Day 188: A River AND Success

1 Corinthians 10; 2 Kings 3; Amos 8

So how is a believer supposed to live? First, don't worship anything else besides The Lord. Paul reminds the Corinthians of the Israelites who followed Moses out of Egypt and how they did terrible things and died. The reason that is in scripture, he says, is to be a warning for us. The Bible is recorded to be a message from God to his followers. It records who God is and what he expects. And this is not to be a burden. God doesn't expect us to do ridiculous things. Everything he asks of us is beneficial to us. So why would we ignore him?

I also love the verse that talks about temptation. It says that even if we think we are strong enough to stand up to temptation, be careful that we don't fall. No matter how strong of a Christian we think we are, or even how tough of a human we believe ourselves to be, we are still susceptible to temptation and sin. But if we are tempted, does that mean that we just give up and give in? Paul says that God will show us a way to escape. If we really look deeply into our past at times we sinned, very often we can see a moment (or several) where God gave us an opportunity to turn around and run the other way (sometimes literally, other times spiritually). Whether it is a prompting of your heart or an angel in disguise, God warns us of sin before it happens. It may be subtle, especially if God is used to being ignored by someone, but he loves us too much to let us just fail and leave us there. He wants us to win the battle over sin, but we can't do that by ourselves. It takes the Father, his son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit living in our hearts.

The reason that sin is such a big deal is because (as Paul says) you cannot have both demons and God. We cannot live a life of filth and still expect to be clean. We cannot live a life of depravity and expect to also be pure. Either we are living for God or we are living for evil. We need to decide who we will follow, and following Jesus Christ is a deliberate choice. Those who say they haven't made a choice, ARE making that choice NOT to follow Christ. I pray with all my heart that we as believers would completely destroy the sin, evil, and depravity in our lives so that we can be wholly and fully Jesus'.

So this group of kings and soldiers heads out across the desert to attack another kingdom. Good plan? Maybe heading across the desert was the short cut, I don't know for sure, but maybe they could have followed a longer route but not run out of drinking water. But, nevertheless, they run completely out of water and are afraid of what is going to happen to them. In their desperation, they cry out to God. Did they ask God first which way they should have gone? Nope, they use God as a crutch when times are really tough. God doesn't want to simply be our crutch when life stinks. He wants us to call on him at all times, to worship and praise him always. But, the kings and soldiers hear from God that he is not only going to solve their water shortage, but also help them defeat their enemy. God didn't have to do that. He didn't have to provide such life and success in the midst of their desolation. He could have simply said, yep, I'll give you a little water, but turn around and go home. Instead he gives them an entire river of flowing water AND tells them they will defeat their enemies. How can we say that God is not generous?

This passage in Amos is so like what our society does today: "You will crush those in need and wipe out the poor. You say to yourselves...when will the Sabbath be over? Our wheat is ready and we want to sell it now. We can't wait to cheat and charge high prices for the grain we sell. We will use dishonest scales and mix dust in the grain." There are tons of stories out there about the poor getting poorer because society continues to allow programs that steal from them. All those pay-day loan places or cheap car dealerships are there to prey on the poor and steal from them. We've also heard of price gouging, people stealing from their company, the food we eat isn't pure because they've mixed stuff in it to save money...the list goes on and on. Humans are greedy. The people of Israel were too. And God was really mad. Sometimes we focus so much on our God of love, that we forget that he is a God of righteousness and justice. He doesn't mess around when it comes to honesty and caring for the needy. He loves them too much to ignore them.