47. Manna is the Method: Why Does God Only Give Me Enough For Today?

What do you do when yesterday's provision won't cover today's need? That's the wilderness. It comes one day at a time, and just enough, and never quite enough to stop needing tomorrow. And if you're anything like most of us, that makes you a little crazy, because you don't want daily bread. You want a warehouse.

This is part two of the four-part Wilderness Arc. We go to Exodus 16, where God feeds a nation of freed slaves with manna, a word that literally means "what is it?", and attaches one strange rule to it: don't hoard it. The manna they tried to store overnight bred worms and rotted, because God built the provision so it couldn't be stockpiled. Not out of cruelty, but to heal them of the very thing slavery had taught them: that survival depends on what you can grab and keep.

With help from C.S. Song on how God meets us in the ordinary daily provision rather than the spectacular, and Henri Nouwen on the scarcity mentality that makes what we cling to rot in our hands, this episode is about learning to live on enough. It traces the manna all the way to the prayer Jesus taught: give us this day our daily bread. Not a warehouse. Enough, today, and Him.

The daily bread isn't God being cheap with you. It's God keeping you close.

Scripture: Exodus 16:3-4, Exodus 16:15, Exodus 16:19-20, Matthew 6:11, Joshua 5:12.

If this met you where you are, share it with someone living day to day, leave a review, and follow the show so you don't miss the rest of the arc.

