A YEAR WITH RESOLVE

1. BE FAITHFUL. Jesus tells us in John 16:10-12, “Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in very little is dishonest also in much. The word says do not despise a small beginning. Such beginnings are the place that tests our faithfulness. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own. If you will be faithful you will hear him say;

2.BE DISCIPLINE. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. The hardest part of a marathon race is not the beginning or the end, but the middle.

3. BE SELF-CONTROLLED. Desperation is definitely not cool to any generation.

4. BE PATIENT. Time is an equalizer– it doesn’t discriminate. The best use of time is helping others for in life, most people require some kind of assistance, whether it’s physical, financial or spiritual. No one gets to where they are alone. God puts  people in places to get his people where he ultimately wants them to be. A lot of times patience is required.

5. VALUE EVERYONE. “Everyone can be great because everyone can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t even have to make your subject and your verb agree… You only need a heart full of grace…a soul generated by love.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.

6. BE OBEDIENT. One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons… “Preach the gospel always…. if necessary use words.” (St. Francis). And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams ( I Sam. 15:22).

7. REMEMBER SELF-CARE. You and your needs are important, too. Create time for you and family. Take time to relax, retreat and renew.

8. START SOMETHING YOU WILL NOT FINISH.  Think of Moses in that day of his farewell as he walked up the mountain where God had prepared his funeral service. I’ve got a feeling he was overwhelmed with joy as he looked over the promised land and the generations that were left to finish the race. To think that the vision had actually come this far for him was a testimony to God’s faithfulness.

9. INVOLVE GOD IN ALL YOUR PURSUITS. Moses is told to go to Egypt and assemble all the elders of the people and explain to them what only God can deliver. Moses reacts and responds in a way in which any of us might react and respond. Five times he tries to get out of it. However, God promised that he would be involved. When God is involved success is sure.

10. BE PRAYERFUL. There is no room in the service of Jesus Christ for boasting or too much self-confidence.

 

NO TURNING BACK – ISAIAH

Isaiah begins his Christmas prophecy in chapter 9 with these words in verse 1, “Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress.” Isaiah gives this prophecy to a war-weary nation some 700 years before Christ.  Empires are rising and falling in Isaiah’s world:  first Assyria, then Babylon, and after that Persia.  Each conquers the Middle East, and then is destroyed by a new superpower.  Because of its strategic location, tiny Israel becomes the bloody battleground for these warring empires. But, Isaiah promises a Messiah who will shatter the yoke of Israel’s oppressors.  Verse five promises that he will burn every warrior’s bloody garment in the fire, putting an end to all wars.  Verse six goes on to say the {one world} government shall be upon his shoulders. Verse seven says that only then will there be a peace that has no end.   No wonder verse six calls him Prince of Peace and the angels later greet his birth with, “Peace on earth, and goodwill toward men.”

 

 

IRREVOCABLE COMMITMENT

If we are honest, we know that we don’t ultimately belong to Dallas or any other city on this earth. Philippians 3:20 says, “But our citizenship is in heaven.  And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Because our citizenship is in heaven, we must, therefore, make an irrevocable commitment in this season for the road ahead.

In 207 BC Xiang Yu crossed the Yellow River to face ancient China.  His army was hopelessly outnumbered and panic was beginning to spread.  In a risk-taking endeavor, he ordered all the bridges over the river behind them burned.  Cut off from all avenues of escape, his army was forced to fight onward for its very survival. Against overwhelming odds, his desperate soldiers won the day.

In the year 1519 Hernando Cortez sailed from Cuba to face the Aztec Empire.  He landed on the shores of Mexico with a small army of eleven ships, to face a nation of 50 million warrior people.  When he boldly proclaimed to his men that they would march into the Aztec heartland and seize its capital city, panic and rebellion spread through the ranks. During the night Cortez ordered the Spanish ships in the harbor at Veracruz burned.  His army was now marooned in Mexico, with their backs to the sea.  Cortez spoke to his men the morning after saying; “We will succeed or we will fail, but we will not go back.”

