What Does it Take to Get a Little Milk and Honey Around Here?

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!