And God was displeased with this [reliance on human resources], and He smote Israel. – 1 Chronicles 21:7, Amplified Bible

Most Christians don’t have a clue how irritated God gets when we rely on ourselves rather than on Him. Consider 1 Chronicles 21. In this passage, King David instructed his captain, Joab, to take a census of the people of Israel – without God’s instruction or permission – to see how strong in number they were. In return for this act of reliance on human strength, God smote Israel with a plague that killed 70,000 men (not including women and children).

Why does God hate it when we rely on ourselves? The answer is simple: our self-reliance steals our attention and our time away from the work that He has for us to do. As Oswald Chambers so succinctly puts it, “Have you ever noticed what Jesus said would choke the Word He puts in us? Is it the devil? No— “the cares of this world” (Matthew 13:22).* It is because He knows that the cares of this world crowd out the concerns of Heaven that Jesus admonished us in Matthew 6 to stop worrying about our needs and to “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things [all your needs] shall be added unto you [taken care of].” (Matthew 6:33, KJV) In other words, put God’s concerns first, and God will be sure to provide for our earthly needs.

Implicit in Matthew 6:33 is a warning that not too many people think about it. If God will take care of our needs when we seek His kingdom first, then what will happen if we put the world’s cares before His? If we put the world’s cares before God’s concerns, then there is a strong chance that God will resist us in our attempts to provide for our earthly needs. Does not God tell us in James 4:6 that He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble? When we shirk God’s provision in favor of our own, have we not fed our pride in ourselves and starved our faith in God?

If you are suffering from constant confusion, and if you feel like no matter what you do, you just can’t get ahead in life, then examine yourself. Are you relying on your own devices to navigate this life? Or, are you relying on God’s?

Even though God guarantees to provide for our needs if we seek Him first, He does not guarantee that life will be easy. It could be quite tempestuous. But, even in the midst of the storm, there will be no confusion, there will be no doubt, and there will be perfect heart peace. If you are laden with confusion, doubt, and double-mindedness, chances are that you are relying on human resources, not heavenly ones.

* SOURCE: www.utmost.org, May 23 entry.