Psalm 145:14-18 “The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” This episode is about how God provides for us and about how important it is to be persistent in our prayers. It talks about a miracle that my parents received. It also talks about how God satisfies the desires of all living things. It also reminds us to praise God in all circumstances, even when we haven't received our answers yet. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Praise Series—God Provides In Mysterious Ways
Psalm 145:14-18 “The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”
There are so many good things in this passage. “The Lord lifts up all who are bowed down.” How often do we need the Lord to lift us? It is so great to know that the Lord lifts us when we pray to Him and ask Him to. When we are bowed down to the Lord, we are praying and worshipping Him. When we spend this time with Him, He can lift us. This verse helps us to see the power of praise. When we praise and worship the Lord, He lifts us to higher heights. I heard a saying once that I absolutely love and placed on the door in front of my treadmill. It says, If you complain, you remain. If you praise, you will be raised.
I have seen this time and time again. I have seen the difference between people who sit and complain about their circumstances and those who can be grateful. Those who spend all their time thinking about what they don’t have and those who focus on the little that they do have. We have a choice in every situation. Are we going to turn to the Lord? Are we going to ask Him and rely on Him for all that we need? Are we going to be grateful for what is going right or focus on all that is going wrong? I promise you, if you start to focus on the good. If you start to praise the Lord for what you do have, you will get more of it.
Next, the verse says, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time.” This one is a hard one for many of us. We do not want to wait for the proper time. We want things to happen on our timeline, or maybe we think our timeline is the proper time. Then we struggle when God disagrees. My dad told me a story once that shows how God will give food to those who look to him at the proper time. My mom & dad have 11 children. They also had a friend who had several children, I think at least 7. This friend called up and asked my parents if they could watch their kids, as something important had come up. My parents said yes because they were always there for those in need. However, my parents had just been talking about how they had no idea how they were even going to feed their own children dinner that night, and now they had seven more mouths to feed. So, they did what they always did in these situations: they turned their eyes to God and asked Him to provide.
Shortly after their prayer, they received a knock at the door. It was a neighbor holding bags of groceries. It turns out the neighbor's father had to move in unexpectedly, and they needed to combine his father’s household with his. They had just gone grocery shopping, and so they did not have room in their cabinets for all the food from his Dad’s place. So, they asked my folks if they could use any of the food. My parents graciously accepted. When looking through the bags they notice that there was plenty of pasta. My parents prayed, “Lord, if we only had some meat, then we could serve spaghetti to all these kids.”
Guess what? There was another knock at the door. It was a different neighbor. He had a cooler full of meat. He said that he and his friend had been hunting and they had too much meat. He explained that he and his friend had already stuffed their fridge and freezer, and still they had no room for this leftover meat. Again, my parents graciously accepted. Then, when they looked in the cooler, there was ground meat for spaghetti. They were so thankful. This was not a one-time thing for my parents. My parents were faithful in their prayers, not just when they were in need, but even when things were going well. God was faithful in answering them. My parents did not have a lot, and yet I didn’t hear them complain a lot. My parents knew that God was their provider. They knew that all they had came from Him, so they praised Him and thanked Him for all He gave them.
Next, it says, “You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” This is another great verse. I believe that God puts our desires in our hearts. I am talking about our deep desires, not the desire to eat ice cream at midnight. The desires I am talking about are the desires to have a specific job, the desire to be married and have children, the desire to sing, or act, or whatever it is you feel you are called to do. As this verse states, God wants to satisfy the desires of every living thing. I know this can be hard to believe if you have a desire that you have been waiting for God to satisfy. Maybe you have been waiting for the right man/woman to come along so that you can be married and have children. I know it is hard when we want something, and we have to wait a very long time. Isaiah 55:9 says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God has a plan for our lives, and it is better than our own. I know this can be frustrating because God does not always let us in on His plan for our lives. Sometimes we can be left wondering what His plan is and when we will understand it. If you have been thinking these things, I want you to know that you are not alone. Many of us do not understand God’s plan or why the things we have been praying for have not happened yet.
It's easy to lose hope when our prayers aren’t answered immediately. It can be frustrating when we pray for something and don’t seem to get any answers. I found this definition of hope online, and I really like it. In the Bible, hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised, and its strength is in His faithfulness. We know God is faithful to His children. We know He keeps His promises. Therefore, we can confidently expect that He will answer our prayers.
It says in Hebrews 13:8, ”Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever." Jesus has kept all of his promises in the bible. If He did it then, He will do it now. If you are getting frustrated waiting for your desires to be fulfilled, I ask that you turn to the scriptures and either use the ones in this episode or find other ones that show you how faithful your Heavenly Father is. He will come through. Please don’t give up asking for what you want. Saying that makes me think of the story in Luke 18:1-8 of the persistent widow. “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, “In a certain town, there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time, he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Jesus told this parable to show his disciples that they should pray and not give up. If He was worried his disciples would stop praying and give up, and they lived with Him day and night for 3 years, then I think He will cut us some slack for wanting to give up. I am sure He gets how frustrating it is to wait for the Lord’s timing. If you are tempted to give up and stop praying for something that you genuinely desire, I ask you to pause and remember this woman in the parable. What if she had stopped bothering the judge? What if she had not kept going back? Would she have her justice? We never know when the answer is right around the corner. What if you pray for 3 years, then stop, and God wants to give it to you the next day? Don’t stop praying for your deepest desires. He gave you those desires, and he will bring them into being if you let Him.
We need to thank the Lord for fulfilling our desires even before we have proof that He is fulfilling them. Praising Him for things unseen shows the Lord that we trust Him to keep His promises to us just as He did to His people in the Bible. God did extraordinary things in Scripture, and He is still doing extraordinary things today. Are we going to be able to see those extraordinary things? Are we going to praise Him for those extraordinary things even before we see them? Are we going to trust that God keeps His promises and that if He has done it before, He will do it again? You get to choose how you respond.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all of those listening to this podcast today. Lord, we ask that you help us to praise you, even as we wait for answers. We ask that you fill us with hope for those desires that we've been praying for. Lord, we pray that you give us perseverance to keep praying even when there's no end in sight. Lord Jesus, we ask that you give us strength to keep praying when we don't have any answers. Give us strength when we're weak, and we don't think we can go on. Lord, we know that you are the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We know that you've kept your promises in the past and you will continue to do so. Lord, we ask that you fortify our hope and faith in you. We ask that you increase our faith. Lord, if there is a desire that we have given up on that you want to give to us, we ask that you renew that desire in our hearts, Lord Jesus. We ask that you keep whispering it louder and louder until we can no longer ignore it. Lord, we thank you for fulfilling these desires, as we know you keep your promises, and so these desires will be fulfilled. We thank you for helping us stay persistent and for giving us the strength to keep asking. Lord, we thank you for listening to all of our prayers every time we ask. Lord, we love you so very much, and we ask all of this in accordance with Your Will and in Jesus ' Holy Name. Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to invite you all to sign up for my newsletter. It is just a once-a-week newsletter that has a brief teaching on the mentoring topic for the month, and then any news on my life and what is upcoming for the podcast or mentoring. I do have some very exciting news about the podcast that I will be sharing shortly. If you would like to sign up, you can CLICK HERE or head over to my website, findingtruenorthcoaching.com.
I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in July 2025 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 come to you as a gentle rain. I come to you as a torrential waterfall. I come to you at every moment of your life in the way you need me at that moment.”