Milk & Honey: Mending the Ways of Self-Striving
October 11, 2026
In our home, we frequently stock up on two items: milk and honey. Our children love cereal because they see their dad bring home a variety of cereal boxes at each grocery shop, since he loves cereal too. As for the honey, it is anything we think is necessary to make something sweeter, or to nurse a cold.
This past spring, our family decided that we needed to take a family trip to Branson to a place called Stillwaters Resort. Marquis looked at me one day and decided that our family needed space to get away and just be together. A time to be refreshed without attending to all the needs of our day-to-day. On the drive, I kept thinking about these two words, ‘milk & honey,’ as a reminder of how God provides for his children.
While I was at the resort, I took a moment to sit with my journal as I watched the water flow and the sound of splashes echoing throughout the area. At the top of one of the pages, I wrote, ‘Milk & Honey,’ and took my pen to write about where I wanted to stop self-striving. There was a moment on this trip that I recognized that God was doing something new in me, even though I did not have all the words to understand. I felt my mind and my body yearning for something more than the foundation of my own thoughts, feelings, and understanding.
As I was getting to the end of my journal entry, I wrote a prayer to the Lord that said, “I need you desperately to lead me in the areas where I am leading myself.” Shortly after, I took out my phone and looked up the definition of ‘self-striving’. One of the definitions of self-striving is “the act of putting intense, persistent, or anxious personal effort into achieving goals, fixing problems, or handling life primarily through one's own willpower and self-reliance”
That was it—that is where I felt God tugging me to come closer to depend on Him in all the areas I was worrying and cycling through my personal human efforts, approval from others, and any way I was looking to measure up in ways God was not requiring me to. It was a time when God was inviting me to open up my heart to examine the roots of pain, frustrations, and anxieties that He wanted to nurture.
One of the things about milk & honey in the Bible is that it represents provision. I sincerely believe that God wants to provide for us, but many times, we don’t allow Him to. He wants to give us the provision of our day-to-day, through the ebbs and flows of life that can bring grief, uncertainty, pain, worry, and so much more.
Through the slavery the Israelites were experiencing, God promised them that He would lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey. The oppression that the Israelites were going through did not mean that God was absent in it. Do you recall a time when you were feeling the weight of sorrow, sadness, or defeat? If you have, or you’re standing in those tensions right now, I want to encourage you to know that God desires to be present with you in it.
Self-striving convinces me that I have to depend on my own human efforts to bring me satisfaction, joy, and happiness. There were times when the Israelites chose to depend on other things to comfort them, like the golden calf and their steady complaints against God. Though God has his promised plan lined up, they found themselves relying on their own decisions to curate their livelihood in the land.
“... and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.” Exodus 3:8
Rescue. It is what God has always planned for His children. For the Israelites, they were held bound by the power of the Egyptians, and still, God had a promise to provide for them in the present and in the future, with spiritual and physical nourishment. Where slavery held them captive, God had a rescue plan. He is the same God who rescues today when our heart is bound by fear, stress, sorrow, disappointment, and pain.
When I was reflecting on the resort, I prayed an intentional prayer as I acknowledged areas where self-striving had become a way of survival because of the unknown future and the present realities that were heavy. Life can easily convince us that we are better off doing it on our own, even if it costs us our mental, emotional, and physical health.
I am here to remind you that God wants to provide for you now and in the future. Before there was the offering of milk & honey to the Israelites, God provided manna in the wilderness.
“The Israelites ate manna for forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.” Exodus 16:35
The manna God provided for the Israelites was their provision of food while they were weary in the desert. It is a reminder that God doesn’t just provide for us because we are on our best behavior; He provides for us because He is faithful. Faithful to serve us through the battles of sin. Faithful to serve us through the heartaches of suffering. Faithful to serve us when we grew distant from His heart.
Isaiah 30 in the Bible reminds us that God provides meager bread, instruction, and well-thought-out plans for His children. Sometimes the unhealed places of our heart cannot recognize where God is desiring to lead, provide, and sustain us. My encouragement to those reading these words is to remember that God doesn’t need us to depend on our own self-striving efforts.
The Lord will give you meager bread and water during oppression, but your Teacher will not hide any longer. Your eyes will see your Teacher,” Isaiah 30: 20
Since sitting in this reflection at the resort, it has been a journey of unpacking layers of things that God never intended for me to live out. The more dependent on the Lord I am becoming in this season of my life, the more I am able to live out my identity rather than searching for belonging, approval, and acceptance outside of Him. God knew that the Israelites would not stay in their wilderness season even when they didn’t know or believe it themselves.
God has a prepared land that would be flowing with milk and honey. A God who will provide with both manna and milk & honey as a reminder that when His children become dependent on self or other sources, he has a better way. God desires for us to thrive in joy, peace, and healthy growth. The shift from thriving with God vs. self-striving becomes clearer by sitting in His presence with honesty so that He can pour out provision and direction. All provision God gives is not just material. He provides healing through heartbreak of any kind. He provides peace in the midst of fear. He provides joy through overwhelming sadness.
Here are some things that can help remind us of the faithfulness of God, and how He provides and nurtures the heart of who He has created us to be:
Make a gratitude list of things God has provided for you.
Reflect on times that God has rescued you from pain.
How has that shaped you to manage pain points today in a healthier way?
Pray for God’s wisdom to equip you to grow in dependence on Him.
Write out any areas where you are relying on yourself instead of God. Pray over them.
Invite safe community in to share areas that are bringing exhaustion, burnout, or approval from others.
What has God graced you to do from His voice & instruction?
Repent with honest confession, not through the lens of shame, guilt, and condemnation. God sincerely wants to use this opportunity to grow and mature you. He doesn’t desire to be replaced by other things that pull us away from His truth and character.
Take time to create beauty with God. Example: One weekend day, I went to a garden from 10 AM- 5 PM and had a whole day enjoying nature, journaling, praying, and hearing God’s voice for myself. What might that look like for you to be refreshed in Him?
Unknowingly, after spending that time with God, I had no idea that I would go through a season over the next four months of God uprooting and revealing areas where self-striving was costing me my peace, joy, and focus on what He had in front of me. Some of the characteristics of self-striving can include self-abandonment, fear-based responses to life, and reliance on things that are contrary to God’s heart. Our family has been in so many transitions, and through each of them, God has taken me on a journey that uproots anything that would hinder my walk with Him. Ridding the familiar, the comfortable, and the identity that isn’t shaped by Him.
Though God has taken me into a deep journey of healing, I can look back and see where He has provided in all the areas of my mental, physical, and emotional health. He has poured manna through a season of pain and has provided milk & honey on the other side of promises that He has spoken over my family over the past several years. As I write this, I can honestly say we are walking in multiple promises right now; oh, may my heart never forget to embrace that with thanksgiving and gratitude.
To note it all, I want to write a closing encouraging thought that you can trust God to provide for you and heal the pieces of self that think it cannot rely on His power alone. Paul reminds us of this: “Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:8-10
His grace is sufficient enough to challenge the areas of the heart that are yearning for freedom and the authenticity of who He has created His sons and daughters to be; let Him in.