 

Jeremiah is addressed to God’s people some 500 years before Christ.  The Babylonian Empire has conquered Israel and destroyed Jerusalem.  The survivors of that holocaust have been carried off in exile to Babylon.  They are miserably-homesick, and desperately want to leave. False prophets are telling them to get their bags packed because God is about to take them home.  But Jeremiah 29:4 -5 says,

“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  ‘Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.”

Jeremiah was born into a priestly family 655 BC. The Book of Jeremiah says that Jeremiah was called by Yahweh to prophesy calling his people to reorder their lives in the light of a new reality that was quickly emerging. He says;

MAINTAIN ORDAINED RELATIONSHIPS:

If there is one thing that will help us get to the next level in our lives, it is divinely eliminating unnecessary bridges and maintaining ordained relationships. Understanding the importance of covenant relationships is a critical part of fulfilling the will of God for our lives. There are people God has “hooked” us up with, who are there to impart into and impact our lives so we can do what God has called us to do. It may be their wisdom, expertise, or knowledge that can help us or it may be a specific anointing on their lives that God wants to develop in us. We must be able to recognize and honor covenant relationships because they are bridges to our success and prosperity.

There is something about life that requires us to face the future boldly as we walk through it with others. God never intended for us to be islands, which is why relationships are so vital. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 says something very interesting: Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. The three-fold cord described in this passage can be likened to a relationship that includes God, you, and the covenant relationship He has placed in your life. The Word even talks about how God is in the midst of Believers when they come together.

ESTABLISH REDEMPTIVE RELATIONSHIPS

This is a call to establish relationships. Redemptive relationships are the lifeblood of human existence. Covenant relationships are those relationships that God has divinely placed in our lives. A covenant is a binding agreement between two or more parties that involves the exchange of strengths for weaknesses. Marriages are covenant relationships because they are designed to operate based on this exchange. There are other relationships that can are also covenant relationships, such as certain God-ordained friendships, business relationships, and mentorships. Sometimes God places father and mother figures in people’s lives to provide the guidance and direction they never received from their natural mother or father.

KEEP THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING

There are people who attend church as a religious routine, and there are those who embrace the man or woman of God who has been called to pastor them as their spiritual mother or father. God cares about our spiritual growth and development, which is why it is His will that every Christian be a member of a local church. When God calls us to a particular church, we should obey Him because He is calling us into covenant with someone in spiritual leadership. The impartation we receive from our pastors and those spiritual leaders God has placed in our lives plays a huge role in our growth and development, not only as Christians but also in our own personal anointing or calling.

I encourage you to evaluate your life and locate the relationships that are divinely-ordained by God. These are the people God has called you to glean from and to help you grow. When you know who they are, cherish them. Sow into their lives and continue to receive their anointing. When you do, you will find the power that operates in their lives operating in yours.

Good deeds will lead at least some pagans to glorify God

The book of Jonah stunningly foreshadows a major change, the “centrifugal” New Testament mission of sending believers out into the city. Jonah is the only Old Testament prophet sent to a pagan city to call it to repentance. God’s final statement is striking: the Lord calls Jonah to love the great pagan city of Nineveh because of the vast number of its spiritually blind inhabitants (Jonah 4:10–11).

From scripture we find that the early church was largely an urban movement that won the people of the Roman cities to Christ, while most of the countryside remained pagan. Because the Christian faith captured the cities, however, it eventually captured the society, as must always be the case. Rodney Stark develops this idea in The Rise of Christianity.

“To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with widows and orphans, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity.

Earlier in the Old Testament, the redemptive importance of the city lay in Jerusalem itself being a model urban society—“the joy of the whole earth” (Ps. 48:2)—demonstrating to the world what human life under his lordship could be. Many have spoken of the “centripetal” flow of mission during this era. God called the nations to believe in him by drawing them in to see his glory embodied in Israel, the holy nation he had created, whose corporate life showed the world the character of God (Deut 4:5-8).

This movement from centripetal to centrifugal reaches another stage when Israel is taken into exile.  The Jews are taken to live in the wicked, pagan, bloodthirsty city of Babylon. What is the relationship of believers to such a place? Jeremiah 28–29 holds out a remarkable outline for a believer’s stance toward the city.  God tells his people to “Increase…do not decrease” (Jer. 29:6) to keep their distinct community identity and to grow, but he also tells them to settle down and engage in the life of the great city. They are to build homes and plant gardens. Most striking of all, God calls them to serve the city, to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city” and to “Pray to the LORD for it” (Jer. 29:7). They are not simply to increase their tribe in a ghetto within the city but are to use their resources to benefit the common good.

