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Now, here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory. Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, you know, rooted in God's name is the phrase Jehovah Jireh. It's one of the most popular names in Hebrew for God, Jehovah Jireh. It means literally the God who provides, and that's what we're going to talk about today.
The miracles of God's provision. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. We've all prayed for something we needed, and then wondered why the answer seemed so slow in coming.
Well, our heavenly Father delights in meeting the needs of His children, and today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress shows how you can position yourself to experience God's provision in the days ahead. But first, let's take a moment to hear some important ministry updates. Thanks, David, and welcome again to a fresh new week of Bible teaching on Pathway to Victory, as we continue our brand new series on miracles called Divine Invasions. You know, most of us know what it's like to be short on cash.
It's a crummy feeling, and if so, then today's message is for you. Today, we come to the miracles of God's provision, and I want to be careful here. Because this is where a lot of people get confused, God is not a genie who exists to make you wealthy. But when God moves heaven and earth to meet a genuine need, that's provision only He could accomplish. The truth is, God knows exactly what you need, and He's promised to provide.
I've curated this teaching series on divine invasions into my brand new book by the same title. It includes seven chapters. Covering the amazing ways that God breaks into our ordinary world with His supernatural power, my book is yours when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. In fact, it'll arrive at your home along with eight divine invasions encouragement cards. I'm going to say more about my book, Divine Invasions, and other resources later in the program.
But right now, let's resume a study we started last time. On Friday's program, we identified some of our pressing needs, whether financial, emotional, physical, or otherwise. Today, we're specifically addressing God's miracles of provision. We've seen what our needs are. God understands what our needs are.
Let's talk about for a moment the promise of God's provision. God promises to meet the needs that we have. Listen to Psalm 145 verses 14 to 16. For the Lord sustains all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due time.
You open your hand and. Satisfy the desire of every living thing. God has promised to meet our needs, and that leads me to what I really want to drill down on for the next few minutes, and that is the principles of God's provision. We need God's provision; He's promised to meet those provisions. But how does He do it?
I want you to write down these four principles that will help you experience God's divine invasions, His miraculous. Provision for the needs you have in your life today. First of all, the principle of ask. A S K. Listen to Jesus' words in Matthew seven verses seven eight.
Very familiar words. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and him who knocks it will be opened.
Now those words ask, seek, and knock are important because they are in the present imperative. Keep on asking, ing. Keep on asking, keep on knocking, keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on asking, seeking, and knocking. Why does God say that we need to be persistent in our praying?
You know, Luke eighteen reminds us of the importance of persistence in prayer. Remember the story Jesus told about the widow who was being persecuted by the Sadducees, who were trying to foreclose on her house, and she came to this no good judge and asked him for protection from the Sadducees. And Jesus said the judge was one who did not fear God nor did he respect other people.
So the widow every day would go and make her plea to the judge, and he would say no. And then one day he said, "This I'm going to give you what you want. I'm going to give you what you want. I'm going to give this to you, lest your continued arraigning of me wears me out." That's what he said. And then Jesus said, "If the unrighteous judge will do this for this woman, how much more will your heavenly Father do for you?
Pray with persistence. Tell God what you need." The other night I was having dinner with my grandchildren, and I asked my granddaughter in the first grade. I said, "What are you learning in school right now?" She said, "Well, I'm learning the difference between needs and wants." I said, "Well, that's interesting. What's the difference between needs and wants?" She said, "Well, needs are the things you really have to have, like air and food. Wants are the things you wish you had, like toys." God promises to give you your needs, but He doesn't promise to give you all of your wants.
I said, "Well, that is fantastic." You know, I'm going to preach a sermon about that this Sunday. She said, "Paul, Paul, you always say that." But it did make me think. When she asked that, I've got to ask the question to address the elephant in the room right now, and that is, why don't we get what we want all the time? You keep saying, pray with persistence, pray with boldness. Is that a guarantee God's going to give you what you want?
No, it's not a guarantee. There are three reasons we don't always get what we want. I want you to write them down. This is bonus material, not on your outline. Three reasons we don't get sometimes what we want.
