I Am Not the Provider

How returning provision to God made work lighter

By Josh Singleton | Founder, serving as Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

For the first 35 years of my life, good turned inward.

Not rebellion. Not failure. Not a lack of faith.
Good intentions, good work, good responsibility.

I did what I was taught to do. I worked hard. I showed up early and stayed late. I carried the weight of providing seriously. If you had asked me whether God was my provider, I would have said yes without hesitation.

But posture is revealed by where the weight rests.

Functionally, provision had become my responsibility. God was acknowledged, but the burden lived in my body. Work became insurance. Planning became control. Faith existed, but outcomes were managed.

This was not a short season.
It was my formation.

For 35 years, good work slowly folded inward. Responsibility hardened into identity. Providing became proof of worth. And the longer I lived this way, the heavier life became. Not because the work was wrong, but because the load was misassigned.

I worked. Not 9–5, but really 7–5. Sometimes earlier. Sometimes later. And I called this maturity. I called it wisdom. I told myself this was love.

What I did not realize was that I had quietly stepped into a role that was never mine.

In 2022, I quit my job, not with a clear plan in hand, but with a call I could not ignore.

I did not leave knowing exactly how provision would come or what form the work would take. I left to begin walking out The Neighborhood Garden Project with no blueprint, no guarantees, and no timeline. Only obedience. Only trust. Only the next faithful step.

That was the point.

I was no longer being asked to secure the future. I was being asked to walk faithfully with what had been entrusted to me that day. To stop demanding clarity before movement. To stop waiting for certainty before obedience.

That decision made people uncomfortable. It still does.

You need to be prepared.
You cannot live that way.
You have a family to provide for.
Faith is fine, but someone has to be responsible.

Most of that feedback is projection.

It comes from people carrying the same inward weight I carried for decades. People formed by a system that teaches survival before trust. Where provision is equated with control, and control is mistaken for faithfulness.

When I stepped away from the 7–5, God did not remove work from my life. He redefined it.

The invitation was simple and unmistakable.

You are my son.
Stop focusing on being the provider.
Focus on the things I would have you do today.
Walk faithfully with what you have been entrusted with now.

Almost immediately, something changed.

The storms around me did not stop, but they clarified, because I was no longer spinning with them. Pressure still existed, but it no longer dictated direction. Anxiety still knocked, but it no longer held the wheel. What once felt like chaos became information.

When I stopped trying to manage the storm, I could finally see it.

I could tell which demands were real and which were inherited. Which urgencies were faithful and which were simply familiar. The storm lost its authority the moment I stopped rotating inside it.

Work did not disappear. It became lighter. Not because there was less effort, but because effort was no longer trying to be God.

This is when Jesus’ words stopped sounding poetic and started sounding practical.

“My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

A yoke is not rest from work. It is shared work. Two moving in the same direction. One setting the pace. Each carrying what they were designed to carry. The burden becomes light not because it vanishes, but because it is rightly distributed.

For years, I was yoked to fear and calling it responsibility. I was carrying provision as if it were my assignment. When I finally returned to God what was His to carry, what remained fit.

Provision belongs to the Father.
Faithfulness belongs to the son.

I did not stop working. I stopped carrying what was never mine. I did not stop planning. I stopped hoarding tomorrow. I learned to move my hands in rhythm with trust.

The garden made this visible.

Soil responds immediately to misassigned weight. When you demand from it what the season cannot give, it resists. When you overwork it, it compacts. When you try to force growth, it shuts down. But when you tend it faithfully, preparing beds, adding compost, honoring timing and rest, the soil does what only it can do.

It grows.

In the garden, my responsibility is not the harvest. It is attention. Presence. Stewardship. God carries the increase. God carries the provision. God carries the future.

The image of two oxen under one yoke captures this better than words. The work moves forward because the weight is shared and the direction is steady. Neither ox carries the whole load. Neither sets the path alone.

And here we are, four years later, not having arrived, but continuing to walk.

The work has taken form, but it is not finished. The garden has roots, but it is still growing. What exists today was not mapped out in advance. It has been revealed step by step, through attention, obedience, and staying faithful to what has been entrusted to us now.

We are not managing a destination. We are walking a direction.

Each season continues to ask the same thing of us, to carry what is ours to carry today and to trust God with what remains beyond our reach.

For the first 35 years of my life, I carried a burden that did not belong to me.

Now, I walk yoked, carrying what is mine to carry, trusting God with what has always been His.

And that continues to change everything.