God’s miraculous provision may well be in the Bible, but can it really be true that God provides for us in miraculous ways today?
We may well fail to see God’s hand in provision because of the many mundane ways in which He works (and the fact that He chooses to use people to give in practical ways that bless others.) He often does extraordinary things from ordinary people! But as a church, we can certainly testify that God provides!
When we wanted to move to Market Street, we had £7,500 in the bank and the building on Market Street was up for sale at £160,000. We pledged all we had to the penny (which raised a few eyebrows at the estate agent’s!) and applied for a grant from Coalfields Regeneration Trust. Many would say that they gave us the money, not God, but the manner in which we received money from them (not once, but twice, having to return the grant initially at the end of March because the sale had been delayed past the end of the financial year) definitely was not ‘normal’. The fact that the Methodist Church had a buyer willing to pay an additional £20,000 soon meant that it looked as though the building would never be ours, but God had other ideas.
It took months, but eventually the other buyer backed out… we were asked if we were still interested… CRT gave us the grant back without any further questions… and we were loaned £20,000 by the local Methodist circuit … and all this showed us that provision comes just in time! Moreover, we were able to pay the £20,000 loan back within two years without selling our previous building (that took longer than we expected to sell, but God provided the finances for us to repay the loan anyway!) We have seen God’s provision all the time and can testify that God does indeed provide! Just recently, we received another grant of just over £1500 from Coalfields Regeneration Trust to help run our Parent & Toddler group. God is faithful in so many ways; He is interested in our day-to-day needs and works to meeet these.
The Bible is unequivocal in its declarations that God will provide for His people, and that the revelation of the Lord as Jehovah Jireh to Abraham all those years ago is as relevant today as it was then. Whether our need is financial, practical, emotional, spiritual or physical, the Lord will provide all we need. His grace is sufficient for us.