Connect with us via our Instagram: @faithformed_pod

Email us any questions or comments to yourpursuitpodcast@gmail.com

Order your copy of my latest book, "The Purpose in the Pause", here

Learn more about me at www.justindbelt.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Here's a question that'll tell you a lot about where your heart is right now. Ready? What do you do when yesterday's provision won't cover today's need? Come on. What do you do? Because that's the wilderness. In the green season, you build a cushion, hopefully, right? You save, you store, you get a little ahead, and there's a piece in that. Um, a buffer between you and the edge. But the desert doesn't let you get ahead. In the desert, it comes one day at a time, and just enough, and never quite enough to stop needing tomorrow. You wake up and there's bread for today. You look for extra, for margin, for a stockpile so that you can finally exhale, and there isn't any. There's only today's. Again, and again, and again. And if you're anything like me, that makes you absolutely crazy. Because personally, I don't want daily provision. I want a warehouse. I don't I want enough saved up that I don't have to trust anybody, including God, I'm just gonna be honest with you, for a good long while. I, Justin, want a margin so wide that I can't see the edge of it. And the wilderness looks at that desire in me and says, Nope, not here. Here, you get today's bread and you get me, Jesus, and you're going to have to decide whether that is enough. Last week we started this arc by saying the wilderness is not a detour. God leads you in on purpose. Today we're gonna go one layer deeper into how He feeds you once you're there. And I'm telling you up front, the way God provides in the desert is not the way you design it. Actually, it's better. But it won't feel better at first. It'll feel like scarcity and it's actually intimacy in disguise. Hi, I'm Justin Belt. This is Faith Formed, the podcast about honest faith for people who don't have it all together. We're trying to build a faith in people that holds up in the middle, in the wilderness. And today we're talking about the manna, about what it means to live on provision that only ever comes one day at a time. And before we jump into today's episode, do me a favor. If you're enjoying Faith Formed, go ahead and give us a five-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. It is a great way for the word to continue to get out about the word about the work that we're doing and how we're trying to grow a community of disciples uh who have a battle-tested faith in who God is. All right, all right, let's go. So I want to take you to Exodus 16. And I think if you have been in the Bible at any point, you kind of know what I'm what I'm talking about. Israel is about six weeks out of Egypt. They've been across the Red Sea, they've been led into the wilderness. Uh, the high of the Red Sea has worn off because now they're hungry, they're scared, and they do the thing that people tend to do in the wilderness, including yours truly. They romanticize the past. Look at Exodus 16, verse 3. They actually say that they wish they died in Egypt, where at least they sat by pots of meat and ate bread until they were full. Read that closely. They are rewriting slavery as a golden corral, as a buffet. And that's what the desert's fear does to your memory. It makes the old bondage look like a banquet, as long as the bondage comes, uh came with a full stomach. It's like uh someone who, you know, maybe it's been years since they've been in a relationship, and the relationship that they were in was toxic, and they're so tired of being lonely, and they're like, oh man, at least, you know, at least so-and-so, you know, would Doordash food or at least so-and-so would watch movies with me sometimes. In a desert and wilderness season, things can and and do get bad enough to where we are able to look back with revisionist history and rose-colored glasses all wrapped into one and find some measure of good in all of the bad that we just walked out of. And here's how God responds to a nation that's romanticizing its own slavery. In true God fashion, he doesn't scold them, he doesn't shake a holy finger and sound thunder and crash lightning against them. No, he feeds them. In Exodus 16, verse 4, then the Lord said to Moses, I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. Now, writing this, of course, the famous song, It's Raining Tacos from out of the sky tacos. But in this case, it's raining manna from out of the sky manna. You know, I'm sure somebody came up with this. Maybe it was Moses. Maybe Moses wrote it, it's raining manna, and somebody translated it into tacos. Yeah, I like that. I like that. That is the gospel according to Justin. So each day, enough for that day. Circle that because that phrase is the whole sermon. And then watch what happens the first morning it appears. Exodus 16, verse 15. The people wake up and there's this fine, flaky substance all over the ground, and they have no idea what it is. So they literally ask in Hebrew, man who, manhu, which means, what is it? And that question becomes the name, right? That's crazy. They call the bread manna, which means, and I love this, it literally means, what is this? They named their daily provision after a question mark. Every morning they ate something whose name was essentially, I don't understand what this is. And I think there's a whole theology in that name, man, if I'm honest with you. Because the wilderness provision God often shows up, the wilderness provision of God often shows up in a form that you don't recognize and you can't explain. Like you were praying for the thing you expected. The job, the check, the door to open. And instead, you got manna, some strange, unfamiliar provision that doesn't look like what you asked for, that you can't quite categorize, that keeps at and that keeps you asking, What is this? God, what what are you even doing? And God's answer is essentially it's bread. It's enough. Eat it and stop trying to identify it. