Lately it feels like I’m wandering in the desert. I feel like I’ve been stuck in the same dry, forsaken place for way longer than expected.
I keep waiting for the next season. The Land of milk and Honey.
God delivered His people from pharaoh. He split the sea and performed miracle after miracle in keeping His promise to free them. They had food fall from the sky on the daily. His presence hovered in the form of a cloud by day and fire by night. They wandered in the desert for 40 years.
What should have been an 11 day journey took 40 years!
I feel like I’m wandering for 40 years here and I want an 11 day journey. Then it dawned on me. Why didn’t they enter the promised land? So I looked it up.
They didn’t believe God would keep His promise. They had just seen the sea split and they were afraid God wouldn’t come through for them!
It’s easy to have this perspective when you’re reading it in a book. What were they thinking? How could they forget all that God has done?
This is us.
God has come through for us time and time again. Yet we forget.
I believe that it’s my lack of belief that God will come through that prevents me from stepping into the Promised Land out of the desert. What promises has He given you? Have you stepped into them? What is preventing you from moving out of the desert? Is it fear? Is it a lack of trust?
Sometimes I need a good reminder of all the things God has done in my life. I keep a journal on my phone and I can search previous entries by certain tags I assign them. So if I have a big God moment I can easily search all the big God moments at once. As I read back to back, how He has been faithful in my life personally, it actually increases my faith!
We have the luxury of being able to read the Israelite’s story in a compact version, ultimately giving us God’s perspective. But they were living their story. They did not have the same perspective.
We are living our stories. We typically don’t have the perspective God has.
Good news though, He promises to help us think like Him (Romans 12:2). Christ paid the price for us to be free from our faulty way of thinking. Holy Spirit fills us as we surrender our way, in exchange for His. As long as we surrender everything to Him, He promises to show up for us.
“He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 10:39
It was too late for some of the Israelites. The ones who didn’t believe died in the desert and weren’t able to enter the land.
It’s not too late for us.
What Christ did on the cross actually did something. More than we can ever hope or imagine. I’m inspired by the man that encountered Jesus and said, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.”
Let‘s admit that we can’t do it.
Let’s allow God to be the Lord of our lives and the fulfillment we are hopelessly searching for elsewhere without attainment.
“If the LORD is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land which flows with milk and honey.” Numbers 14:8
~ Amanda Santistevan
Comments