Spiritual Amnesia

One advantage of growing older, there are many but one that is particularly advantageous, is life history. Those who are of my generation and older are able to look back and see how we have survived and thrived in the midst of adversity and challenges. 

The scene I would like to set before you is from the Old Testament. In this particular circumstance, the people of Israel have wandered in the desert for 40 years. No, they were not on a sight-seeing tour, although I’m sure they saw many unique places that today you and I would pay thousands of dollars to visit. Their tourist excursion was on account of their disobedience to God’s command to go and conquer the land that He was giving to them.

God is so patient with us.  He wants us to learn the lesson of trust more than anything else. But we get so impatient!  We want what He has to give us without the pain and sacrifice that often times accompanies life.Those lessons are taught to us by God as He teaches us to trust Him. We, on the other hand, want instant growth, instant maturity, instant sanctification. However, God thinks long-term in regards to our spiritual growth.

For the people of Israel, they had seen God protect them through the ten plagues He sent to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. The Israelites were personal witnesses of the night that God finally set them free from the bondage of being servants. Each one of them saw with their own eyes the Red Sea and wondered how they would get across only to have the Lord open the way for them! One would have to imagine that there would be no way they could ever forget that day! They would have to live in that moment for the rest of their lives. They could not help tell their children and grandchildren about it!

Full stop! You know what I am going to write next, don’t you?  How could we ever get over the fact that once we were spiritually dead with no hope (Ephesians 2:1-4)! No matter how much we went to the spiritual well of the world, it could not bring us satisfaction and lasting joy and contentment.But somehow after we have entered  into the joy of our salvation, we seem to fall out of love with the Saviour, it becomes a ‘old hat’. We lose our enthusiasm. Just like the children of Israel did.

Moses, the author of the Pentateuch, takes time to remind the people of God of His miracles that He wrought among them. In Deuteronomy 1-3, the author of the book, brings back to memory all that God had done for them. Listen to this challenge in Deut. 1:30-31, “The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.”

What is God asking you to trust Him for? You may be thinking that, “No way, that is impossible!” What a minute? Did He not already do in you the greatest miracle of all when you came to faith in Christ? He has not changed and He will continue to faithfully lead you as you faithfully follow Him.

Is it easy to do? No way is it.  Listen to what the Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 2:6-7, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

Trust Him, He is totally trustworthy!

God bless,

Pastor Bill