Hidden Manna
We are given the promise that those who overcome will be given the “Hidden Manna”. For most of us, we probably think of the time that we will be in Heaven, and are face to face with the One that called Himself the Bread of Life. I would like to suggest that this promise needn’t be relegated just to the distant future. Consider the young nation of Israel for a moment: wandering in the wilderness, they needed food to eat. It is interesting to see how God addressed this need. It was entirely within His power to provide more than one day’s worth of food at a time. If He had led them to a huge storehouse of food, they would have come to depend on that, instead of on Him. His method required them to get up each day, and gather only enough for that day. Those who disobeyed and gathered more found that hoarding was unprofitable.
With His promise to give us the hidden manna, God is offering us the opportunity to learn to trust in Him. We awake in the morning with absolutely nothing in our spiritual bank accounts. He credits us with one day’s worth of strength, wisdom, endurance, and whatever else we will need. At the end of the day, it is all spent, and our account is zero again.
While it may be easy to think of this arrangement as God having us over a barrel, there is a point to it. He is a God of relationships, and He wants us to walk with Him and talk with Him every day. If everything were given to us, and spelled out a year ahead of time, we would be very likely to forget about Him long before the year is over. As it is, we are forced to go to Him daily for the gifts He gives, and if we allow it, we will soon find that the Giver is much greater than the gifts.
In the case of the manna, what does it mean to be an overcomer? It means accepting the fact that God wants to meet us every morning, trusting that He will never fail us, and refusing to give in to the temptation to try to “stock up” on His blessings. If we do these things, He will fulfill His promise to give us the hidden manna.
