Deuteronomy 1:30-31 “The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.”

We are so quick to forget what God has done for us in the past! That’s actually the whole reason for Deuteronomy. It is a retelling by Moses of all the things the Israelites had experienced since leaving Egypt, as a written record they could hang onto. This particular passage is reminding them of their major failure in that area, when they couldn’t accept that the God who had parted the sea for them could give them victory over the current inhabitants of the land they had been promised. Perhaps one reason for that failure was that crossing the Red Sea had only required walking, while taking the land was going to require fighting. As soon as real effort on their part was required, they chickened out! That story sounds all too familiar, because we do it all the time. We rejoice when God hands us something on a platter, but when He requires us to stretch and grow and really break a sweat, there’s no end to our grumbling! We couldn’t do it on our own in any case, but if it doesn’t require anything of us we don’t value it very much. That is very evident in the actions and attitudes of people who have been pampered, but God is too good a Father to pamper us all the time. He is tender and loving, as Moses indicates with the figure of a parent carrying their child, but He loves us enough not to spoil us. We don’t like to hear that any more than the Israelites did! However, a mature faith will rejoice in the perfection of God’s plans for us.

I’ve really experienced this truth! It has been hardest for me to value the things that have come easiest to me. At the same time, I have rebelled at putting in the effort necessary to get the full benefit of other things that God has intended for me. How foolish! It is easy for me to see such failures in others, but I am too often blind to them in myself. As a pastor I seek to open people’s eyes to see God’s plans for them and how they need to cooperate with those plans, but I must not do it from an attitude of superiority. I have struggled, stumbled, and fallen in that way too! Yesterday’s Bible study was very good in that area, as people realized how God uses even the mistakes of very imperfect people to bring good they hadn’t imagined. I need to help people realize the goal is worth striving for, and that by God’s grace they will reach it, if they will believe and trust Him.

Father, You indeed “do exceeding abundantly, beyond all we could ask or think.” (Ephesians 3:20) Thank You. Help me indeed be willing to make the effort to “take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Philippians 3:12) Help me recognize Your grace and abundance and be willing to do all You ask of me, however hard it might seem at the moment, so that all of Your plans, for me and for those around me, may be fulfilled on Your schedule for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!