My Father Provides
"And Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak."
Joshua 15: 14
King James Version
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EXPLORATION
"Tackle life's problems by trusting God's promises."
Author Unknown
What has God done for me in the past that gives me the assurance I can trust Him to help me today?
"What a wonderful experience mine has been. What inexhaustible supplies have been vouchsafed to the work in my hands. How amazing to mere unaided human reason have been his answers to prayer, even when faith has almost failed and our timidity has begotten distrust instead of love and hope! And God has not failed us once!"
Thomas Barnardo
INSPIRATION
"How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world."
John Paul Richter
Like most young girls who have a father they can admire, I really looked up to my dad. He was my hero. He was a terrific athlete. He had a great personality. And everybody loved him.
When I was about 7-years-old, the local Kiwanis Club in our city had a father-daughter banquet. My dad took me with him and I'll never forget how proud I felt as my "daddy-boy" introduced me to all the business leaders. "This is my girl. My daughter, Dorothy." To this day, I can still feel the aura of joy and honor that surrounded me. It wasn't because I thought I was so great, it was because my dad was a "larger than life" figure in my eyes. He was a trustworthy and gracious person – and this is why I could look up to him with such admiration.
After looking at the life of Caleb, I can only imagine that his daughter, Achsah, looked at her father with great esteem, too. As we found out in our study about the Features of a Father, Caleb portrayed in his life many admirable qualities. He saw and believed the best. He had a heart that was wide open. His strength never waned. And he was the same in the beginning as he was in the end. These characteristics were not unique to Caleb for we find these characteristics are present in our Father in heaven, too.
It is these loving and gracious and kind characteristics that radiate from our Heavenly Father and permeated the life of Caleb that made it so natural for Caleb and his daughter to have a beautiful relationship that is a blueprint for the type of relationship our Heavenly Father wants to have with every one of His daughters and sons.
In our text today, Joshua 15: 14, we are given a jubilant report. All the sons of Anak, the giants that possessed the land, were "driven thence." No longer were the giants threatening God's children. They'd fled town!
Just think for a minute how you would have felt if you had been Achsah, the daughter of the respected Caleb. How would you feel knowing your dad had, through God's power, done what others said was impossible and driven the giants out of the land? As we will see in the next few days, it was extremely critical that Achsah understood her father because when she did, it made a difference in not only their relationship, but in what she was willing to ask her father for.
If you believe your father sees and believes the best about you; if you believe your father has a heart wide-open to you; if you believe your father's strength never diminishes; and if you believe your dad is the same at the beginning as He is at the end – how would this knowledge affect how you approached your father for the needs in your life? Would you be timid? I doubt it! Would you hesitate or hold back your requests? I don't think so. Or would you ever fear that your father wouldn't give you the best he had to offer? Absolutely not!
As we will learn, the features of her father, Caleb, were the driving factor that released in Achsah the boldness to come to her father and ask him for everything she needed to fulfill God's purpose in her life.
In his letter to the Hebrews, the Apostle Paul, in describing the features of our heavenly Father, uses this descriptive language to invite us into the presence of our Father who longs, like Caleb did for his daughter, to give us the entirety of all He has to bestow: "Let us, as God's daughters and sons, walk right up to our Father, with confidence and boldness, and get what He is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help." (Hebrews 4: 16, N.I.V. and The Message.)
When we understand that our Father has and will and is "driving thence" all the giants in our lives, how can we be anything but confident there's no challenge too great or problem too big that our Father can't make a way of escape.
"The acid test of our faith in the promises of God is never found in the easy-going, comfortable ways of life, but in the great emergencies, the times of storm and of stress, the days of adversity, when all human aid fails."
Ethel Bell
AFFIRMATIONS
"God's promises are like the stars; the darker the night, the brighter they shine."
David Nicholas
"My Father, I abandon myself to You. Do with me as You will. Whatever You may do with me I thank you. I am prepared for anything. I accept everything provided Your will is fulfilled in me and in all creatures. I ask for nothing more, my God. I place my soul in Your hands. I give it to You, my God, with all the love of my heart, because I love You. And for me it is a necessity of love, this gift of myself, this placing of myself in Your hands without reserve in boundless confidence, because You are my Father."
Charles de Foucauld
1858-1916
