Hidden in Christ

My family and I began at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and descended rapidly along switchbacks until we hit a ridge protruding out to "Skeleton Point."  Though it was fairly cool outside, it was hot dusty work to reach that ominous place.  The name conjured up the image of dried bones of a hapless person or deer fallen, eaten by carrion, and left as a testament of the harshness of the land.  The white rocks themselves looked like the spine of the earth as the elements disinterred it.  

It was hard to believe that wind and rain could wreak such ruin--a canyon ten miles across, one mile deep, and 265 miles long.  Wind, rain, and flood in the hand of an Almighty God over eons and eons cut through the hidden places of the earth as if through butter.

One feels very exposed as one hikes through the desert.  The lack of water, the absence of shelter, the merciless sun, and the long vistas in every direction make one feel small and vulnerable.  An eagle's eye might see you coming from 25 miles away.  

What does God see when he looks at me?  Can he see everything about me?  Does he look at all my actions?  Can he see what I do in secret?  Does he know my motivation for everything? 

We say a prayer for purity every week that goes like this, "Almighty God unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts..."  There is in reality nowhere to hide from God's sight.  King David acknowledges God's ability to discover his heart in Psalm 32.  In a moment of great transparency, he admits to God:

...When I kept silent, my bones wasted away
    through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
    my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 

This shepherd in the desert turned King of Israel knew about heat and exposure.  He also knew that God wants us to be honest about our failings and deal with him about them.
 

I acknowledged my sin to you,
    and I did not cover my iniquity...

and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

It's not our place to hide our sins from God.  It is not possible, of course; it is also not how forgiveness works.   We are forgiven only as He forgives us.  Honesty and humility about our sins is necessary. 

Halfway down the trail, just past "Skeleton Point," we found a hueco, or hollow, in the rock big enough for my whole family to hide inside in case of bad weather.  The kids climbed up into it and saw that at its top there was another even more hidden cave. 

Wind, rain, hail, flood, and searing sun could not touch us in there.  Maybe David found similar places for himself and his flock at times of bad weather.  We know he hid in caves as he was hunted by Saul and his armies.  He often calls God his "rock" or "crag"--a place of security and safety. 

If we can't hide from God, maybe God can hide us from the consequences of our sin.  David started the psalm like this:

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.

How are sins covered?  If I can't hide them and if God sees them, what will cover them? 
God covers us with himself.  David goes on to say,

You are a hiding place for me;
    you preserve me from trouble;


I learned to pray from my mother when I was five years old as a tornado roared down our street towards us.  We huddled in the basement darkness with my three year old brother and said the "Our Father."  And our Father protected us.  The tornado turned and went off in another direction. 

It wasn't the basement--it was being hidden in God that saved us.  How can we be hidden in God?  We pray like David who said

let everyone who is godly
    offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters,
    they shall not reach him.
You are a hiding place for me

Great rivers of water carved out the canyons of the west.  Floods as of Noah's time split the rocks and scoured the dirt away. --no other explanation exists except, as the insurance adjusters say, "an act of God" did it.  How will I be saved from the flood of his righteous judgment?  

I hide in Jesus.  

Almighty Lord and Father, there is nothing hidden from you.  I stand uncovered before you.  My faults are as apparent to you as a solitary stone in the desert.  You see my sins; wash me and cleanse me from them.  Let me hide in Jesus.  Let his righteousness so cover me that on the day of judgment I will be safe.  This I pray in Jesus' name.  Amen.

learning to speak

Anger, frustration, darkness—these characterized the daily existence of a little girl in Alabama.  Because she had an intelligent mind, she had the capacity for normal life, but the normal windows into her mind, her sight and hearing, were shut.  She would become enraged when she didn’t get what she wanted, and even as a six year old, she was getting no closer to sharing what that was.  When through the gift of a persistent teacher Helen Keller was given a language—even a rough sign language drawn on her hands—she said she moved from being almost brute beast into much fuller humanity.  Ideas that were impossible to think and emotions that were impossible to feel were now real and present to her.  Where before she could not relate to people now she could interact, understand, and love . 

It would be correct to say that in some very real way language creates us.  Without it, we would have no complex thought; we could not interact.  Without it, we would have no personality to speak of.

