Substitution~Thursday

​What about those needs that go unmet?


The cries that seem to go unheard?

We all have prayed and believed for things, only to have our hopes  fall apart right before our eyes.

The job that we (or our husbands) desperately need- the one that was a sure thing in the interview, the one they all but told you was yours - and it went to someone else.

The healing that won’t just make life better, but the kind that ensures life will continue for someone we love...but then it doesn’t happen, and we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Except it’s not a shadow. It is death itself, and it seems it’s going to swallow us whole.

Where is Jesus in these times? Where is the daily provision we so desperately need?

This is where being a follower of Jesus gets real. Where it stops being an idea or an ideal, and we have to wrestle and walk it out in the mud and blood and mess of real life.

Here, if we learn to take these very real, very painful places to Him - daily - moment by moment (literally...because sometimes surviving with our hearts intact is a minute by minute fight), here is where we learn what He means when He says, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Here, He becomes the bread of life, and we must gather in His words, or we won’t make it.

Here, He speaks to the tattered places in our souls, and with His breath he knits what was torn back together. What was devastated and lost,He begins to speak words of life and restoration over. But we must gather it in.
How much bread do you need today?


“Man does not live by bread alone but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4

Prayer:
Jesus, I so want to live like this, to depend on You like this...but I don’t know how. Show me in my places of deepest hurt and disappointment how to turn and hear from You.  Make the word of Your mouth my source of life. Breathe over my broken places. Give me a new picture of what it looks like to live dependent on You- with no cheap substitutions where I try to make life more bearable or more predictable. Help me to live in the mystery of Your provision.

​​Author: Brooke Kireta

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