First of all, we don't ask for what we want. James four two says, "You do not have because you do not ask." Now there are sometimes God gives us things that we don't ask for. That's His grace. But many times God giving is connected to our asking. We don't ask.
Secondly, we ask for the wrong reasons. The wrong Motives. James four three says, "You ask and do not have because you ask with wrong motives, so that you might spend it on your pleasures." Jesus said. In Matthew six thirty one thirty three, don't worry about these things. What will we eat?
What will we drink? What will we wear? For your heavenly Father knows your need for all those things. But here is what you are to concern yourself with: seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Listen, when you start to focus on what God is interested in, what His priorities are, it is amazing how your desires change.
How your desires become God's desires, how those desires shift to those things that God is interested in, isn't that what Psalm thirty-seven four promises? Delight yourself in the Lord, make Him central in your life, and He will do what? He will give you the desires of your heart. Why is that? Because your desires become His desires.
One reason we don't get everything we want is we ask for the wrong motives, and thirdly, sometimes we don't get what we want because we ask for things that are outside God's will in our life. Let's be real clear about this: nowhere in the Bible is there any guarantee that God will give us everything we ask. Every promise in the Bible about answered prayer is always within the boundary of God's will. First John five fourteen says, "And this is the confidence we have in Him that if we ask anything according to His will, we know He hears us." Think of God's will as A fence around your life. It's a fence not meant to keep good things from coming into your life, but to keep bad things, evil things, from coming into your life.
It is the believer's protection. But when we do pray for things that are within the will of God, when we do pray for the desires we have that are in alignment with God's desires, God's default action is to give us what we want. He wants to give us what we want if it's the right thing and within His will. He said this in Matthew seven verses nine to eleven. He said, "What man is there among you who, when his son asks for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, would give him a?" A peanut butter and jelly fish sandwich.
Well, it's not exactly what the text says, but it's the idea. If your son asks you for a loaf of bread, you give him a stone. If he asks for a fish, will he not give him a snake? Will he? If you then being evil, that means sinful.
If you know how to give good gifts to your children, there it is again. How much more will your sinless father, who is in heaven, give you what is good for those who ask him? In other words, just like the unrighteous judge, if an un Righteous judge will give a widow what she wants. How much more will a perfect judge of all the world, God, give? If we, being sinful parents, still have this desire to give our children good gifts, how much more will our perfect heavenly Father want to do for us?
The principle of ask. If we're going to experience God's miraculous provision in our life, secondly, the principle of work, the principle of work. My pastor, are you saying that we have to work for our miraculous provisions? Yes, many times, many times. The way God provides for what we need is through our labor.
In Deuteronomy eight eighteen. God says, "You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, and that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day." Now, ultimately, God's responsible for every good and perfect gift in our life, but sometimes those gifts come through our work.
Somebody said it this way: God gives us the strength to dig the ditch. To earn the money, to buy the bread, to get the strength to dig the ditch, God's the one who's providing the breath of life for us to provide for ourselves and our family. And in God's word, there is a link between poverty and laziness.
Now, hear me clearly: some people can't work. Because of physical limitations or for age, and we're to be gracious and helpful to people like that. But for the majority of us that can work, there's a link between our not working and poverty. Jaw down Proverbs 19:15: Laziness cast into deep sleep, and an idle man will suffer hunger. Or Proverbs 24: The sluggard does not plow after the autumn, so he begs during the harvest, and he has nothing.
Proverbs twenty one verses twenty five to twenty six. The desire of the sluggard puts him to death, for his hands refuse to work. All day long he is craving, while the righteous gives and does not hold back. And then, of course, Paul adopted that principle in Second Thessalonians three ten. For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work.
Than he is not to eat either. That's the principle of work. Another principle, a third principle, involved in experiencing God's provision is the principle of refuge. In Psalm 34, we know the situation of that particular psalm. David was fleeing from King Saul, who was trying to kill him, but God protected him.
Look what he says in verses eight through ten of Psalm 34. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints, for to those who fear Him there is no want. The young lions do lack, and they suffer hunger.