The language of humanity is prayer.  It forms and shapes our character.  As God communicates to us, he educates us in the fullest sense of the word, drawing us out of ourselves and into a relationship with him and others.  Prayer teaches me to love him; it teaches me who I am.  

When God speaks into a heart, it awakens with light the way a crystal outcrop hidden in a cave sparkles in front of a flame.  There is some faculty in a person ready to receive, to hold for an instant, and to reflect back the truth and light of God.  The giving and receiving of that light is called prayer.  Prayer is a true giving and receiving between a human and God.  As mathematics is the language of science, prayer is the language of interaction between creature and creator.  As a mother and father speak to a newborn, God gives words to us and waits for us to understand them.  And we do.  And then we speak back to him.  At first we do this in halting syntax and lisps.  Later, we develop an easy conversational style.  Correction, expression, direction and affection are communicated to us.  We question and thank and resist or comply with prayer.  It is the gateway to becoming who we were made to be.

In Harold Bloom’s “Shakespeare:  The Invention of the Human,” Bloom stakes out a very modern understanding of what it means to be a person.  Bloom writes of Shakespeare’s characters that “they develop because they reconceive themselves…this comes about because they overhear themselves talking…self-overhearing is their royal road to individuation.”

We become human, not by some self-conscious dialogue with ourselves—as if the key to maturity were introspection—but by our conversation with God.   The name of this conversation is prayer. 

Overhearing oneself speak, introspection, and everlasting dialogue with self when there is no outer corrective or partner higher than ourselves with which to speak is rather the path to the hell of solipsism.   

Prayer can be funny; it can be touching; it can be stern and demanding; but it is always asking me to look past myself into a greater reality than that which exists in my own mind. 

The Hebrew scripture begins with this:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Listen to the rhythm:

Darkness

then word

then light

The Gospel of John begins in similar fashion

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Creation and enlightenment comes through the language of God.  Echoes of creation still reverberate in the development of every human being. 

Lord, teach me to pray.  It is in conversation with you that I am given a language to understand the world, myself, and you.   Lord, give me the words and concepts and feelings that are necessary to become a person made in your image.  I cannot love unless you write the language of love in my heart.  I cannot be compassionate, merciful, forgiving, holy, or courageous like you are unless you teach me.  Form these gifts in me and form me in your likeness.  Give me ears to hear you, a mouth to speak to you, and a mind that sees you.  Let your word, like light, come into my heart and transfigure it.   

Healing the Center

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Two screens played before him.  On one side he saw himself being treated for the physical symptoms of AIDS.  On the other he saw the Lord who was surrounded by light. He knew that God was giving him a choice between healing of just his body versus a healing that was also spiritual.

He had met Christ as a young man but after the pain of our broken world caught him, he began to live a self-destructive lifestyle.  He had every symptom of AIDS and was dying in the hospital waiting for the final test to confirm what he knew.

“I want to heal your whole person, not just your body.  Choose.”  These are the words that Mario heard as he saw the vision in the hospital room.

As he chose the total healing, the first screen faded away; he was embraced by God and filled with his love. 

God’s healing and love reach us at the root.  He re-orders our identity and integrates our existence on the basis of his life in us.  Jesus said, “you must be born again.”  When our soul is healed as we are embraced by the love of God, we become a new creation.  The old self dies.  The new self, which is really Jesus in us, grows and lives.  While not guaranteeing perfect actions, this new power in us has practical consequences for our behavior.

The word of God is strong in insisting that to be a Christian is to undergo a change in behavior.  Paul writes to remind the church in Corinth that they need to remember who they are.

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.   (I Cor 6:9-10)

If a Christian has Jesus at the center of his new identity, then good practical results follow just as surely as a good tree bears good fruit.  If we are caught up in patterns of sin, then we are not able to see and inherit the Kingdom. 

Paul goes on to say,

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

(I Cor 6:11)

The language here is of identity:  you were x—but now you are no longer.  When God grabs us and pulls us up into his life he gives us a new center.  Habits and hurts  which drove us to act in sinful and broken ways no longer dominate;  patterns of thought which made us believe that we were beyond redemption do not prevail.  Best of all, we are touched in the deepest part of ourselves by the living word Jesus who writes a new story in our hearts.  He makes us right with God.  He gives us a new identity as a saint.

