GOD IS YOUR BENEFACTOR

Publish date: 10/07/2005

All the commandments which I command you this day you shall be watchful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers. 2 And you shall [earnestly] remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and to prove you, to know what was in your [mind and] heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 And He humbled you and allowed you to hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you recognize and personally know that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.  Deuteronomy 8:1-3 AMP

You might think you know what’s in your own heart, but you do not really know until you are tested. When you are humbled by your circumstances—by life—and when everything else is stripped away, what is left is the essence of YOU! The hardest things you go through will be the things that define who you are. How will you respond? Will you be bitter or will you be better? Will you allow God’s Word to govern your life; your choices; your circumstances? The sword of the Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12) and will cut down deep on the inside of you and reveal the thoughts, intents, and purposes of your heart. Growth involves change and you can only change the things you know about.

God is not the author of the negative things that happen to you, just as it was not His choice for Israel to wander in the desert for forty years, but the Lord will cause your own heart to be revealed to you, through these things, so you can change, so you can grow, so you can make the adjustments, so you can make corrections to your direction—so you can walk in liberty and in blessing.

Unless you have been through a tough time, suffered hunger, and been fed by the Lord with manna, you may not come to realize that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. If you do not remember that God is the One who took care of you when you could not take care of yourself, then when He blesses you and promotes you, you will think that your ability and talents brought the blessing. You will forget God; you will forget what He has done; you will forget that it is HE Who gives you the power to get wealth and the power to succeed. You will think that you did it yourself. You will forget that God is actually the One who has empowered you to walk in blessing and success as a fulfillment of a covenant promise He made with you. You need to acknowledge the blessing of the Lord in your life—you owe Him your thanks and appreciation.

If you are going through a hard time, and you want to gain the victory, you will need to humble your heart before the Lord. The attitude adjustments you get when you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God during the hard times—if you remember the lessons learned—will carry you through the good times. You need to humble yourself even more when you are prospering and succeeding, so that you do not become arrogant and lose what you have—or worse—lose yourself, by moving away from and then rejecting the Lord.

Possessions, position and prestige are not the answer to all of your problems. Things cannot make you happy because no matter how much a person has, they inevitably want more of it. Only the Spirit of God can truly satisfy your heart. When your contentment comes from your relationship with God and you look to Him and trust Him in and through all the circumstances of your life, whether good or bad, you will be truly happy and blessed and free!