20160117
What is first on your mind when you are faced with any problem? Speak to God and trust Him for His guidance? The exodus of the Israelites has many lessons we can learn about trusting God. The Israelites must have heard it so many times before. Yet miracle after miracle, within weeks they were murmuring and complaining again. Even after God brought them safely across the Red Sea, soon they were complaining that Moses brought them into the wilderness to die when they had no water to drink or food to eat. That God provided manna from heaven and water from the rock is common knowledge.
Just as Apostle Paul and his fellow missionaries had encountered countless sufferings and near-death events when they were in Asia, he did not hesitate to share with the Corinthians his experience. Paul has personally witnessed and encountered God’s deliverance from deadly perils and he has no second thoughts about trusting totally on God for future deliverance. “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us again. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us” (2 Corinthians 1:10).
Yet the majority of Christians today fail to practise this habit when trouble or disaster strikes. They often sought first the advice of a so-called specialist in that field. The first and foremost thing we need to concentrate on is to focus on God, getting to know Him up close and personal, by allowing Him to influence every personal decision in our lives. However, it is important to recognise that God is sovereign and whatever decision He makes are made in love, for those whom He loves and who love Him. It takes a lot of discipline and faith but it is all well-worth it. We can learn to trust God for everything in life by spending time with Him every day in Bible study and prayer. Over time, it can become so natural by becoming one with God – that it becomes synonymous with “breathing to live”. As a popular hymn goes, “O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer.” So, like Apostle Paul, when the pressure of trouble or disaster strikes, let us naturally seek deliverance from God first. “but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God” (2 Corinthians 1:9).
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5,6).
