Exploring the Unpredictable Life of the Promises of God

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Numbers 13:21–25 (NIV) So they went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob, toward Lebo Hamath. They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, lived. (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) When they reached the Valley of Eshkol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs. That place was called the Valley of Eshkol because of the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut off there. At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land. CONSIDER It’s today again, which means it is another opportunity to encourage one another. I wonder how many of us find ourselves in a situation we didn’t really choose, in a scenario that chose us. Something happened somewhere along the way to interrupt our best-laid plans. Maybe it was cancer or divorce or the unexpected and perhaps untimely death of a loved one. Maybe it was the loss of a job or a community in an unforeseen move. Maybe it was the slow-rising tide of an addiction; what began as a glass of wine in the evening has become boxes of wine every week. Certainly, the global pandemic a few years back pushed all of us into ways of wilderness life we would never have chosen. Many of us are still watching church on TV as if church were something that could be watched, and we still wonder if we will ever really go back to the way things were. In short, we have been pushed into ways of life we could slowly and easily settle into, setting up house in a wilderness never meant to be our home. This was the story for the people of God in the book of Numbers. They hated life in the wilderness, and yet it had become their life. They grumbled and complained about everything almost constantly, yet not only would they come to settle for life outside of the promises of God, but they would even make themselves at home there. No one ever consciously chooses to live beneath the promises of God, though. They just don’t choose the faith it takes to claim and pursue the promised life. That’s what we will face here with God’s people in the wilderness. And that’s what we are facing in our own lives right now. Will we choose God and the promised life and the faith it requires of us, or will we quietly not choose at all and settle for the striving mediocrity and comfortable existence of a predictable life? The bad news: we only have one shot at this life, and it is passing us by. The good news: we get to choose, and the opportunities to choose keep coming around, until they don’t. Here is my deep encouragement for your heart (and mine) right here and right now: This is why it is said:     “Wake up, sleeper,         rise from the dead,         and Christ will shine on you.” (Eph. 5:14) Many of us need to take a reconnaissance mission into the promised land of possibilities in our own lives. It’s time to shake off the grave clothes of the past and all it has meant. We can’t settle for this present wilderness and succumb to the deep tendency to make ourselves at home here. Nor can we go back to normal. We must press on toward the promise. It is time to explore the unpredictable life of the promises of God. Now I want you to get a picture of the veritable farmers market these twelve explorers brought back with them from this land of promise. When they reached the Valley of Eshkol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs. PRAY Father, we are tired and weary of this season of life. We didn’t see it coming, and we don’t see a way out. We confess, we are slowly getting used to it. And we know if we don’t wake up, we will gradually settle for it. Let all of this shaking we have been through accrue to awakening to you, Jesus. We are desperate for you, Lord. Come, Holy Spirit, and take us into the new land of the new creation life you made us for. In Jesus’s name we pray, amen.