The Supplier

by Darin Smith

Acts 18:9-10 (NLT) “One night the Lord spoke to Paul in a vision and told him, ‘Don’t be afraid! Speak out! Don’t be silent!10For I am with you, and no one will harm you because many people here in this city belong to me.'”

In 1972, NASA launched the exploratory space probe Pioneer 10. According to Leon Jaroff in Time, the satellite’s primary mission was to reach Jupiter, photograph the planet and its moons, and beam data to earth about Jupiter’s magnetic field, radiation belts, and atmosphere. Scientists regarded this as a bold plan, for at that time no earth satellite had ever gone beyond Mars, and they feared the asteroid belt would destroy the satellite before it could reach its target.

But Pioneer 10 accomplished its mission and much, much more. Swinging past the giant planet in November 1973, Jupiter’s immense gravity hurled Pioneer 10 at a higher rate of speed toward the edge of the solar system. At one billion miles from the sun, Pioneer 10 passed Saturn. At some two billion miles, it hurtled past Uranus; Neptune at nearly three billion miles; Pluto at almost four billion miles. By 1997, twenty-five years after its launch, Pioneer 10 was more than six billion miles from the sun.

And despite that immense distance, Pioneer 10 continued to beam back radio signals to scientists on Earth. “Perhaps most remarkable,” writes Jaroff, “those signals emanate from an 8-watt transmitter, which radiates about as much power as a bedroom night light, and takes more than nine hours to reach Earth.”The Little Satellite That Could was not qualified to do what it did. Engineers designed Pioneer 10 with a useful life of just three years. But it kept going and going. By simple longevity, its tiny 8-watt transmitter radio accomplished more than anyone thought possible.

Do you ever feel like quitting? Of course you do! Who doesn’t? When the wall is collapsing in on all sides and the exit door is still within in our reach, we will choose to quit over staying in. That is human nature. Paul, one of the greatest men of God in the New Testament, faced a similar problem: The city of Corinth in Greece. This metropolis had been destroyed about 150 years before Paul’s time but was rebuilt stronger and populated heavily by freed slaves from various backgrounds. The city housed upwards of 250,000 people–a quarter million people–at any given time. With such an overwhelming task of reaching the people of the city, Paul became distraught. God reassured Paul that even though the scene looked impossible He was with him through it all.

God doesn’t care how big your spiritual batteries are or what you are facing. He will supply the right amount of everything to get the job done. We just have to the patience that He will.

2 Corinthians 4:8 “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don’t give up and quit.”

Faith Lesson: Keep your head held high, God will supply.

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