If We Lived with God as Our Portion
By Cindi McMenamin
“Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.” (Psalm 16:5-6 NASB)
What do you consider your reward in life? A fulfilling career, satisfying relationships, or being able to find joy in the simple things in life? What about success, notoriety, or financial security?
The problem with those “rewards” is that we can often feel we are missing the mark when our expectations aren’t met. But when you and I adopt a mindset like some of the great men of faith in the Scriptures, we can funnel every circumstance in life, every disappointment, and even every miserable failure, through the grid of God being our portion and reward.
Consider Abraham, who waited years for God to deliver upon a promise to give him a son. Remember David the shepherd boy, psalmist, and giant killer who became Israel’s greatest king, but was also a fugitive for many years of his life. And consider Paul, who was shipwrecked, imprisoned, and beaten and left for dead several times. They all considered God as their portion – or reward in life – regardless of their circumstances.
What if you and I were to adopt the motto: “The Lord is my portion?” Our lives would look very different.
We would be content with our lives.
When the Lord is your portion, you are content and you know what it means to have enough. Instead of praying for more money, a bigger house, a better job, and a happier or more fulfilling life, you realize you have been abundantly blessed.
The writer of Proverbs 30:7-9understood God as His portion, when he said: “Two things I asked of You, Do not refuse me before I die: Keep deception and lies far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is my portion, That I not be full and deny You and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or that I not be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God.” (NASB).
Are you content with what God has given you, realizing He sees what is best for you and knows what you can handle and what you can’t? If you see God as your portion, you will be.
We could surrender the need to succeed.
In Genesis 15:1, God told Abraham, “I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
The Apostle Paul understood this “exceedingly great reward” in Christ when he said, “I consider everything (education, achievement, a spotless reputation, self-achieved righteousness) a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him…” (Philippians 3:8-9).
When we understand the worth of knowing Christ, we can surrender the need to succeed in our eyes and in the eyes of others. When He is our portion we find our reward and our worth in Him, not in anything the world offers. And we can say as David did in Psalm 16:1: “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”
When you and I live like God is our inheritance, our share, and our reward, we also understand that nothing else compares to Him. We’ve won the prize.
Editor’s Note: The following was adapted from 10 Ways We Live Differently When God is Our Portion by Cindi McMenamin. To read the full article, follow this link.
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