But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. Even strong young lions sometimes aren't successful in capturing their prey, and they go hungry. But a child of God never lacks any good thing. The principle of refuge. What does it mean to seek refuge?
It means to trust completely in God. To seek shelter from God. When we lived in Eastland, our first pastorate, across the street from the parsonage was an old educational building, about a hundred years old. But the basement had been designated as a storm shelter, and so it seemed like almost every night during the springtime there'd be a tornado warning. The sirens would go off, and so we'd bundle up our girls and would go over to the shelter and go downstairs into the basement.
And so forth.
Now, a lot of times, I'd make sure my family was down there. Then I would stand outside on the street because I didn't like the thought of being cooped up in a windowless room with strangers.
So I thought I could stand out in the street and be fairly safe. Knowing I could hightail it into the storm shelter if I needed to, but there's some things I couldn't protect myself from—a sudden lightning bolt or a car speeding down the road. If I was going to be completely safe, I just didn't need to be near the shelter. I needed to be in the shelter. And it's the same way with seeking protection from God.
To take refuge in God means to depend upon Him completely, to trust Him completely. And finally, the principle of generosity.
Now, this is key if we want to experience God's miraculous provision in our life. And let me be clear: this is not the prosperity gospel I'm preaching to you. This is God's truth. There is a link between God's provision in our life and our provision for other people. God many times provides for our needs through the generosity of others, and He provides for the needs of others through our generosity.
Do you see that link? God sometimes provides for our needs through other people. He provides for other people's needs through our generosity. Philippians four nineteen is a key verse that teaches that. Paul said, "For my God will supply all your needs through our generosity." According to his riches and glory in Christ Jesus.
God will provide for all of your needs, not all your greed's, but all of your needs. But you can't yank that verse just out of context. The context of this is generosity. In verses fifteen and sixteen, Paul commends the Philippians, saying they were the only ones who gave to support him in his ministry in Thessalonica, and it's because of their generosity that God is going to meet their needs as well. There's a link between our generosity.
And God's generosity in Second Corinthians nine verses six and seven, Paul said, "For this I say, he who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully." What is he talking about?
Sowing and reaping. That's an agricultural image. There, a farmer who throws lots of seeds out, guess what, is going to have lots of crops in return. But a stingy farmer who only gives a few. Few seeds is only going to have a few crops when harvest time comes.
It's the same way with money. When we give it generously, we're going to receive generously.
Sometimes it's financial. Many times it's in other ways. But if we give generously, we will receive generously. And many times God provides for our needs through the generosity of others. I have a friend.
Who used to work for another ministry here in town, and the ministry went through a downsizing, and he lost his job. He was panicked. He had two children in college, didn't know what to do. And then, on top of all of that, the bottom fell out. Literally, the bottom of his hot water heater fell out.
He didn't know what to do. He got a telephone call from a friend he worked with, and this friend said, "I have just felt led to come by your house and give you something." So the friend came by and gave my friend a check for a thousand dollars, just exactly what he needed to pay for the hot water heater and to have it installed. That's the way God works. Many times, other people and their generosity are the conduit of God's blessing in our life, and many times we are the conduit through which God pours His blessings into the lives of others. You know, when we think about the principle of generosity in our giving and experiencing God's blessing, I think of some Christian writers like Randy Alcorn or our friend David Green at Hobby Lobby, who through his generosity blessed our church.
But one name I bet you never think of when you think of Christian stewardship is Stephen King, the writer of all those horror fiction novels. And yet, Stephen King, a few years ago, was in a serious automobile accident, nearly took his life, and that accident changed his perspective about everything, including money and giving. A few years ago, he gave the commencement speech at Vassar College, and I was reading last week. Two weeks ago, that speech, and it reads like something straight out of the book of Ecclesiastes or the book of Proverbs. I want you to listen to this; it'll blow your mind.
Stephen King said a couple of years ago, "I found out what you can't take it with you means. I found out while I was lying in a ditch at the side of a country road, covered with mud and blood, and with the tibia of my right leg poking out the side of my jeans like a branch of a tree taken down in a thunderstorm. I had a Mastercard in my wallet." But when you're lying in a ditch with broken glass in your hair, no one accepts Mastercard. We all know that life is ephemeral. But on that particular day, and in the months that followed, I got a painful but extremely valuable look of life's simple backstage truths.