God calls the Jewish exiles to serve the common good of the pagan city. He also has a very practical goal: serving the good of the pagan city is the best possible way for the people of God to thrive and flourish—“if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jer. 29:7). God is still concerned with his plan of salvation, the establishment of his people—and that is exactly what happened. Because the Jews moved in and sought the peace of the great pagan city, they accumulated the influence and leverage needed to eventually return and restore their homeland.  Also Jews remained somewhat dispersed throughout the cities of the world as a cosmopolitan, international ethnic group that became a crucial base for the spread of the Christian message after Jesus.

In exile, Israel no longer existed in the form of a nation-state with it’s own government and laws. Instead it existed as an international community and counterculture within other nations. This is also now the form of the church, as Peter and James acknowledge when addressing believers as “the dispersion” (James 1:1) and “exiles” (1 Peter 1:1).  Twice Peter uses parapidemois as a word for exiles—“resident aliens”—people who live in a country neither as natives nor as tourists passing through. Peter calls Christians to live in the midst of pagan society in such a way that others see their “good deeds and glorify God” but warns them to expect persecution, nonetheless (1 Peter 2:11–12). The echoes of Jeremiah 29 are evident. Like the Jewish exiles, Christian exiles are to engage in their cities, serving the common good rather than conquering or ignoring them. They should expect that the society around them will be both hostileand attracted by believers’ lives and service in the city.  Peter indicates that believers’ good deeds will lead at least some pagans to glorify God.

Church Membership

Recently I came upon description of membership as follows;

“Membership is not about belonging. Everyone belongs; everyone is welcome. Membership is not about gaining special privileges…becoming a member does not mean you get something that non-members do not get. Rather, membership is about a commitment that you believe God is calling you to serve him by serving the church.” (See Peculiar Prophet Blog).

Someone else in another blog said;

I think membership is what John Wesley referred to as ameans of grace. It is a confession that, while we are all broken, we are undertaking a challenging journey together. It is a place where God’s grace might touch us, effect us. Might acceptance into a community of love be part of how God reaches out and transforms a person? Might the embrace of those different than ourselves be a way that God transforms us, teaches us to love as God loves, to see the world as God sees it? If membership in church is not about us, not about the church, but about God, then how can we earn it? How can we limit it? It must never be taken lightly, but that by no means says that it must be limited to the few. If church membership is about God and God’s grace, then it follows the same pattern as everything else about God– it is a crime to offer it to anyone less than all of humanity. God–and God’s grace–is for all (Becca Clark)

I feel the greatest way any under-shepherd could BLESS each person whom they serve or share the gospel at the local church is help them believe in Jesus and as a result place membership in the spiritual body of Christ, (i.e the Universal Church), where all who believe in Jesus are members. This is the most essential membership because the goal of membership should be to live and serve him till we hear Him, the Chief Shepherd of the Universal Church, the bridegroom of the church say, “well done my good and faithful servant” in that day of his return or when placed in a box (i.e whichever comes first).

When such scriptural protocol is followed, the local church then is a group of believers in Jesus Christ who meet in some particular location on a regular basis. The universal church is made up of all believers in Jesus Christ worldwide. The term church comes from at least 2 words. One of the words has to do with the meeting together or “assembly” (1 Thessalonians 2:14; 2 Thessalonians 1:1).

A local church is normally defined as a local assembly of all who profess faith and allegiance to Christ. Most often the Greek word ekklesia is used in reference to the local assembly (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 1 Corinthians 4:17; 2 Corinthians 11:8). There is not just one specified local church in any one area necessarily. There are many local churches in larger cities.

The universal church is the name given to the church worldwide. In this case the idea of the church is not so much in the assembly itself but rather in those constituting it. The church is the church even when it is not holding an official meeting. In Acts chapter 8 and verse 3, one can see that the church is the church even when they at home.

