God Meets Needs

[Jesus said,] “Don’t worry . . . saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.”

Matthew 6:31-32

CAROL STARED AT her bank account. How could she pay the bills again this month? She had a daughter in college and two younger kids still in school. Her finances were stretched to the limit. She worried about it constantly. She wasn’t putting away a cent for the family’s future, and it seemed she was always in survival mode.

One day, though, she came across this great passage, in which Jesus spoke about worry and anxiety. She said to herself, Okay, God says he’ll meet my needs. So I’ll leave them in his hands. She began to work with a new outlook: God would provide for her and her family because he loved them, and Carol would stop worrying about money all the time.

She forgot about that prayer for a while until one day she noted she had saved more than two thousand dollars in one account, had been contributing to her company’s 401(k) plan, and her company was thriving. At bonus time, she nervously opened her gift check. What she read astonished her: because of her hard work and trustworthiness, the company president had given her a check for more than ten thousand dollars. Nervously, she asked him if it was a mistake. “No,” he said. “You deserve it. You’re a great worker. And I don’t see you wasting time on gossip and nonsense. I respect that.”

God promises to meet all our needs. The great thing is, he meets the basics and then goes way beyond that.