We come into this world naked and broke. We may be dressed when we go out, but we're just as broke. Warren Buffett going out broke. Bill Gates going out broke. Tom Hanks going out broke.
Stephen King broke. Not a crying dime. All the money you earn, all the stocks you buy, all the mutual funds you trade, all of that is mostly smoke and mirrors. It's still going to be a quarter past, getting late, whether you tell time on a Timex or Rolex. No matter how large your bank account, no matter how many credit cards you have, sooner or later things will begin to go wrong with the only three things you can really call your own: your body, your spirit, and your mind.
So, I want you to consider making your life one long gift to others, and why not? All you have is on loan anyway. All that lasts is what you pass on. We have a power to help, the power to change, and why should we refuse? Because we're going to take it with us.
Please, giving is a way of taking the focus off the money we make and putting it back where it belongs: on the lives we lead, the families we raise, the communities that nurture us. A life of giving, not just money, but time and spirit, repays. It helps us remember that we may be going out broke, but right now we're doing okay. Right now we have the power to do great good for others and for ourselves.
So I ask you to begin giving. I think you'll find in the end that you got back in return far more than you ever gave. And did more good than you ever dreamed. And folks, when you spend your money sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with others, you are giving other people the greatest gift they need—a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ. You know, there's a powerful principle woven through everything I've just shared with you.
When you give, not just your money, but your time and your spirit, you discover that you receive far more than you ever surrendered. That's the economy of God's kingdom, and nowhere is that truer than when your generosity carries the gospel to someone who's never heard it. That's exactly what your gift to Pathway to Victory accomplishes. When you support this ministry, you're sending this message of hope into homes where despair is settled in.
So today, would you partner with me to thank you for your generous gift today? I'm going to send you my hardcover book for this series, Divine Invasions. We live in a world that insists the age of miracles is over, but nothing could be further from the truth. I'll show you from Scripture how God still invades our Our ordinary lives with His extraordinary power. This book is my gift to you.
When you support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, I also want to invite you to stay with us through the end of today's program, because we have a special Ask Dr. Jeffress feature. A listener asked me about a phrase you've probably heard many times: a hedge of protection. What does that actually mean?
Well, the answer comes from a surprising place in Scripture. And I think it will bring you great comfort.
So stay tuned. But first, here's David. You're invited to request a hardcover copy of Dr. Jeffress's brand new book, Divine Invasions, when you give a generous gift to support the Ministry of Pathway to Victory. Just call eight six six nine nine nine two nine six five.
You could visit ptv dot org or text ptv to seven eight eight zero zero. And when your gift is one hundred dollars or more, we'll also send you, in addition to the book, this month's teaching series on audio and video. Disc, along with the companion study guide, to request these resources, call eight six six nine nine nine two nine six five, or make your request online at ptv dot org. You could send your donation by mail. Write to P O Box two twenty three six zero nine Dallas Texas seven five two two two.
That's P O Box two twenty three six zero nine Dallas Texas seven five two two two. And now it's time for a special edition of Ask Dr. Jeffers. Dr. Jeffers stopped by the studio recently to answer a question from one of our listeners.
What is a hedge of protection? And should we pray for one? Interestingly, that phrase came from the lips of Satan. He was talking to God about God's servant Job, and he said, "Consider your servant Job. I mean, of course, he praises you, God.
You have built a hedge of protection around him. A hedge of protection is that wall that means nothing apart from God's will is going to come into our life, and it's something God does for us. There's no harm in." Praying for a hedge of protection around ourselves, our mate, our children, our grandchildren, but it gives us great comfort. It should, from the story of Job, to know there is nothing that enters our life that doesn't come without God's permission. Thanks, Dr.
Jeffress. I'm David J. Mullins.
Well, provision isn't the only miracle God still performs today. In a world full of very real dangers, we all sense our need for divine protection. Learn about miracles of protection Tuesday on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.
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