"I think God is humbling us. He's humbling the whole nation because he's taking away the idols everyone naturally depends on - health and financial security. And he's humbling us Christian leaders because all our clever ministry plans and events and strategies have had to be torn up or radically changed and we're forced to depend on him to work!" (London pastor)
"Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)
God's humbling brings us to see and feel our creatureliness, our createdness, to teach us that man does not live on bread alone.
We do not simply exist. Everything around us that we see and touch, does not simply exist. Nothing simply is. Except the Lord God. He is the eternal, self-sustaining, unsupported, uncaused I AM. Everything else is contingent on him. By the word of his mouth he caused everything to be and by the word of his mouth he causes it to remain in existence (Gen 1, Heb 1:3). And yet we tend to operate as if everything around us simply is. As if there is simply me and this computer and a table and a window and the road outside. A practical atheism which denies that I am a created being existing in a creation, that my very existence and that of everything around me hangs by the thread of divine command.
But we need to go further. Not only does nothing have existence in itself, so nothing gives life out of itself. Only the living God has 'life in himself' and is able to grant life to others (John 5). The food in my fridge and cupboard cannot give me life in the sense that it has life in itself to give. That's how I tend to think - that it is the glucose and the water and the protein and the vitamins that I need. They are transferred from the food into my cells through my digestive system. So again I live a practical atheism where everything is simply mass and energy. What gives me life is transfer of money and then transfer of molecules. But that is not true. The Lord God gives us life. He does it through food but it is he who is the source of life. Psalm 104 is beautiful on this:
"All creatures look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground." (Psalm 104:27-30)
That is always the case, but in a season of humbling the Lord helps us to feel that which we so quickly forget. He taught his people in the wilderness by making them hunger and then cry out and then be fed so that they would know that it was not the bread giving them life but he himself.
Calvin and the Puritans pointed out that this is how prayer works. Why does God have us pray when he already knows what we need and he's already determined what he's going to do? Because we need to hunger (physically, emotionally, spiritually, for a particular answer) and then cry out to him and maybe cry out again and again ('unanswered' prayer increasing the hunger) and then receive the answer - so that we will know we are receiving everything from his fatherly hand.
So a prayer and a thanksgiving in response to this:
"Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)
God's humbling brings us to see and feel our creatureliness, our createdness, to teach us that man does not live on bread alone.
We do not simply exist. Everything around us that we see and touch, does not simply exist. Nothing simply is. Except the Lord God. He is the eternal, self-sustaining, unsupported, uncaused I AM. Everything else is contingent on him. By the word of his mouth he caused everything to be and by the word of his mouth he causes it to remain in existence (Gen 1, Heb 1:3). And yet we tend to operate as if everything around us simply is. As if there is simply me and this computer and a table and a window and the road outside. A practical atheism which denies that I am a created being existing in a creation, that my very existence and that of everything around me hangs by the thread of divine command.
But we need to go further. Not only does nothing have existence in itself, so nothing gives life out of itself. Only the living God has 'life in himself' and is able to grant life to others (John 5). The food in my fridge and cupboard cannot give me life in the sense that it has life in itself to give. That's how I tend to think - that it is the glucose and the water and the protein and the vitamins that I need. They are transferred from the food into my cells through my digestive system. So again I live a practical atheism where everything is simply mass and energy. What gives me life is transfer of money and then transfer of molecules. But that is not true. The Lord God gives us life. He does it through food but it is he who is the source of life. Psalm 104 is beautiful on this:
"All creatures look to you
to give them their food at the proper time.
When you give it to them,
they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.
When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.
When you send your Spirit,
they are created,
and you renew the face of the ground." (Psalm 104:27-30)
That is always the case, but in a season of humbling the Lord helps us to feel that which we so quickly forget. He taught his people in the wilderness by making them hunger and then cry out and then be fed so that they would know that it was not the bread giving them life but he himself.
Calvin and the Puritans pointed out that this is how prayer works. Why does God have us pray when he already knows what we need and he's already determined what he's going to do? Because we need to hunger (physically, emotionally, spiritually, for a particular answer) and then cry out to him and maybe cry out again and again ('unanswered' prayer increasing the hunger) and then receive the answer - so that we will know we are receiving everything from his fatherly hand.
So a prayer and a thanksgiving in response to this:
- A prayer that this current season would indeed have that effect of humbling us all - both convinced atheists and practical atheists like me - to find that we are not autonomous, self-sufficient beings, that we are not God, that food is not God, that we do not live by bread alone.
- And thanks to God for Jesus - the one who fulfils Deuteronomy 8:2-3 perfectly - the one who John's Gospel has taught us is the life-giving Word coming out of the mouth of God; the eternally begotten one, granted to have life in himself, who became man and entered the wilderness and, unlike the first Israel, resisted the devil's temptation to be autonomous; the one who was perfectly dependent on the Father, perfectly humble, even to death on a Cross; who on that first Easter became for us the bread of life for us. Lord, give us that Bread to eat!
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