Friday, December 28, 2012

Trusting God with your Today


“If only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.” Exodus 16:3

The thing I feared most had just happened. After working for two and a half years at one company, the economy took a bad turn and my company began downsizing, and my job was one that was cut.

The following three months included the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and lots of job searching. It was the hardest situation that I had to face in my working life. I had landed that job right at the end of my senior year of high school, and although I had some problems and complaints about my situation at the time, I was not ready to start over somewhere else. Suddenly, the things I had been unhappy about didn’t seem all that bad, and all of the "if only..." statements began dancing around in my head. Even after I had started my new job, I still found myself missing my co-workers and my old job.

Previous situations always seem more desirable when you’re facing the unknown future, and struggling on your way to it. Past struggles seem to dim in intensity once you’re facing something you’re not sure you will be able to get through.

It doesn’t mean the old challenges were any easier. It’s simply the fact that the old is familiar, and you’re not facing it now.

Whatever your current struggles and challenges are, they are an invitation to trust God more. Just ask Him to show you how you can trust Him in your current season. God’s command in Exodus 16:4 required the Israelites to trust Him daily by gathering just enough bread for the current day.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Look, I’m going to rain down food from heaven for you. Each day the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day. I will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow my instructions.”

God calls us to trust Him with our today. Each “today” brings us to the next place God wants us to be.

I eventually returned to the original company I worked for, but it was not until I gave my life over to God and allowed Him to begin changing me. When I returned, I was a very different person from who I was when I left. This is what God desires for you: continuous growth in Him, to become more like Jesus, and in turn, reach out to others who are facing a tough season of their life.


What previous seasons or situations seem easier compared to what you are dealing with now?

What challenge are you facing right now that God is asking you to trust Him with?

How can you step forward to trust God with your “today”?