From scriptures, membership in a local body should come after one has placed membership in the spiritual body of Christ (i.e Universal Church). Before you place your membership in the universal church and as result membership in the local church a pastor will often ask;

1. Do you accept Jesus Christ as the Lord, the Savior, the Boss and the Center of your life ?
2. Is your DOMINANT desire to be MORE PASSIONATE for Jesus as you live in accordance to revealed word of God?
3. Is your DOMINANT desire to bear MORE FRUIT for Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit  for the rest of your life………….

The scriptures teaches that the focus of our lives needs to be on the “final day when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more.” That is the moment when the roll is called up yonder and each person stands before the LORD OF LORDS and give an account of their life. At that time:

• Every Un-Confessed sin will be revealed
• Every Motive of our hearts will be revealed
• Jesus will either Judge us or Reward us according to how we lived our life for Him!

NO TURNING BACK

For 40 years Moses hid on the far side of a desert as an alien among nomads.  Even though his emotional scars hadn’t yet healed, God told him to go back to Egypt and face rejection… again.  No wonder he came up with excuses to avoid more of the same pain. Exodus 4:10 records Moses’ final excuse:  “I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant.  I am slow of speech and tongue.”  The Holy Spirit tells us in Acts 7:22, “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was powerful in speech.”

When Moses was the  Prince of Egypt, he overestimated his power to lead a slave revolt. At his first attempt, his own people said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14). Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known” and run to the wilderness.  During 40 years of desert exile, he was forced to reevaluate everything.  But even at age 80, he deceived himself into underestimating his capacity.  “O Lord, I have never been eloquent.”  Like most of us, he had more self-deception to be pruned away.

Moses is desperate in verse thirteen: “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”  Verse 14 says, “Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses.”  But thank God for his tender mercies in verse fourteen:  “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite.  I know he can speak well.  He is already on his way to meet you, and his heart will be glad to see you.”

After 40 years, Moses is being reunited with his brother.  Where he feels weakest, this brother is strongest.  Everyone of us needs an Aaron to watch our back.   But I must warn you: Aaron will let you down.  Later, Aaron crafts the golden calf.  Later, he teams up with Moses’ sister to oppose his leadership.

God says to Moses in Exodus 4:19,  “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead.”  Before it’s over, there will be a new crop of folks who want to kill Moses.  But, at least for now, God is buying him enough time to do what he has to do. Our Lord never calls us to do something at the wrong time. That’s why we have to wait on him, even if it takes 40 years.  And God will never call us to do something that is beyond his power in us.  When he gives a vision he supplies provision.  There are days when his call tests every molecule of our body and soul.  During those times, cling tenaciously to St. Paul”s promise in I Corinthians 10:13:   “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

In Egypt, Moses is given a hero’s welcome by his slave family.  They are overjoyed that God heard their prayers and is going to set them free.  But happy revival turns to harsh reality.  Moses stands before the god-king of Egypt to deliver a command from his God that can be reduced to four words in Exodus 5:1:  “Let my people go” The god-king responds in verse two, “Who is the LORD that I should obey him and let Israel go?  I do not know the LORD; and I will not let Israel go.”

Moses could take this rejection as personal.  But this isn’t  his battle.  Pharaoh mugs to the ringside crowd, “I don’t even know the LORD.”  Pharaoh is thinking, this God of slaves can’t be much of a LORD.  But Pharaoh makes the biggest blunder of his life by underestimating his opponent and decides to challenge this God of the slaves.

This epic fight is be a power encounter between the great  I AM and the pretender god of Egypt.  The great I AM sent ten rounds of plague.  In the end, Pharaoh’s armies go down for the count, and Egypt will never recover her former glory. If we are rejected by the people of this world, its not personal.  They are rejecting the God in us.  If they hated Jesus, they will hate us.  Like Pharaoh, they joke about our God as the creation of  uncool, uneducated, unscientific fundamentalism.

In the first round, the god-king lands a vicious uppercut.  He loads even more work on the Jewish slaves.  Instead of freedom, Moses has made their bondage worse.  In Exodus 5:20 they lash out at Moses, “May the Lord look upon you and judge you!  You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”  To be attacked by God’s people is the cruelest blow of all.  When rejection comes lathered with god-talk it’s even worse:  “May the Lord look upon you and judge you!”

