Cheese Sandwiches Again??!

[Passage: Romans 8:31-39.]

There was an story told by Peter Kreeft of a poor European family who saved for years to buy tickets to sail to America. Once at sea, they carefully rationed the cheese and bread they had brought for the journey. After 3 days, the boy complained to his father, “I hate cheese sandwiches. If I don’t eat anything else before we get to America, I’m going to die.” Giving the boy his last nickel, the father told him to go to the ship’s galley and buy an ice-cream cone. When the boy returned a long time later with a wide smile, his worried dad asked, “Where were you?” “In the galley, eating three ice-cream cones and a steak dinner!” “All that for a nickel?” “Oh, no, the food is free,” the boy replied. “It comes with the ticket.”

Paul wrote to the Romans in Romans 8:32 - "Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, freely give us all things?" In light of the context, Paul was talking about the love of God. God loved and cared for humankind so much that He provided for their ultimate need, the need of salvation, by giving up His own Son. This was a demonstration of God's love toward us. If God cared so much for us that He fulfilled our ultimate need, the need for salvation, how much more would He meet our other needs? In another sense, God's meeting of our needs is an outflow of His love towards us. He knows us from the inside out. In Matthew 6:8, the Bible clearly tells us that God knows what we need even before we ask from Him. On our side, all we need is the faith in God that He will meet all our needs, knowing that if He loves us so much that He is willing to give up His only Son for our ultimate need, how much more will he freely meet all our other minute needs in light of the ultimate need for salvation?

[Response: Take some time to just commit your needs to the Lord. It may be a financial need, an emotional support, God's intervention, or restoration of relationship, whatever it may be, just commit it to the Lord and trust that He hears and will answer in His time]

[Action: Look around you for someone in need. Whether it is a need for a meal, a need for a friend, a need for support, whatever it may be, like Christ fulfilled our need, let us too be the extended hand of Christ and demonstrate Christ's love for that person by meeting that person's immediate need.]