Isaiah 43:19 Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.
It is among popular “Christian” belief that an abundance of material and other blessings follow those whose hearts are truly after God and that those who seem to consistently struggle to that end, cannot possibly be in God’s perfect will. I want to submit to you a realization I had about this very thing. I think we might have it all backwards.
Almost all the great men of faith I’ve read about in the Bible had to spend some time in the wilderness. Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, just to name a few.
God had to make them desperate. He had to cause them to be quiet and undistracted enough to hear His still, small voice. He had to make them hungry and thirsty enough to cry out for a miracle.
Interestingly, the word for wilderness, in Hebrew, is “meed-bahr”. And meed-bahr comes from the word “leh-da-behr”, which means to speak. Hmmm.
Some of us are walking through the desert right now. It’s hot by day — there is only rugged, thorny, sandy terrain for miles and miles and there seems no end. By night, the wind is unbearably cold and we stumble over things we can barely see. Snakes and scorpions live here. It seems like a lonely place.
But this is actually a place of blessing! It is for our growth, and ultimately for our prosperity that God has brought us here! Like it or not, the wilderness is where He can speak to us most effectively. It is the place He can most easily get our attention. It is the place we will cry out to God and truly listen for His voice.
Know that God is with you today! He is walking along with us through this wilderness and longing to comfort us! Let’s cry out to Him and heed His voice! The promised land awaits!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]When we think of a good citizen, we probably think of a law-abiding, productive contributor to society who takes pride in his country. I’m sure all of us would like to be thought of as good citizens of the countries in which we live. My wife has dual citizenship, she’s both Israeli and American — I guess that means she has to work extra hard at being loyal!
The Apostle Paul’s discourse in 1 Corinthians 10 recalls the great miracles God performed for the children of Israel during the time of the Exodus. Delivered from Egypt and Pharaoh’s slavery, they were dismayed to discover his maniacal rage pursuing them anew, driving them into a deadly corner and imminent destruction. Humanly speaking, their terror and panic was understandable. With their eyes they could only see the wrath of Egypt succeeding at last to utterly destroy them. In that state of mind, how might they have remembered the consecutive miracles God had wrought against Egypt which had brought them to this very place?
Is there something about miracles that makes them forgettable? Or is the problem with us? After journeying for a season the children of Israel were faced with hunger — another test. This time, naturally faced with starvation, they murmured against the Lord, AGAIN! You’d think they might begin to put it together that God truly wanted them to trust Him. Apparently not yet. The dire circumstances attacked their mass cerebral cortex (memory) and once again they went into attack mode, bitterly complaining in unbelief. The Ten Plagues, the pillar of fire, the Red Sea walk, the Egyptian chariot soup, none of these connected to the present hunger pangs. Nature trumped super-nature, and sadly, God Himself.
When I was in school, it seemed they ran a “fire drill” at least once a year. A long, loud, kind of scary bell would sound and we knew it was either a real fire, or, more likely, just another drill. We were formed into lines, ushered down the halls, and out the doors we went. Of course, the point was practice….so we would be prepared for a real fire.
The children of Israel are facing yet another test, this one, even more severe than hunger– dehydration – which, unabated, quickly leads to a miserable death. Yet, now, every day they are also seeing the miracles of God, who is feeding them regularly with manna, and surrounding them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Once again, they fail the test, even in the midst of their daily witness of miracles. So even though the test is more severe, the evidence for trust is that much greater.
There is a long standing tradition of cleaning one’s house in the springtime – hence the term “spring cleaning”. One source for this tradition is certainly the Jewish Passover (Pesach). Each spring as the holiday approaches observant householders in Israel and around the world perform a meticulous cleaning of their homes, especially to be sure there is no leaven in the house before Pesach begins. Leaven, in scripture, is often a metaphor for sin and impurity; and this season of the year is often a time for emphasizing “spiritual housecleaning”.
This season of the Resurrection also occurs during a significant Old Testament feast day, the feast of “Firstfruits” (Hebrew, “bikoreem”). When Yeshua (Jesus) rose from the dead he was the firstfruit of the resurrection. On that day the keys of Hell and Death were obtained by our Lord. The apostle Paul connected the resurrection with the feast of Firstfruits in his letter to the congregation at Corinith. “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”