At age forty, Moses murdered a man in a fit of anger. At age eighty, when he saw God’s people worshipping the golden calf, he exploded in anger and smashed the Stone Tablets of the Law to smithereens.

At age 85, when God’s people complained about a lack of water, he smacked the rock instead of speaking to it as the Lord commanded.  That outburst of anger kept him out of the Promised Land.  But, eventually Moses overcame his abiding sin.

Toward the end of his life, God could say in Numbers 12:3, “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.”  Even the most painful rejection by God’s people perfects us.  Joseph’s brothers sold him into Egyptian slavery.  For the next twelve years Joseph experienced one rejection after another.  But those rejections perfected Joseph and set in motion a chain of events that put him in a position to save his people from a famine.  May we all come to the place where we can say what Joseph said to his brothers in Genesis 50:20:  “What you meant for my harm, God meant for my good.”  What saves us from God’s rejection?  The Gospel of Christ is our only hope.

NO TURNING BACK – EXODUS

Among the most amazing feats in history, none rival the Exodus.    The odds stacked against the Jews escaping Egypt were astronomical:  A rag-tag rabble of slave, without weapons or military training, were led by an 80 year-old shepherd.  Standing against them was a global superpower, boasting the greatest military machine in history, led by a god-king who would rather die than let those slaves go free.

Yet these slaves escaped Egypt while the world’s greatest army drowned in the Red Sea. But if their chances of getting out of Egypt were improbable, their odds of surviving the Sinai were impossible. The size of that exodus was immense.  The Scriptures say that there were more than 600,000 fighting men.  Add their wives, assume four children per family, plus Egyptians who went with them, and we can safely estimate that there were as many as 3.6 million people in this monumental trek. If each family, together with their livestock, were allotted 50×50 feet apiece the total space needed for the Jewish encampment would be 10 ½ square miles.  If people and livestock were lined up fifty abreast, the length of their line would stretch back 100 miles.  Moving at a normal pace, the Israelites would take 50 hours to march past the same point!

It would require the equivalent of 160 railroad box cars of food and 1,000 tank cars of water every day for that hoard to survive trackless deserts and mountain ranges as barren as a moonscape where temperatures soared to 110° Fahrenheit during the day and plunged below freezing at night. Yet, in the most desolate wilderness on planet earth, God supernaturally met the astronomical needs of 3.6 million people not just one day—but  every day for 40 years until they got to the Promised Land.  In spite of all that, no people ever worried or complained more than those Jews.  The book of Hebrews talks about the restlessness that afflicted them in the wilderness.  It seems that of God’s people in every age struggle to rest in him.  No matter how many blessings he showers on us, we still  worry about tomorrow.   In Hebrews 4:9-11 God calls worriers and whiners to enter his rest:

There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.  Anyone who enters that rest also rests from his own work, just as God rested from his.  Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest…

Life is a faith journey.  For the Jews it was traveling from Egypt to a Promised Land.  For Covenant it is a journey from where we have been to where we are going as a church.  Every one of us is on a pilgrimage from where God found us to where he is taking us.  We need to remember this:  Between where we’ve been and where we are going,  God calls us to rest in him.

We are all  on a journey from where we have been to where we are going.  It’s risky to move forward.  Some of you are facing areas in your life where you know that you have to move forward. You can move forward with a sense of peace and confidence.  God has called us to a Sabbath Rest in Christ.

There are three phases in the journey for God’s people:

1. Getting out of Egypt. For 400 years the Jews had labored in slavery, crying out to God for deliverance.  They experienced no greater joy than when they stood on the other side of the Red Sea, free from bondage.
2. Crossing the desert. There was no way they could avoid it.  They abhorred their past and longed for their promised future. But standing betwixt and between the two was a desert crossing.   Verse 8 calls it “the time of testing.”  When they crossed the Red Sea they weren’t yet ready for Canaan.  God had to grow them up.
3. The Promised Land. I Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”  Things too wonderful to imagine await us in the future, but we aren’t ready yet.  We still have some testing times ahead to grow us up.

