to understand about Christ.

“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond servant, and being made in the likeness of men, and being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Philippians 1: 5 through 8.

Grace creates a bridge that allows us to cross over and remain. This is the ingredient to the overcoming life. Jesus plus Jesus plus Jesus and nothing more.

Father, thank you, thank you thank you. I am so grateful that You have confronted me with You over and over and I pray that You would do this to those who read these words so that Your grace may be abundant. For Your names sake.