Philippians 4:19 “I am convinced that my God will fully satisfy every need you have, for I have seen the abundant riches of glory revealed to me through Jesus Christ!” Today's episode talks about the greatness of God. It has several recounts of the miraculous ways that God answers our prayers, large or small. If you have ever wondered if God will provide for you, or worried about how your bills will get paid or where your next meal will come from, this is the episode for you! Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
God Will Fulfil Every Need!
Philippians 4:19 “I am convinced that my God will fully satisfy every need you have, for I have seen the abundant riches of glory revealed to me through Jesus Christ!”
This was in a letter from St. Paul the Philippians. When I read it this morning I wondered, are we convinced? I know St. Paul was convinced, he had seen God come through time and time again for him and his followers. However, what if we haven’t seen God come through? What if we have never really been in a situation where it felt like we needed God to come through? How do we become convinced that God will satisfy our every need?
What comes to my mind first is that if you haven’t seen God provide for you then you aren’t looking hard enough. I would argue if you have never had a time when it felt like you had to rely on God then God has blessed you even more because you never went without. I do think if you have little and you have no idea where your next meal or the money to pay the bills is going to come from, then you learn to rely on God more and you get to see Him work more in your lives. That does not mean that He is working more, it just means that you see it more.
God is working in each one of our lives. There isn’t a single one of us that He puts on earth and then just forgets about. He knows everything about each one of us. He not only knows your needs but He knows your wants and your desires too. He put them in your heart. He will take care of providing for you all that you need. However, He will also help you get the things you want as well. Oftentimes it is not in the time that we want.
For instance, we may have wanted to get married when we were 20 and instead, it happened when we were 40. I don’t know why this happens but what is coming to mind right now is two different scenarios. First, maybe we weren’t the person we needed to be earlier in life. Maybe if we had gotten married earlier it wouldn’t have worked out because we weren’t ready. The second is that God allows us to make our own choices so maybe we weren’t listening to Him and we were doing our own thing. God's ways are higher than our ways so I have no idea why things don’t happen in our timing. I wish I did. I wish I had an answer for every person who wanted a child and didn’t have one, or wanted to be married and hasn’t found the right person yet. I wish I could tell you why sometimes you have desires that weren’t realized. I honestly don’t have answers for that.
I do know it says in Romans 5:5, “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Hope in the Lord does not disappoint so we don't have to be scared or afraid to hope in the Lord for our dreams and desires to come true. I don’t think we have to be afraid our dreams are not His dreams for us either. I believe He put our dreams in our hearts and as long as we are close with Him, as long as we are doing our best to listen to Him, then we don't have to be worried about them not being His dreams for us too.
I just spent some time talking about how God will provide all we need for our heart’s desires. What I want to talk about now is something that I am not sure many people know or believe. God can and will provide for your everyday needs too. Did you know that God can give you money, food, cars, or whatever you need in miraculous ways? We tend to put God in a box and we think He has the same constraints that we have. We look at our situation and we don’t see a way and we assume there isn’t a way. However, God is a way maker. He doesn’t need to follow a path, He can create His own path. Just as He did for the Israelites when he parted the Red Sea.
However, it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. Sometimes He can create a miraculous answer to your prayer without a big show, without fanfare, without you even realizing it is Him doing it. My dad is a deacon and so I got a front-row seat to hear him talk about all the ways God helped our family. Honestly, I feel like he could talk about them all day every day and we would never run out of miracle stories. I don’t think my family is unique in this way. I think God is working miracles in many of our lives. I think there are two differences with my parents that others may not be doing.
First, they always went to God with their needs. They didn’t try to solve it first on their own. They didn’t save prayer for the last resort. Luckily they both knew the power of prayer and so it was their first response to a problem. Second, they were on the lookout for the miracle. They have this faith that they are absolutely sure God will provide. It is amazing to watch. They never told us growing up that we should pray and that if we were lucky, God would provide for us. They never told us God might come through. They taught us that God is a God who provides and if we ask He answers. I am more grateful for that lesson than for anything else they taught me. Sitting in the pews at church listening to my dad tell miracle story after miracle story, this belief was cemented in my mind.
In case you weren’t lucky enough to see or hear about all the miraculous ways God works in the everyday stuff, let me share a few so you can start to believe in his miraculous answers to our prayers. I know I have probably told these before but in my mind you can never talk about God’s glory too much!