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, eat it and stop trying to identify it. That is prophetic for somebody. Somebody. This entire episode, but this especially, God is speaking to someone who is listening, and you're trying to figure out what it is, and God is saying to you, quit trying to identify it, just eat it. Their provision doesn't have to make sense to you to sustain you. Just eat it. Just eat it. Now here's where it gets pointed because God attaches a rule to the manna, and that rule is really the entire point. Exodus 16, verse 4, again, God says the people will gather enough for that day, and then he adds this in this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. So manna is explicitly a test. It's not just food, it's a daily exam in trust. And here's the rule that makes it a test. Look at verse 19. Moses tells them, No one is to keep any of it until morning. Don't save it, don't stockpile it, don't build the cushion, gather only today's, eat only today's, and trust me again tomorrow. And of course, what do they do? Well, look at verse 20. Some of them don't listen. They keep it till morning because who wouldn't? Because every instinct in a scared human is to store some, to hide some, and to get ahead. And the text says the manna they hoarded bred worms and began to stink. It rotted. The provision that was so perfect for today turned foul the moment they tried to make it tomorrow's security. Oh my gosh. Just yeah. Anyway, don't rush past that because I think that's one of the most quietly devastating things about in the Torah. God built the provision so that it couldn't be hoarded. He designed it to rot. Not because he's cruel, but because he was trying to break something in them that Egypt had put there. Listen, 400 years of slavery teaches you that survival depends on what you can grab and keep and control. And God is trying to raise the people who depend on him, and you can't depend on God and hoard against God at the same time. The stockpile and the trust cannot coexist. So he made a bread that punished the stockpile to teach them the trust. Oh, that's good. And I feel this one personally. So let me just say it plain. A lot of us are trying to hoard our way out of needing God. Yeah, we call it wisdom. We call it planning. We call it being responsible. And some of that genuinely is. But if I'm honest, underneath a lot of my saving is a quiet desire to get to a place where I don't have to trust God so much. A lot of my grumbling in the wilderness is because I'm having to go back to God every single day and say, God, can you give me some more bread for today? Can you give me just enough to make it through the day? And if I'm honest, it drives me crazy. Huh? And the wilderness is God's mercy against the exact instinct to buffer against his daily faithfulness. God keeps the provision daily, not because he can't give me more, because he can. Right? The cattle on a thousand hills, they belong to him. He's able to do exceeding abundantly, right? But he keeps the provision daily because he knows what a full warehouse of provision would do to my heart. It would let me forget him. But barely enough keeps me looking up. Barely enough keeps me close. Barely enough keeps me right under his wing. Barely enough keeps me right in step with him because I'm waiting for the next provision. And I want to bring in a voice here because y'all know I'm big on bringing in theological voices to support what we're talking about and also to help with revelation and understanding. And I want to bring in a voice right here that we've mentioned several times on the podcast, but he names exactly what's happening in a heart that hoards. Okay. Henry Nguyen wrote a little book called Bread for the Journey. And in it he describes what he calls a scarcity mentality. He says, as fearful people, we develop a mindset that says there's not enough. Not enough food, so I'd better save mine. Not enough love, so I'd better hold my friends close so no one takes them. Not enough security, so I'd better grab all I can and guard it. It's the mind of a person convinced the well is running dry. So everything becomes about hoarding against the shortage. And then Newen says this. He says, the tragedy of hoarding is that what you cling to ends up rotting in your hands. Come on, man. Oh my gosh. What you cling to ends up rotting in your hands. Y'all, that is Exodus 16 in one sentence. 3,000 years later, the scarcity mentality doesn't protect you. It spoils the very thing you were trying to protect. The hoarded manna stinks. The grasped influence suffocates. The friendship that's held onto so tightly. The relationship that's held onto so tightly, it suffocates. The security that we white knuckle turns to anxiety and our grab it rots. Newen says that the opposite of the scarcity mentality is the abundance mentality. And here's the part that I think turns it. The abundance mentality isn't the belief that you personally have a huge stockpile, it's the belief that there is enough because God is the source and God does not run out. It's the freedom of a person who is stopped trying to be their own warehouse because they finally trust the one who rains down bread. And Nuan says the strange miracle is that when you live from abundance, when you hold things loosely and even give them away, what you have multiplies. There are leftovers. The scarcity heart hoards and it rots. The abundance heart trusts and it multiplies. The wilderness is where God performs this surgery from scarcity to abundance on us. He takes away our ability to hoard, precisely so that he can heal us of the need to. He's Taiwanese, and really a significant Asian theological voice, especially in this last century. And his whole project was to root theology not in abstract Western lecture halls, but in the ordinary daily physical stuff of common people's lives. Rice, bread, the everyday labor of feeding a family. So Song insisted that God meets people not primarily in the grand religious event, but in the ordinary provision of daily life, in the rice bowl, in the shared meal, in the plain bread that keeps a poor family alive one more day. And I bring in Song here because I think he helps us see something that Mana is quietly teaching us. We keep waiting for God in the spectacular, the dramatic rescue, the miraculous check, the mountaintop. And God keeps showing up in the ordinary morning, in the plain, unremarkable daily provision that we almost don't notice because it's not flashy. And Song's whole point here is that the sacred is hiding in the ordinary. Oh, that's good. And that a theology obsessed with the spectacular will walk right past God in every day. God doesn't have to come and sit down on your bed and tell you you're calling in order for Him to speak to you as you're helping in children's church. God doesn't have to appear to you in a bright shining light. When just a flicker of the nightlight in your children's room is enough to show you that just how you're loving your children in that moment is the same way that God loves you every moment of your life. Y'all, the manna was not a spectacle. After the first few days, imagine how ordinary it was. Like same bread, same morning, same gathering. It stopped being a miracle and it started becoming a routine. I mean, and that's exactly where most of us lose our sense of God's provision in the routine. Because we've seen, or because we've been trained to only recognize God when He's loud. Oh. In the church service, when the organ is high and the praise is high, we recognize God then. But what about when it's just an acoustic guitar playing and the lights are on? Huh? But see, song would say that the daily bread is the miracle. The fact that you woke up, that there was enough, that the ordinary need got met one more ordinary time, yo, that is God showing up the way he most often shows up in the plain provision of an unremarkable morning. If some of you are waiting for God to prove himself in your wilderness with something dramatic, and you're missing him entirely because he's been feeding you every single ordinary morning the whole time. The provision's