Mario might have said, “I am a homosexual,” and counted himself outside the saving embrace of the Lord.  It would have been easy in a way to adopt our culture’s stance that one’s sexual preference is one’s identity.   This modern cultural “truth” has become a non-negotiable truth in some quarters.  But its not true, and Mario understood that.

Like every sin, sexual sin has the potential to consume one’s life, to demand more and more energy and to place itself at the center of our thoughts and actions.  Modern philosopher and sexual activist Michel Foucault spoke of our modern embrace of sex as the means by which we sell our souls, like Faust did, to the devil.  Our temptation and sin is now to, “to exchange life in its entirety for sex itself, for the truth and the sovereignty of sex. Sex is worth dying for.”   

Can you hear the tone of worship in his words?  Sex for Foucault and for many in the modern world is the truth and is sovereign.   But this is false.  Only God is sovereign.  Only God is the truth.  Only he is worth dying for.  Mario was healed and went on to write a book that has helped heal others of the greatest confusion we have as sinful people:  that of loving other things--even good things--more than we love God. 

Consider Paul’s words to those who had formerly given themselves over to the lusts of their bodies.  Hear how he contrasts a holy union with God against a sinful union outside of marriage.

But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.  Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.  

Paul goes on to say that not even this body we have is our own, but that it is a place where God’s Holy Spirit dwells:

do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.  (ICor 6:17-20)

I am not what I do.  I am not what I like.  I don’t own myself and so have no right to exchange my life for some small part of it.  In fact, it was God the Son who exchanged himself for me—this is the divine pact and covenant.   He gave me new life.  He gave me a new identity. 

Mario understood this. He chose a healing that went to the root.  He chose life.

Lord God and Heavenly Father, give me the assurance that it is neither past nor present sin which define me; grant me the knowledge that I am a new creation in your Son; awaken hope in me; fill me with your Spirit; and bless me with the truth that my identity comes from you; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.  Amen

For more of Mario's story, see this website http://www.zacchaeus.ca/mario.html.  For more on how God has used and is using Mario's healing to bless others, see his ministry website  http://www.redeemedlives.org/ 

Anger at the Root

It all came rushing back

the anger against them
the anger against God
images of lost family members
resentments boiling up after years of peace

He had to stop preaching to these criminals; he had to go pray.

If anyone had a right to be angry, he did.  He had lost over 100 family members in the genocide.  And here he was preaching to the perpetrators--maybe even the ones who had killed his brothers and nieces and cousins.  Anger welled up in him as the words of God touched their hearts and they were moved to repent.  Like the prophet Jonah who was called to preach to his enemies that they might repent and that God might have mercy, Robert was not happy to be sharing God's word at that moment.  He left the prison in the middle of his sermon.  He walked out, climbed a neighboring hill and talked to God as he looked down on the fences and walls and guards and criminals.

Why should they receive mercy?!?
They took no pity on my family!
Why are you extending your grace to them Lord? 
And why do I have to be your instrument?

If our identity changes as Christians, then that change reaches into our affections, rights and responsibilities.  It has been noted that the Sermon on the Mount, as it broadens and deepens God's commands against adultery and murder to include both lust and anger, paints a picture of a man or woman so thoroughly changed that he or she naturally does what is impossible. 

Jesus reminds his hearers of the commandments and then expands them:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

and 

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

How can I come to a place where I keep God's commands from the depths of my stony heart?  

How is it that the rocky ground, that place where God's word doesn't seem able to penetrate, is finally yielded up and given over to new life?  

The rocks are there!  My heart pushes back in protest:  "Jesus' words don't apply to me--after all, when I am angry I am most often justifiably angry." 

But then I wonder how often God the Father might have been justified in anger towards me?  I wonder how many hundreds of times I have lied, even after hearing his command not to?  Or lusted...Or dishonored my parents...Or coveted, stole, committed murder in my thoughts or broken the two great commandments

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul

and 

Love your neighbor as yourself

If he were to judge me with the strictness with which I pretend to judge others, I would be dead.  So justification of my anger will not let me off the hook.

My heart rebels again:  "even if Jesus' words do apply to me, they seems rather unrealistic.  I am not in control of my emotions.  It seems idealistic to believe that anger or lust could be controlled doesn't it?"

