God's Provision When Your World is Falling Apart

 

Did you know that God has a provision in place for you, even when your world is falling apart?  Not only has He provided a means for you to navigate this time of distress, but He has provided Himself, His very presence to be with you when it feels like your world is falling apart.  You might say, "If God was providing for me, wouldn't my world have stayed secure, wouldn't circumstances have held together in such a way that all would not seem out of control?

Let's look to the Old Testament for some answers...

Those of you familiar with the Old Testament know that King David had his fair share of troubles.  In fact, a majority of the book of Psalms is written in response to times when David's world was falling apart, those times when his enemies relentlessly pursued him to the point that he was hiding in caves for his very life.

A key story in the life of King David happened when he made plans to bring the ark of the covenant back into their possession.   The Ark of the Covenant  was called "by the name, the Name of the Lord" and it contained the stone tablets on which were written the very laws of God.  Not only that, God's presence resided within and around the Ark of the Covenant.  In essence, God's provision and presence embodied the Ark of the Covenant.  Once the Ark of the Covenant was in their possession, they were singing and rejoicing, but then the ark was mishandled in a manner outside of what the Lord commanded when Uzzah tried to save it from falling off the cart.  As a result, the Lord struck Uzzah down and David became angry with God.  David then became afraid of the Lord and didn't want the Ark of the Covenant near him and took it to the house of Obed-Edom where it remained for three months.  As a result, the house of Obed-Edom was blessed during that time.  When David saw their blessings, He overcame His fear and sought to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant.

Don't we tend to behave this way when handling the Word of God, which is God's very provision and presence to us - a modern day Ark of the Covenant if you will.  We mishandle the Word of Truth either not fully believing it, misinterpreting the Scriptures to justify our sin or not relying on it when we are fearful and our world is falling apart.  We in essence become, dare I say, fearful or apathetic toward reading the Word because it is not serving us in the manner we feel it should.

How can we develop an attitude of singing and rejoicing over the Word of God; a desire to return to the Word, the very presence of God, where we will experience His provision?  How do we look to the Word and allow it to permeate our thoughts to the point of molding our hearts to believe, trust and obey, ESPECIALLY when our world is falling apart?

When Everything Falls Apart, God is There

Having not personally experienced an earthquake, I did, however, experience the Universal Studios "ride" that mimics a violent earthquake.  As someone with vertigo, I'm surprised I even attempted this!  As the "ride" was reaching it's crescendo, I remember just wanting it to stop, not so much out of fear of getting hurt, as I was in a controlled simulation, but I didn't like the feeling of being so utterly out of control.

Life can feel that way, can't it?  We are either going at our usual pace or have set plans and then suddenly the rug gets pulled out from underneath and we feel like we are in an earthquake, completely and devastatingly out of control.  We might be blindsided or our world may have been slowly but surely unraveling until it finally fell apart.

Let's face it, in times like these it can be hard to see that God is right there with us.  The thing is, He never left our side.  In fact, He allowed our circumstances to show Himself big in our midst.

 A man’s heart plans his way,

But the Lord directs his steps.

Proverbs 16:9

Even though our world has fallen apart, the God who upholds the world in His powerful hands is in complete control of our circumstances.  He has a divine purpose in the rubble.   Where we see out-of-control ruins, He sees glorious reconstruction.

When we set our focus on the unseen God, we WILL see Him.  We need only look to the Word, where His provision dwells and rely on the Holy Spirit, where His presence dwells, to guide us in right understanding of WHO our God is and to shed light on His purpose in our circumstances.

I have set the Lord always before me: 

because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

Psalm 16:8

Even when our world has fallen apart, we need not be shaken to our very core for we need only to set God's Word ever before us, and we will not be moved.

We must purpose to memorize Scripture so that when the earthquakes of life occur, we will be armed with God's provision and will stand firm in His presence.

How to Trust God When Everything is Going Wrong

Let's go back to the life of David, a man after God's own heart, a man set apart by God to be King, a man who Jesus would descend from, a man who sinned against God and a man who struggled with fear when his world was falling apart.  

Yet despite the fact that David struggled with fear, he always trusted God in all circumstances.

“The Lord who rescued me from the claws of the lion 

and the bear will rescue me from this Phillistine!” 

1 Sam 17:37

David was in the habit of remembering all that God had already done for him.  God built up David's trust through one faithful act after another on His part which started when David was a young boy, as we see in the verse above.

The Psalms are a testimony of David's remembrances of God's faithfulness.  David had no reason NOT to trust God because He continually remembered how trustworthy He was.

When everything is going wrong in our lives, we can trust God just like David.  We can draw from past trust-building exercises with God from our own lives, but most especially, we can go to the entire Canon of Scripture to see ALL the reasons why we can trust God.  

At the end of the day, the only thing we can absolutely trust is God!  His Word provides wisdom, strength, courage and comfort to the weary soul whose world has fallen apart.  If we've lost everything, we've lost nothing because we will always have God and His Word and that is absolutely enough.

We must allow ourselves to look at the Word of God as if looking directly at God.  See Him as the One who is Trustworthy when that which we trusted to be constant has fallen apart.  Like Job, we will then watch God rebuild our world in miraculous ways.

How to Keep Faith When Everything Falls Apart

King David was such a man of faith.   Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he wrote these famous words...

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. ...

Psalm 23:1-6

Here we see a prescription for keeping the faith when everything falls apart (walking through the valley of the shadow of death).

Here David is saying that there is no need to fear evil or to fear when everything falls apart because God is with us, His rod and His staff (the Word of God) comforts us.   The Word convicts and directs, comforts and strengthens, all to ensure that we do not fall into evil.  When our world falls apart, we may feel like something evil has happened, but God, He is faithful to lead us to the table prepared "before us in the presence of our enemies, anointing or head while our cup overflows".  That table God has prepared are all His faithful promises.  We have a banquet that is overflowing with God's provision for us to partake of when we pull our chairs up to God's promises contained in the Word of God.

If we take a further lesson from David, we will see that when He couldn't find an immediate reason to bolster his faith, that didn't stop him from keeping his faith in God strong.  Instead, he remembered back to what God had done hundreds of years before when He brought the Israelites out of the bondage of slavery into the promised land.

When our world is falling apart and we are finding it hard to keep the faith, we must look to God's past faithful provision in our own lives.   We can also look to the faithfulness of God to His people by reading those accounts in the Bible.  As a result of these reflections, we will find ourselves keeping the faith, even though our world has fallen apart.

Hide Scripture, the very presence of God, in your heart, so that if your world were to fall apart, you will experience the provision of His Perfect peace.

For similar posts, click on the following:

Are You Relying on God's Help? 4 Reasons You Should!

5 Practical Ways to Feel God's Presence

5 Steps to Becoming Calm in the Midst of Turmoil

How to Trust God in Times of Uncertainty

How to Overcome a Struggling Faith

6 Absolute Truths to Remember When Your Faith is Shaken

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