Is God Everything You Need? (trick question)

. August 13, 2011
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You have big dreams: Missions, or perhaps homeschooling or Christian schools for your kids.

Saving money, investing, and using the income to fund your dreams seems like an awfully human way to get there. Does relying on your investments reflect a lack of trust in God?

Let's draw some finer distinctions.

Something can be hyperbole in one sense and not in another. For example, the statement "You are everything to me" may be true in a romantic sense without implying that one's significant other is literally a source of food.

Similarly, saying that "God is everything" is hyperbolic in one sense: God is not literally our food. In another sense, it isn't: God is provider of the things we need, which glorifies Him as the Giver.

Is it possible to trust God and yet rely on the gifts He gives us? Take a look at Proverbs 31 (emphases mine):

10 An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
11 The heart of her husband trusts in her,
And he will have no lack of gain.

 16 She considers a field and buys it;
From her earnings she plants a vineyard.

17 She girds herself with strength
And makes her arms strong.

25 Strength and dignity are her clothing,
And she smiles at the future.

30 Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,
But a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.
31 Give her the product of her hands,
And let her works praise her in the gates. 
Don't over-simplify. That tends to be a good hermeneutical rule.

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