Lent, Day: 22: WHO'S IN CHARGE AROUND HERE?

Scripture:   Numbers 20:22-29

Focus on the Word

God is holy and just.  He invites us into His ways and means not to elevate us but to be God in our lives.  He calls us to faith and trust in Him.  Our problems begin when we trust more in ourselves than in our God.  That's what happened to Moses and Aaron at the mountain called "Hor."  

The people were tired and hungry and thirsty.  They began to turn on Moses and Aaron, chastising them that it would have been better for the people to remain in Egypt than to journey out into the desert only to die of thirst.  Moses and Aaron felt the pressure and stress created by the angry crowd.  They took matters into their own hands, took credit where only God should have gotten the credit, and even though God gave the people water, because of the way they acted God took leadership of the people away from Aaron and Moses; Aaron immediately and Moses a bit later on.  

Life with God is a matter of faith and trust.  It is about being in Him so that who He is and what He is about will permeate our lives.  The journey of faith works only because God makes it work.  If we begin to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, life can get murky.  God loves us too much to allow a spirit of pride to dominate our hearts.  He will clean and purify where cleaning and purifying are needed.  

In Lent we open our hearts again to the cleaning and purifying process of God.  We are in the Faith only because we have been drawn there by the grace of God.  The journey is on His terms and His terms are always holy and just.  In Lent we come back to the fundamental issue that we are not in charge but that God is in charge.  Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart" (Matthew 5:8, NASB), not "blessed are the prideful in heart who need to take over and be in charge."  Life with God is a faith-walk, where His ways and means trump every other ways and means.  We are on the journey with God and victory is rooted in Him. 

Today’s Prayer

Father, I want to know You, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from You the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that You may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt You make the place of Your feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for You will be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus' Name, Amen.     (A. W. Tozer)