Wednesday, September
27, 2017
“And say to the people, ‘Purify yourselves, for tomorrow you
will have meat to eat. You were whining,
and the Lordheard you when you cried, “Oh, for some meat! We were better off in Egypt!” Now the Lord will give you meat, and
you will have to eat it. And it won’t be
for just a day or two, or for five or ten or even twenty. You will eat it for a whole month until you
gag and are sick of it. For you have
rejected the Lord, who is here among you, and you have whined to him,
saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’”
But Moses responded to the Lord, “There are 600,000 foot soldiers
here with me, and yet you say, ‘I will give them meat for a whole month!’ Even if we butchered all our flocks and
herds, would that satisfy them? Even if
we caught all the fish in the sea, would that be enough?” Then the Lord said to Moses, “Has
my arm lost its power? Now you will see
whether or not my word comes true!” Numbers
11:18-23(NLT)
Now the Lord sent
a wind that brought quail from the sea and let them fall all around the camp. For miles in every direction there were quail
flying about three feet above the ground.
So the people went out and caught quail all that day and throughout the
night and all the next day, too. No one
gathered less than fifty bushels! They
spread the quail all around the camp to dry.
Numbers 11:31-32(NLT)
In a
conversation with our friend and fellow church member, Julie, we both agreed
that nobody…absolutely nobody prays for patience! That is, you don’t pray for patience if you’re
in your right mind, because when you lift that prayer heavenward, the next
sound you hear (after God’s muffled laughter) is the sound of tribulation and
trouble knocking at your front door! We
both laughed at that…nervously, only half-joking!
But the
truth is, I have repented of that thought.
I absolutely NEED
patience! Why would I not pray for
patience to not go insane over the dumb things I see us do in our culture
today? Indeed, why wouldn’t I ask for
patience to see and think clearly considering the dumb things I do?
We can make
a mess of life with our selfish choices, particularly in bringing that warped
perspective to the prayer closet…we ask for things, material “blessings” which
turn out to be weights around our necks.
We ask for relief from the very circumstances God may have engineered,
because we wouldn’t listen any other way.
We try to push God into our corner (when He’s already there), and wind
up pushing Him away with our unbelief.
In short, we pat ourselves on the back for being so spiritual as to
spend that three minutes and 16 seconds in prayer daily, checking-in to make
sure God hasn’t forgotten something we had on the list…and then we quickly sign-off
and move out because we’ve got so much really important other stuff to do this day!
God’s
children hadn’t matured very far as disciples in the wilderness. They were getting tired of manna and wanted
meat! Then God told Moses to tell the
people to buckle their seat belts – they were in for a lesson in table
manners. I believe I can hear God’s
voice in that exchange when I remember what my Dad said to me a time or two when
I got the whine-ies: You crying? I’ll GIVE you something to cry about!
Wise
parents know that sometimes the only approach you can take with greedy kids who
want something so badly they just don’t want to see any other possibility, is
to give them that for which they whine. And
so God not only granted them meat…he gave them enough to get sick of it. That has been the case with many people in
history…rising to the top of the heap of humanity (Napoleon, Caesar, Howard
Hughes, Elvis, Solomon, and so many more…), they find they’re sick of the life of
which they dreamed, and want nothing more than a little peace in their soul.
For You Today
Every experience
in prayer that has ever turned out in a positive growth in my relationship with
God follows an unshakeable pattern – it is time spent unhurriedly courting the
surrender of my will to His. I start
with adoration for the
God who is my Creator…move to confession
of my sins…press on to thanksgiving
for what He has, and will do, in, through, for, and with me…and if there is
still something pressing on my heart, I then ask in supplication for His will to be overwhelmingly
accomplished!
You chew on
that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!
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