One day my dad's car broke down on the way to work. He needed that car to get to work in order to make money to provide for the family as my mom stayed home with the kids because there were so many of us. My dad got home from work and decided to tell my mom after dinner so we could have a nice dinner together. In the middle of dinner a neighbor knocked on the door. My dad knew this man, but they were not friends. They had actually exchanged words over some thing the kids had done. This neighbor handed my dad a set of car keys. My dad asked what these were for and he said you need a car right? My dad agreed that he needed a car but asked how the guy knew as he hadn't even told my mom yet. The guy said he just got this feeling he was supposed to give my dad the car. His wife can't drive anymore so she doesn't need it. He's not lending it to my dad and he's not selling it to my dad he just is giving it to him with no strings attached. That is a miracle only God can do.
My parents were looking in the cupboard and realized they didn't know what we were going to eat for dinner that night. Then Friend called up and said there was an emergency and asked if my parents would watch their 10 kids. My parents said yes even though they didn't know how they were going to feed everyone. They knew God would provide and so they asked him for the food needed for all these kids. They were barely done the prayer when the neighbor knocked on the door and asked if they needed any groceries. He said his father-in-law moved into their house over the weekend but it was unexpected and so he had just gone grocery shopping at his house and so had they. There was no room in the cupboards for all the food and so my parents gratefully accepted. They noticed there is spaghetti and sauce in the bags, enough for everyone at the house. They were so grateful. They thought to themselves if we just had some meat it would be perfect. Another neighbor knocked on their door just after they had that thought and asked if they needed some meat. The neighbor had just gone hunting. He stuffed his fridge and his freezer and there just wasn't room for all the meat so he offered it to my parents and they gratefully accepted. Do you see how God works? If we are not looking sometimes we may miss the miracle.
Another time a friend of mine was sitting in her car with her daughter. She was making a shopping list sitting outside the dollar store. She only had $75 for a whole weeks worth of groceries for her family of five I think. She was writing down what she needed and realized if she only had 50 more dollars she could actually get all that she needed. I'm not even sure if she prayed about it or if she just thought about it. The next thing she knows her daughter open the door runs out into the parking lot and then comes back to the car. Luckily the store was not open yet and there was not another single car in the parking lot. When she asked her daughter why she got out of the car she said she saw something fly by the window so she got out to get it. When she gave it to her mom it was a $50 bill.
God created the entire universe with his words, he can create a $50 bill out of nowhere and send it to you when you are in need. I love these recounts of God's miracles because they show us that sometimes he uses regular every day things like other people to provide for us and other times he can do it just out of thin air. One of my witness Wednesdays I think it was Jasmine talked about how she didn't have enough money to pay her bills one month. She had checked her bank account and there was no money in it. She prayed and asked the Lord to provide and something inside of her told her to check her bank account again and she did and there was money in it. She called the bank and they didn't know who put the money in that account. It just showed up. God can do the same for you.
I am telling you about these miracles today so that if you don't have any miracle stories now you do. You have now seeing how God can work in your life. God is the same yesterday today and forever. You can look at the miracles written about in scripture and know that he can do that in your life too. It is true that God will fulfill every need! We just need to ask. Yesterday at the end of prayer group people were sharing the little ways God is working in their life. One lady was saying her grandson wanted to switch from flag football to tackle football now that he is in high school. She was nervous for him and just prayed that God would find a way for him not to be hurt in this new sport. She went to dinner with her family the other night and her grandson said he decided to do golf instead of tackle football. Do you see how God cares about every little prayer we send to him, even the things we might consider little.
I could go on and on as I love to talk about God’s miraculous power to provide for us. However, I know you all have things to do and this episode is already on the longer side. I want to invite you to take a look at the things that have happened in your life, in the light of these miracle stories and see if you can recognize God’s hand in them. I want also to invite you to be on the lookout more going forward to see how God is orchestrating all things to help provide for you.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless everyone listening to this episode. Lord, you are amazing and we are so grateful for all the ways you provide for us. We ask that you help open our eyes to these ways. We ask that you help us to see all the ways you are working in our lives. Help us to be more aware Lord! I ask that you reveal at least one miracle you have done in the lives of each person listening to this episode. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again on Monday. Remember, Jesus loves you, and so do I! Have a blessed day and may the favor and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in March 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group, these words, or how to join us for a meeting, please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is, “My children, I reward the little things done with great love. It's the great love that I look for. People think they must do grandiose things for me to notice. I notice even the littlest things that you do out of great love.”