Provision

In the fading light of December, I am struck by how often we mistake our wants for needs, like children confusing snacks for sustenance. We hold our desires up to heaven like crumpled shopping lists, demanding that God play the role of a cosmic vending machine. Yet in His unrelenting, faithful love, He persists in giving us what we truly need, not what we think we want.

So often, we are slow to awaken to God's upside-down economy. We pray for strength, and He gives us weakness to teach us dependence. We beg for clarity, and He gives us fog to teach us trust. We plead for comfort, and He leads us into the wilderness to teach us His sufficiency. Like Jacob wrestling with God until dawn, we grasp and strain for blessings on our terms. Yet the true blessing often comes disguised as a limp, the wound that forces us to lean on God’s grace alone. Our Father knows that what we most deeply need is not the fulfilment of our wishes but the transformation of our wants.

In my years of walking with Jesus, I’ve learned that God’s greatest gift is not in giving us what we want but in teaching us to want what He gives. His ‘no’ to our wants is often His ‘yes’ to our being changed. He sees past the shopping list of our desires to the depths of our soul’s hunger. And in His fierce love, He feeds us with the bread of eternal significance rather than the snacks of momentary pleasure.

The Abba I’ve come to know doesn’t deal in the currency of our shallow wants; He works in the deeper economy of grace. Every perceived denial is, in truth, a delivery of exactly what we need most. God is not in the business of satisfying our wants but in the business of saving our lives. Sometimes salvation arrives as uninvited emptiness, painful patience, or the refining fire of unmet expectations. How often I’ve walked with others through their own appointments with divine disappointment, only to see God’s faithfulness emerge in unexpected ways.

And so, as this year ends, I look back at my own unanswered prayers with struggling gratitude. Every ‘no’ has been a doorway to deeper trust, however unwelcome. Every unmet want has created space for a need I didn’t know I had: a need for mercy, truth, and the unshakable love that only dependence on God can satisfy.

We pray for comfort, and He gives us courage. We ask for escape, and He provides endurance. We seek for miracles, and He offers His presence. And in the end, when our tears have dried and our protests have quieted, we find that His presence was the miracle we needed all along.

In the tender twilight between years, I invite you to release your white-knuckled grip on what you think you want. Open your trembling hands to receive what Love knows you need. For in the economy of grace, our Father’s provision, though often mysterious: is always sufficient, always timely, and always rooted in love.