God Is Your Portion
Have you noticed that things wear out? No matter how durable, nothing is immune to the test of time. Along with time, weather, friction, repeated or misuse, are also causes of things wearing down or wearing out. After constant exposure to sunlight, that beautifully painted flowerpot on your front porch isn’t quite as colorful by summer’s end. Your air conditioning unit needs to occasionally have coolant added in order to work properly and efficiently. The tempered steel lawnmower blade gets eventually needs sharpened, even if all it touches are blades of grass. The brake pads on your car need replaced every 50,000 miles or so. Milk in your refrigerator lets you know when it has gone bad.
Our bodies wear out with age as well. I work hard to stay in shape but even so, I just cannot do what I did even five years ago; not just physically, my energy level is less too. Every one of us does, or will, come face to face with age-imposed physical, emotional, and cognitive decline, and sadly, for many people, there is not much golden about their Golden Years.
Almost everything known to man declines or decays with age. Many wines improve with age but even with wine, there comes a point when it is not longer as good as it was yesterday.
As we get older, we regularly need to rely on other people or other things more and more. However, as I just mentioned, we live in a world that wears out over time, so even those people or things we need to rely on more and more at some point begin to fail us as well. However, we serve a God who never wears out, who never fails us, who never needs refilled with refrigerant to work properly. In Psalm 73:25-26 we find these words – “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Psalm 73 is one of twelve psalms (50, 73-83) known as the “Psalms of Asaph.” Asaph, the son of Berechiah (1 Chronicles 15:17) and a descendent of the royal family of Judah from the tribe of Levi, is thought to be either the author or transcriber of these psalms.
Just what does it mean that “God is your portion?” That is not language we typically use in modern society. The Hebrew word for “portion” simply means “allotment” or “inheritance”.
If God is your portion, then He is your unsurpassed provider. Romans 8:32 tells us – “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” If God is your portion, then He is also your greatest inheritance. It is not heaven, even with all its precious stones, pearls and gold (read Revelation 21), that is a Jesus-follower’s greatest inheritance. Rather, the greatest inheritance is the One who dwells there. We read this in Revelation 21:3 – “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” And if God is your portion, He is your never-ending hope. Read Lamentations 3:22-24.
So, God is your permanent allotment, your permanent inheritance, your permanent hope. He is enough. He is all you need. He is your portion.
If you are encouraged by this or any of my writings, you can subscribe to be notified by email when I post something new. To subscribe, click here. Once you put in your email address you will then get an email confirming that you wish to subscribe. Thank you.