Are we only in love with the miracles? Are we sign seekers or relationship responders? Sometimes we hold God hostage to our idea of the supernatural. We look for God to manifest in miracles and yet often miss His gentle whispers…listen now.
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Num 21:5 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.
When you attack the Word there is no safeguard against serpents. Earlier they attacked the enemy and there was no mention of anyone being lost. Here, they attack the type of the Word and much people were slain. What the sword of the enemy could not do, the serpents of judgment did. You can have great victory over your enemy and then lose ground because you misrepresent God’s Word. Lord help us to respect and revere your Word.When there is no safeguard against the serpents any thought can build in your mind a stronghold that will become a sinful action.When there is no safeguard against the serpents any feeling can deceive you into false assurance and a twisted venomous perspective of morality.When there is no safeguard against the serpents any doctrine can persuasively present itself and before you can thoroughly examine it, the fangs of apostasy will sink into your interpretations of life.When there is no safeguard against serpents any seducing spirit can find lodging in your vision, making you see the appearance of evil as the appearance of good.
I remember reading years ago how certain snakes would lay around a rabbit hole until it studied the movements of the rabbit, eventually consuming the unsuspecting creature; then it would take up residence in its hole, lay its snake eggs, and within a short period of time that rabbit hole will become a snake pit.This is often what happens when the Word of God is tossed aside as dull and boring; a snake pit of hellish reason and thought replaces good moral reasoning. But there is hope in the one who became the likeness of sinful flesh to deliver us.
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He didn’t have to give his life, but he gave it freely. He didn’t have to save us from hell’s eternity, but he reached for our fragments. He didn’t have to suffer so violently, but he chose to do it faithfully. He didn’t have to restore what was lost, he could have started over with a thousand new worlds, but he chose us to be his family. He didn’t have become shame and share our sinful likeness and show us mercy beyond justice, but he pushed past the iron gates of law with forgiveness. He didn’t have to rescue us from the burning sands of condemnation or icy fjords of death; he could have just left us abandoned to our abusive idols, living famished in spiritual foster homes absent of love, but he chose rather to be our father; yes, he suffered to give us faith; he suffered to give us a future, a victorious future; he suffered to buy us as His forever.
We couldn’t give him any meaning, but he came as the dictionary of love, as the definition of deliverance, as the express image of God. He created a whole new vocabulary of truth, giving us words like justified by faith, and saved by grace, and joy unspeakable. We found a spiritual lexicon of hope, filled with exciting discoveries; hidden words that had always been there, but needed unveiling; hidden ways that would lead to generations of testimony, and as we walk with Him we learn, and we live, and we love as we could never have done under the tutorship of the law.
We couldn’t live without his mercy. Justice hunted us. Law betrayed us. Failures maximized our guilt. Death trailed our every dwindling moment. Hatred incubated in the cold recesses of our iniquitous hearts. True Love sidestepped us. As the hunt continued we tried to rid ourselves of sin’s scent, but the stench was too putrid, no matter how we bathed ourselves in good deeds. All our deeds were just rags, filthy, dirty, muddy rags. Rags of self-righteousness. Rags of narcissistic justification. Rags of envy and erosive malice. But his mercy is everlasting. Yet, his mercy showed up in flesh; in human form; in “the likeness of sinful flesh”. He was on a time clock “born of a woman, born under the law.” Listen now…
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