In our walk with
Jesus we are promised a better life. As
heirs with Christ there are a lot of benefits.
If that is the case why do we still have trials and tribulations? Last week I wrote about that a bit. Today I'd like to approach it from a slightly
different angle.
Exodus 3:8(NKJV)
8So I have come down to deliver them out of
the hand of the Egyptians, and
to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing
with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and
the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.
In the OT the land
of milk and honey was a physical place.
I'd like to use it as an analogy to the better life in Christ that we
talk about. I want to look at the
question: What does it take to get a little milk and honey around here? In other words is there something more
required than just believing in Jesus?
Now let me be very
clear. The only thing required to
receive eternal life is accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and
Savior. But is that enough to get you a
full measure of that Milk and Honey Life in Jesus? Let's take a look.
Let's start by
looking at the highlighted part above.
God has come down to Egypt and He is going to bring them (the
Israelites) up from there. What I want
you to notice is that God wasn't bringing the Land of Milk and Honey to
them. I mean if God was gonna take
someone's land and give it to the Israelites, why not just take the Egyptians land
and give it to them. After all, they
were already there. It was nice land. It would have been
so much more convenient.
But nooo, they had
to be willing to follow God, trust Him, and go on a journey with Him. They had to actually make an effort and go
through some hardships before they
finally got to enjoy the Milk and Honey.
And as we
learned last week in Romans, we are to rejoice in our tribulations. Another way I think of it is that we are to
bear our tribulations with dignity.
Let's look how the Israelites handled it.
Exodus 14:12(NKJV)
12Is
this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’?
For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the
wilderness.”
More like
whine and complain. And what happened to
those that whined and complained? Did
they get to enjoy the Milk and Honey?
Nope, they just got to enjoy a lovely 40 year walk in the desert.
What can
we learn from this? If you will truly
let Jesus be the Lord of your life He will take you places and you'll do things
that you never would have imagined. If
you will just trust Him and take a chance and do some of those crazy things he
puts on your heart to do you will be amazed.
When He prompts you to do something that is really scary to you like
witnessing, or leading a Bible Study or something, take a chance "on dying
in the wilderness" and let God develop new talents and skills that you
never knew you had.
If you
will trust Jesus and follow Him anywhere He leads you, you will indeed enter
into that Milk and Honey Life in Jesus!