But Jesus is not addressing emotions; rather he addresses motions of the heart--small seed-like choices the heart makes which bear fruit of one kind or another later on.   When I sin in anger, it is the fruit of resentment that has taken hold of my heart.  "I was owed respect but not given it; I will demand it now," my heart thinks.  

I wonder what the proportion of disrespect (them to me vs me to God) is?  I probably disrespect God about a thousand times more than one other person disrespects or sins against me because while I am with another only for a short time, God is always with me.  And the honor due him as creator is even greater than the honor due to a human--even though that human is made in the image of God.  When I look at it this way, I see how remarkable it is that God is merciful to me.  
Jesus caps this teaching off with the goal--that we would become like our Father in heaven.  

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.  He makes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.

He sends rain; he makes the sun shine.  He also plants his word deep in our hearts to transform us from the dusty dead soil we are to the new creation he makes us to be.  

Robert went back into the prison knowing the great forgiveness which he was receiving from the Lord was a living force inside of him.  He finished his sermon.  People did repent and receive the mercy of God. 


Father, forgive me for the rights I so stubbornly cling to:  the right to resent; the right to be sarcastic; the right to hold a grudge; the right to demand what is owed me in anger.  You don't resent me...nor do you hold grudges but you demonstrate your love in giving me your son.  So change my heart that I might live like him who loves his enemies and prays for those who persecute him. 

Her Brothers House

Marcianna had no land, no father and now no husband.  But she did have children to care for.  Preferring the company of another wife, her husband had just chased her and their two little ones away.  The story of division and estrangement begun in the garden of Eden continues to bear its bitter fruit:  husband vs. wife; parents against children; until hope is poisoned and despair reaches into darkness.

After Marcianna was rejected by her husband she and the children moved into the unlit 10' by 10' mud brick room (with a tarp for a roof) already containing her mother and sister that was added to her brothers crowded house.  Then she tried to find redress in the courts.  She soon found out that because she was her husband's second wife (a situation relatively uncommon these days in Rwanda), she had no rights.  Undaunted, she tried to secure land from her father's estate through the courts.  But since her mother was also a second wife again Marcianna's claim had no legal status.

Marcianna began to despair.  She said she felt like "no one."  She wondered if she was a worse sinner than the other people she knew.  Perhaps God was singling her out for special punishment?  Close to suicide, she was brought to a Christian pastor named Justin.  He immediately began to advocate for her in the courts. 

With Justin behind her, the courts heard her argument and she won a little bit of land far away from her mothers family.  It wasn't much, but it was a start.  And God was working in other ways as well.  Some friends of Justin's in America had become prayer partners to Marcianna.  When Justin came to visit they asked about her and were moved with compassion.  "How can we do nothing when we have so much and she has so little?" they asked themselves.

They saved up money and sent it by wire to the diocese.  Soon men and women from the church brought timbers for the frame.  They bought corrugated tin for the roof.  They busted through the addition's wall for the opening into a much bigger mud-walled room they were building.  She started to feel like someone again.  She had her own space--shared with goats and chickens for sustenance, but still hers.  A real roof over her head.  Better than that she had friends and a new family that loves her.  She knows she has a Father in heaven.  Brothers and sisters on earth--even white ones from a land so far removed that only the power of Jesus could overcome the distance. 

Marcianna (in dark shirt) with her biological and church family

Though we had turned away from God and made paradise into a hell of estrangement and despair, God did not abandon us.  He sent his son is Jesus to live and die for us.  

St Paul writes that Jesus has "broken down the dividing wall of hostility" that separates Jew and Gentile (Eph 2:14).  Elsewhere he says that there all of our distinctions fade and are made irrelevant before the presence and power of Jesus Christ who, "is all, and is in all."  Because he is in us, we become sons.  Because he is everything important to the father, his virtues become ours.  Our identity shifts.

We are given his character, start to act like he acted, begin to move in his power, and slowly or quickly look more and more like him.

Marcianna knows that in Jesus the estrangement is over; she has a family again.  She is someone.   

