That He might make you know

So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. – Deuteronomy 8v3

If we are not careful we can spend a lot of our time moaning and complaining and whinging and wondering why we have to go through what we have to go through. Every trial, big or little, send our little minds into a tizzy trying to figure out why it has to happen to us.

Israel must have felt the same. Why does this all happen? Why did we have to go through the wilderness? Why all the struggles and trails and testings and temptations? Why were we so hungry? Why could we not find water? Why did we face enemies?

Here, I suspect, that we have an indication of the answer. Moss tells the people ‘God humbled you. He let you get hungry, and then fed you with manna so that you would learn what your father’s forgot. God wants you to know that you don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’

Sometimes our trials come to remind us that God is in control. Sometimes it comes to take our eyes off of the seen and to look at the unseen because that is what really counts. We need to be humbled because many of us think that we have to sort everything out in our power an in pur strength. We need to understand that we don’t really live by the physical, but by His word.

Our trials and tests should not drive us to despair, but to His word because that is the source of life!

Trails come to humble us and teach us that we live not only by the necessities of this world, but primarily by His word.