When the testing times come, we want to go back to Egypt.  In the desert the Jews constantly complained, “It was better in Egypt.”  Life in Egypt was miserable, but at least it was predictable.  The most dangerous time for any dysfunctional family is when they start the healing process.  Everything is turned upside down.  Nobody was happy before, but at least they knew how to operate in the old dysfunctional system.   The alcoholic dad gets sober, and suddenly the whole family faces a crisis of how to function in the new dynamic. They secretly wish things could be the way they used to be.     Churches are often dysfunctional families.  Sometimes when a church takes off in a new and exciting way, old members complain that they miss the way things use to be. Freedom is a risky business.  Change takes us to uncomfortable places.  But, unless we venture out into the desert with God, we will never find our Promised Land.

Embrace the challenge of the desert crossing.  Most worry is present deserts is  wasted worry.  The desert between Egypt and the Promised Land is a faith adventure.  There will be plenty of reasons to worry and complain.  God is testing us.  He is pushing us to give up our striving and enter his Sabbath Rest.  Hebrews 11:6 say, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”  And what is faith?  Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  Faith is to believe in God even when we don’t see him; to rest in his promises even when we don’t see them being fulfilled; to rest in his presence even when we don’t feel it; to obey him even when it doesn’t  pay immediate dividends.   In verse 8 he says, “…do not harden your hearts…”  Keep your hearts soft and pliable.  Don’t become cynics.   In verse 2 we read about the “rebellion” when God’s people, according to verse 3 “tested and tried” God.  The writer is quoting from Psalm 95.  There were three times of rebellion in the desert:Massah: the place of Grumbling   You can read about it in Exodus 17:1-7.  God called that place Massah which means “the place of testing.”

St. Paul said in Philippians 4:12, “I have learned the secret of being content in every situation…”  And what is that secret?  It is to rest in God’s sovereignty.  Paul says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the god of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  Grumbling is an outward manifestation of a heart that’s not at rest with God.

The second desert place is found in Numbers 12:26-14:4.  It was at a place called Kadesh, at the entrance to the Promised Land.  Twelve spies were sent into Canaan.  They came back with a mixed report:  “The land is flowing with milk and honey, but it is also populated by giants.”  God’s people had two choices:  either they could focus on the promise of the land, or fixate on the giants.  Actually they had a third choice: they could focus on their God.  The bigger the giants became in their imagination, the smaller their God became in their hearts.  We need to constantly rest in the promise of Scripture:  “Greater is He in you then he who is in the world.”  (I Jn. 4:4)   Doubt and worry go hand in hand.  Doubt is also a mark of a hard heart.  At Kadesh it led to open rebellion.  The people refused to enter the land.  As a result they wandered in the wilderness for 40 more years.  In Hebrews 3:11, God says of these doubters, “So I declared on an oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”

After Kadesh they returned to Massah whose name had been changed to Meribah.  You can read about it in Numbers 20:1-13.   Again the people grumbled about their thirst.   This time Moses lost his patience with their whining and complaining.  God told him to speak to the rock.   Instead, in a fit of impatience, he hit it with his stick.  After years of listening to these whiners, Moses finally had a gutful of their complaints. His heart hardened, and he rebelled.  Anxiety and dissatisfaction always leads to a hard heart:   whether it is in the church,  or in an unhappy marriage, or a dysfunctional family, or any other difficulty.  Hardness of heart always leads to a rebellious spirit. Impatience is a sign that we are not resting in God.  Invariably impatience leads to taking matters into our own hands.   To rid us of our grumbling,  doubt, and impatience God takes us into impossible desert situations so that we might be forced to rest in him.

Any runner will tell you that the hardest part of any race is the middle.  Every project is toughest when the excitement of beginning morphs into the long haul of reality.  Almost always, people give up halfway home.  Verse 12 says that no matter how hard it gets, don’t stop!  There’s a Promised Land for those who persevere.  This church has left where it’s been, and we are on a faith journey to where we will be in the future.  Are there deserts yet to cross, and giants yet to face?  You bet!  But we can move forward with Sabbath hearts knowing that the battle is his to win and ours to enjoy!