Though living in poverty, Marcianna has since adopted another needy child who like her new mother is finding out that she too has value in the eyes of the Lord.    

see also our African blog at
http://mittentoafrica.wordpress.com/

Rivers of water

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Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water

Jane was a typical student at a huge state university—but one who had an extraordinary impact.  As an undergraduate she felt called by God to start a prayer group in her dormitory.  She put up fliers in her dorm announcing a weekly time that was sure not to conflict with classes—6am.  For a year she held a prayer meeting for two people person—herself and one senior.  For the next year and a half, she did the group alone.  She was, at that time, praying through something like a Christmas list:  “God I want this; I need that, please give me this and such…”  Then she read a biography of a great revival preacher that opened her to the power of God's Spirit.

God began to pour into her what was planning to give to others through her.  And then He moved forcefully to show her the reality of his power.    

Spring semester of her junior year, thirty-seven people showed up on one particular morning.  Week after week they came back.  Miracles happened.  People came to a saving belief in Jesus.  Calls to serve the Lord were heard.  Jane was given the vision to start prayer groups in every dormitory on campus.  Without an office, income, or human supervision, she started prayer meetings in twenty-four dorms.  Each group had its own leader:  young men or women who had been blessed by the refreshing life-giving water of God’s Spirit became wells for others to be refreshed.  Twenty-four different leaders—twenty-four different wells—twenty-four different strategies--all going deep in prayer; all praying for people to come to know Jesus.  And Jesus, who is the fount of every blessing, after making Jane a well, turned these twenty-four into wells and they refreshed others who have gone to bless still more people.

Jesus promised this kind of multiplying power and blessing as he cried out:

          “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the 
           Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’"(John 7:37-38)

St John comments on this promise by saying that the water he was speaking of referred to the Holy Spirit

          Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive

The Holy Spirit is life for a Christian.  He is as necessary to a Christian as water is to a person.  A Christian's power in witness is bound up with the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Coming to Jesus with our spiritual thirst we are met at the point of our hearts--the center of will, imagination and self.  Our parched soul is refreshed and satisfied as our Heavenly Father lavishes his own spirit over us and in us.  To stay connected to Jesus is not only to drink but to be transformed from the inside out.  Once the connection is made, the very Spirit of God wells up inside us as a spring pours forth in the wilderness.  As we are changed, the people surrounding us have the possibility of life. 

Evangelism is more than one thirsty soul pointing out a well to another.  It is the power of God to transform a human life into an oasis for others.   When the Holy spirit takes up residence and flows through a person, the one who shares the message is not only a sign pointing to the living water, but becomes a well him or herself. 

Jesus said that we would be like him because he gives us new life, a new power, and in fact a new identity.  Jesus was the Son--He makes us sons.  Jesus was the Well--he makes us into wells.  So evangelism is not by the power of the person, as if he or she had anything to give, but by the power of God’s Spirit, living in the person and giving him a new identity, that others are refreshed.

Whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.  The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up for eternal life (John  4:14)  

Jane heard this invitation from Jesus.  She went to the Lord for the water.  He broke through the stony soil of her heart.  She met with the Lord, drank deeply the living water, and in time became a source of living water for many around her.  Her connection to the Lord was strong, consistent and life-giving.  He blessed her to bless others.   

One can’t give what one doesn’t have.  And in God’s economy, He gives to us so that we will give to others.  In fact, it is as necessary to give his gifts away as it is for a river to give away its water.  Jesus promises that those who drink deeply from him will have more than enough of him to share.  If we lack power to evangelize, as most of us do, we can hear his voice and ask for this deep opening to his life.  As we cry out to him who first cried out to us, we can be sure that he will answer.

Lord, help me hear your voice calling me to drink.  Break through the rocky ground of my will that I may be refreshed by your Holy Spirit and have your pure, life-giving power at the center of who I am.  Make the connection so deep and clear that your water overflows and others find your healing and life through me. Make me a well in the desert, a spring in the wilderness, an outpost of your Kingdom.  Take my heart Lord Jesus and use it as a door to bless others, just as yours has blessed me.  

another prayer from the ancient church:
 
“Merciful God, good Lord, unite us to that fountain from which we may drink of the living spring of the water of life with those others who thirst after you. There in that heavenly region may we ever dwell, delighted with abundant sweetness, and say, ‘How sweet is the fountain of living water which never fails, the water welling up to eternal life.’ O God, you are yourself that fountain ever and again to be desired and ever and again to be consumed. Lord Christ, always give us this water to be for us the ‘source of the living water which wells up to eternal life.’” - Columbanus

Consider the Flowers

Consider the Flowers

Enthusiastic, creative, empathetic, and often late to meetings. David was, like all artists I know, a little bit scattered. But he had one of the most beautiful spirits—one of the most giving hearts—of anyone I have ever known.  If you had a need, he was there to help.  If you needed encouragement, his words were perfect. 

