The Past and The Future

"What I Say"

GOD HAD DELIVERED them in a way only He could, through signs and wonders which boggle the mind. He had parted the Red Sea, causing millions of gallons of water to stand firm on either side, and sent them across on dry land. Now, He’d sent them manna, bread from heaven, to sustain them. Yet, this mighty people, who had been so blessed and so incredibly delivered, began to look backward and whine.

We are to remember our victories and forget our ruffled past. Remember what God did for you, how He healed you, how He paid that bill unexpectedly, how He set your son free of his addiction. But forget your errors in judgment, forget the condemnation over it. Forget the pain you suffered. There is no reason to live there.

The Israelites whined for the leeks and onions of Egypt. We’re so tired of this manna. Give us meat to eat. Moses, beyond frustrated, cried out to the Lord. Please help me! So God did what they’d asked as only God would do it.

He sent quail, two cubits deep, a day’s walk on either side of them. The average endurance runner can go 20 miles in a day. So taking that figure, 20x20 is 400 square miles. A cubit is about 18 inches. So they had 400 square miles of quail, three feet deep. Until it came out of their nostrils, as God promised.

We become what we think about. What we dwell on continually will eventually come out of our mouth and turn into reality. If we murmur and complain about the future, as we’ve pictured it, then we’ll miss out on God’s reality. If we focus on the stones we’ve tripped on, we’ll fall flat on our faces. Now, God is merciful and full of grace. Jesus set us free from the curse of the law. Yet the truth of the Israelites actions remains.

Over and over again, they’d been told about the Promised Land. For generations, they’d heard what God had up ahead for them. Why return to slavery simply to eat leeks and onions?

Why arrive at the land God had foretold would be theirs and fall apart? These people are too big. We can’t do this! God had said they could. He told Abraham. He told Isaac. He told Jacob. He told Moses. He had said He would give it to them. Yet, there they stood trembling in fear. And when they balked, when all but two men agreed with God, then that entire generation died in the wilderness.

God waited until only Caleb and Joshua remained and took their children in. Caleb, some 80-plus years old, charged in eager to have the city he’d spied out, forty-years before.

Who do we want to be like? Do we want to agree with God’s report and reach forth toward those things that are before us? Or do we want to sit down and lose out? I have had to walk when it hurt to walk. I have had to override the noise of the enemy in my head and deliberately hear God’s goodness. With the past pulling at me, I’ve had to embrace the future God has promised and keep going.

I had to take God at His Word.

Okay, you said not to be anxious. So I’m giving this to You. And now, I am asking you to set me free of it. I thank you, Father, for deliverance, for peace of mind which passes understanding.

Do you know what I did next? I lived. What do I need to do today? Where am I supposed to go? I lived and I let all the mishmash go. I lived aware of God’s presence in me and upon me. I have four things I quote when it seems like everything is going awry.

1. God is on the throne.
2.  Jesus is alive.
3.  The Holy Spirit is in me and upon me with evidence of speaking in tongues, and when I pray in the Spirit, it’s God praying the will of God to God, and the enemy has NO IDEA what I’m saying.
4.  The Word of God is truth.

These have never failed me. Circumstances sometimes lie. Voices speak untruths. What I’m looking at, what I’m feeling, can make it appear that God is missing. Yet, I know He isn’t, and I know what He’s promised me, the hope and a future of His goodness, are right there at my grasp.

I need only stop looking backward and keep going.

“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.” (Philippians 3:13)


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com