“Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” -Psalm 34:9–10
The verses act as one, a parallelism, to strengthen the message. Those who are true followers of the Lord lack for nothing. In contrast, lions will sometimes go days without eating before they are able to catch their prey and satisfy their hunger. Not so with the servants of the Lord.
Such optimistic language appears frequently in the Scriptures, especially in the wisdom literature like the Psalms. Given there are, in reality, those followers of Christ who do suffer want and hunger, even persecution and imprisonment, what are we to make of passages like this? We are certainly not to pretend we have never seen, or in some cases maybe even experienced, the reality of want in the lives of believers. That would be disingenuous and it would not do any justice to the truth of things.
I suggest there are a few principles we should keep in mind as we read and claim the promises of God’s word.
First, we are helped to keep in mind, these are general observations. They are promises, in other words, only in the general sense. Such general principles are absolutely true—God withholds no good thing from those who walk with him (Psalm 84:11)—but the truth of these promises doesn’t guarantee there won’t be exceptions.
God uses less than desirable circumstances to chastise his children (Hebrews 12:5-11), sanctify his elect (Job 13:15), and testify of his supreme majesty (Daniel 3:16-18); but ultimately, we know he will never leave his children destitute of his love—even if, for his greater purposes, he allows them to be deprived of their very lives (Romans 8:35-39).