He was, and is, the son and grandson of ethnically German missionaries in India.  As he completed his studies in the US, he moved in with his brother who was studying with me in graduate school.  David immediately became a vibrant member of our Monday night prayer group.  One night he shared with us the burden that God placed on his heart to help the poor in Africa through medical missions. 

He needed a Visa and applied to the consulate of the East African country to which he was called. 

“Can you prove that you have enough money to live on for the summer and to buy a plane ticket to leave our country at the end?” they asked.  “If you can’t, you can’t come here.”

In fact he had no money and was raising just enough to get over there.  If he had been a US citizen, this problem would have been overlooked, after all, what American would go to Africa for welfare?  But as he was an Indian citizen it was not.  This poor country didn’t want another poor person to drain its resources.

He still felt called by God to work there.  Somehow he needed to prove his good intentions or come up with a large sum of money before his internship was to begin.  He gave permission to the consulate to check his bank account—an account where a couple of hundred dollars sat lonely for more.  He said his prayers and had us pray. 

He knew that if God indeed wanted him to go, he would make a way.

Imagine our surprise when he was granted a visa with no real money in his account.  Imagine our further surprise when we found out that the agency responsible for granting the visa had seen $20,000 in his account.  

 How was this possible?  The bank had made an error in his favor for $20,000 the day before his account was checked.  The day after it was checked the bank caught the error and removed the money. David had all he needed for as long as he needed it.  Not one minute more.

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?...Look at how the lilies grow.  They don't work hard to make their clothes. But I tell you that Solomon with all his wealth wasn't as well clothed as one of them (Mt 6:25-29).

Do you know that your heavenly Father has all you need?  Do you know like David that God the Father is your Father and that he is looking out for you?   Did he work hard to raise funds? Yes.  Did he put time into communication and contacts?  Absolutely.  But well before his anxiety grew very great, the Father gave him what he needed.   David story exemplifies the words of Jesus:

…the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 
(Mt 6:32-33)

He had the same type of relationship with the Father that Jesus had.  There was no fear between them.  Only love.  The Father wanted David to go to Africa and David said yes without condition.   All the while he understood that the Father pays for what he orders. 

If the bank’s “oversight” reassured the consulate and verified David’s faith, it also taught me.  God promises to care for me as I walk with him.   He supplies the needs of all who follow him.  “Give us this day our daily bread,” I recite all the while remaining anxious about tomorrow and forgetting that I am speaking to the one who actually has more money, power, influence, and goodness than all the billionaires in the world.   I am still learning this lesson.  I am still learning to walk with the Father like Jesus did. 

Jesus not only shows us the way to simple, beautiful faith, he is the way to it.  When he lives in us, he gives us a new identity as sons of the Father.  This means that all the Fathers riches are ours for as long as we need them.   When we die and see our life from the vantage point of eternity, we will understand that all our wealth and gifts were fleeting like the lilies, and like them given to us for God’s glory.  

There is little so beautiful as field of flowers which silently praise the Father by their very being.  There is little so wonderful as the trust and peace sparrows show as they gather only for today and take no thought for tomorrow.  But in fact a person alive to the truth of the Father’s love is even more beautiful, even more wonderful. 

Heavenly Father:  Grant that I may so come to know you as a good, loving, and providing Father that I may rest from all my anxieties about food, clothing, and the future.  When I am anxious, remind me of your presence; when I am scared, remind me of your love; when I am worried about the future, give me the sure and certain knowledge that you are already there and that all is well where you are.  Remove fear from my relationship with you.  Forgive me for not trusting you, for not believing you, for not putting you first. Grant me a simple trust in you like Jesus had.  Form in me the character of your Son that I might become who you say that I am, your son by adoption.  This I pray in Jesus’ name.