not always going to be a spectacle, family. Usually it's just going to be enough again, quietly, the way bread shows up. And my challenge to me and to you is to learn to see that as the miracle it is. And the desert stops feeling like abandonment, and it starts feeling like daily, faithful, and unflashy love, which is still perfect love from a perfect God. So I have to show you where this goes because the manna isn't just an Old Testament story. It runs straight through the whole Bible and lands in a prayer you've probably prayed a thousand times. When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray in Matthew 6, verse 11, he gave them a line right out of the wilderness. He says, Give us this day our daily bread. Not give us this month's bread, not give us a warehouse, a stockpile, a cushion for the next 10 years, but daily bread. See, Jesus, who knew the manna story, deliberately built daily dependence into the model prayer. He could have taught us to ask for security, but he taught us to ask for enough today and to come back tomorrow and to ask again. Why would he do that? Because the daily ask is the point. The dependence is the point. If God gave you a year's provision all at once, how often would you talk to him? You'd take the warehouse and you'd disappear until it ran low. But daily bread means daily contact. Daily bread means daily dependence. Daily bread means daily relationship. And the reason God keeps provision daily is not because he's stingy. No, no, no, he's not stingy. It's because he wants you. He would rather have you at his door every single morning with an empty basket than to have you comfortable and distant with the full one. The manna is not primarily about food. It's about a father who found a way to make sure his children came looking for him every single day. And I can speak personally to this because I had a moment where I was crashing out in prayer. And I was like, God, I'm sick of having to depend on you for every single thing. Why can't I do this on my own? And God says, Son, You're acting like your dependence annoys me. You're acting like your dependence frustrates me. You're acting like, get this, you're acting like you don't have a loving father who delights in meeting your daily needs. And I think God had me share that because there are some of you out there who feel the exact same way. Because when your children come to you and ask for the same thing, can we have ice cream? Can we have ice cream? Can we have ice cream? Or when your children aren't quite fully independent and they're asking, you know, what clothes should I wear? We get annoyed. We're like, you you should be able to do this. Yet God is oh God is so good. God is so good and so loving that God cherishes our dependence because it keeps us close to Him. Man. God, I thank you for your goodness. I thank you that you don't get sick and tired and annoyed of us. And here's the thing that turns the whole desert. Look at what happens to the manna eventually. In Joshua 5, verse 12, the moment Israel enters the promised land and eats the produce of the land, the manna stops. The very next day it's gone because they don't need it anymore. The daily miracle of the wilderness was for the wilderness. It was never meant to last forever. It was God's specific provision for a specific season. So if you're in the desert eating daily bread and aching for a warehouse, hear this. The manna is a sign that you're being carried through, not left in. It's the food of the journey, not the destination. One day the manna will stop, not because God abandoned you, but because you'll have arrived somewhere that you don't need it anymore. But for the right now in the wilderness, the daily bread is not God being cheap with you. It's God keeping you close, and close to God with just enough is a better place than to be far from Him with the full warehouse. So here's your charge, and carry it into tomorrow morning with you. Stop despising your daily bread. Stop treating the fact that God only gave you enough for today as evidence that he's forgotten you, when it might be the clearest proof that he's keeping you close. Open your hands. The hoarding was never going to save you anyway. It was only ever going to rot in your grip and teach you a fear God is trying to heal you from. So gather today's portion, yeah, eat it, and let tomorrow's be tomorrow's problem, because the same God who fed you this morning will be there in the morning to come. Quit waiting for the spectacular and start seeing the miracle and the ordinary provision you've been walking past. And come to his door every single day with your empty basket. Not because you failed to plan, but because the daily walk to his door is the entire point. He kept the bread daily because he wanted you daily. Give him that. Enough today and him. Decide that's enough. Because it is. Let's pray. Father, we come to you with our empty baskets. And if we're honest, a lot of us come resentful that they're empty, wishing you'd just fill the warehouse and let us stop needing you quite so often. For the one white knuckling of stockpile trying to hoard their way into a place where your faithfulness is optional, would you gently loosen their grip? Show them that what they're clinging to is already rotting, and that the opened hand was always the freer one. For the one who can't see you in their wilderness because they've been waiting for something dramatic, would you open their eyes to the ordinary morning, to the plain bread, to the fact that they woke up and there was enough again, and that this quiet, daily, unflashy provision has been you the entire time. For the one exhausted by living day to day, aching for margin they don't have, would you meet them at their door every single morning? Teach them that daily dependence on you is not a lesser life. It's the closest life. And that you kept them at you you kept the daily bread because you wanted them daily. And God, for all of us, give us the faith to pray the prayer your son taught us, and to actually mean it. Give us this day our daily bread, just today's bread, and you. God, let that be enough. Because you're enough. In Jesus' name. Amen. So if this found you in a season of barely enough, you know someone else who's rationing and worrying and aching for margin right now as well. Send them this one. Sometimes the most freeing thing you can tell a person living day to day is that the daily bread isn't punishment, it's closeness. And be that voice for someone today. And if faith formed is meeting you where you actually live, the best way to help it reach the next person in the wilderness is to leave a rating and a review wherever you listen. It genuinely takes a minute, and it's how new people find this in the noise. Then follow or subscribe because we're two parts into this four-part series, and I don't want you to miss what's coming up. In part three, we talk about what actually grows in dry ground, about what the desert produces in you that the green season never could. So, family, keep gathering, but only just today's. And I'll see you next week. Be blessed.