“‘Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the Lord your God.
2 “‘Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary. I am the Lord.
3 “‘If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, 4 I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. 5 Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.
6 “‘I will grant peace in the land, and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid. I will remove wild beasts from the land, and the sword will not pass through your country. 7 You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you. 8 Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.
9 “‘I will look on you with favor and make you fruitful and increase your numbers, and I will keep my covenant with you. 10 You will still be eating last year’s harvest when you will have to move it out to make room for the new. 11 I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. 12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. 13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.
When we are in need, we have survival instincts that allow us to seek out that which will ultimately help us out of our need. However, when we are rescued from desperation and on solid footing once again, we quickly forget the past. We forget how we were in need in the first place, and who or what actually helped us in that time. In many ways, the actual getting of what we ask for can be the worst possible outcome.
Getting what we want inflates our self-worth to a point of irrational self-worship. We become limitless in our own minds, where only just before we were severely limited and in desperate need of rescue. In that emergency was a God who has promised and given everything, without demanding much in return. He gives when we need him, even though we refuse to acknowledge him. He is present in our lives when we pronounce strong disinterest in being present in his. He walks close enough to meet our daily needs, undeterred in his love by our lack of acknowledgement of his presence. He is a God grieved to see his children making decisions that hurt them. He simply desires for us to see him as a God who supplies our needs because He cares.
There is nothing more satisfying for a parent than to see his or her child achieve something truly great. God desires for us to have confidence in ourselves, but His deeper desire is that we find our ultimate confidence in him, since no other confidence is really any confidence at all.
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