(Psalm 106:24-25 NLT) 24 The people refused to enter the pleasant land, for they wouldn’t believe his promise to care for them. 25 Instead, they grumbled in their tents and refused to obey the LORD.
This is a sad passage of Scripture. It’s particularly sad because it seems to report a fairly common pattern among God’s people. The pattern goes something like this…
- God makes a divine promise to bless His people.
- The people forfeit their blessing because of unbelief.
- They fall into a habit of grumbling.
This seems so crazy to me. It really does. It’s just not that hard to discover the will of God for our lives, and it’s even easier to make up our minds to do what is necessary to release the blessing. And yet, time after time, we read of God’s people missing out on divine provision. Let me make three observations of why I believe this happens…
- God’s provision often does not resemble our personal wants and desires. While God sometimes does give us the desire of our heart, it is also true that His choice blessings have not yet entered into our imagination. In our Scripture today, we are told “they wouldn’t believe his promise…” Did you catch that? They could have believed, but they refused to do so. They refused to do so because what God wanted to provide was different than what they wanted to receive. Crazy…
- We want God’s blessings to be hand delivered without any effort on our part. There were two prerequisites to receiving these blessings. Believe and enter. That’s it. Just believe and enter. They could not bring themselves to do either. “The people refused to enter… for they wouldn’t believe his promise to care for them.”
- We rather enjoy grumbling. Sad. But true. If you don’t believe me, just read the Scripture and make a mental note of the numerous times God’s people get caught up in grumbling. It’s mind boggling. The Psalmist wrote, “they grumbled in their tents and refused to obey the LORD.” I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I believe one of the most common problems we face, whether at home or in the body of Christ, is our penchant for grumbling. We want what we want, when we want it, and when something is not as we think it should be… well, we grumble about it. And, in the process of grumbling, we prevent God from pouring out His richest blessings upon us. We grumble about our spouse, about the weather, about the traffic, about our jobs, about politics, about our… you get the picture!
“Instead, they grumbled…” Let’s make a choice to rise higher than that. Don’t be a grumbler. Let’s buck the trend. Let’s believe. And enter.
PRAYER: Father, I’m as susceptible to a grumbling, mumbling attitude as anyone else. Forgive me and give me the courage to believe in, and enter into Your choice blessings! Amen.
Thinking Out Loud 