Living on Sabbath Time: 23/31
“Repentance is not being sorry for the things you have done, but being sorry you are the kind of person that does such things.”_M. Robert Mulholland Jr., The Deeper Journey
Numbers 11:1 “Now when the people complained, it displeased the LORD; for the LORD heard it, and His anger was aroused. So the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp.”
Have you ever unintentionally heard a conversation that you were not meant to hear? It is an awkward position to find yourself isn’ it? I remember one time interrupting a married couple who were having a rather intense “debate”. Both of them were so caught up in being right (another issue for another devotional) that they did not see me walking up. Then out of the corner of his eye the husband saw me and just like that he turned on the charm and his wife picked up on the cue and joined him. We stood there a moment and chatted as if everything was just fine.
Maybe as a pastor these sorts of things happen to me more often than to others. Having come up on people unexpectedly, I’ve witnesses people in the middle of cursing change in a moment to “church talk”. You ought to see the things people can do with lit cigarettes or beer bottles/cans when they’re trying to hide them from their pastor. Talk about awkward, you ought to be in my shoes when I happened upon a married “Christian” man who is cozily tucked away in a private corner booth with a woman who is not his wife. It would be funny if it was not so sad.
Today I want to call your attention to the same passage I referred to yesterday. I want to remind you that God doesn’t accidently come up on conversations and deeds that were not meant for Him to witness; He intentionally hears and sees all. It is not because He’s a nosey snoop, it is because He is GOD and must do so. We are made in his image and we are his representatives here on earth. That high and lofty privilege requires a reckoning day (Romans 14:12), and I can assure you that God’s records will be impeccably perfect.
This is a rather grim and precarious position to be in. Is there any hope? Well let me call your attention to the following…
I want you to notice who experienced the judgment of God in today’s verse – it was those on the outskirts of the camp. In other words, those that were the furthest from the Tabernacle and the presence of God were the ones that were destroyed. My dear friend let me encourage you to run to God; not from Him. Include God in every conversation you are having. Invite Him to share in every event of your life. Let me remind you that the moment you start having conversations that you’d be ashamed for
God to hear or doing things that you’d not want God to see; that is the moment you begin drifting away from God.
People do not suddenly get “zapped” by God’s judgment; they gradually drift away from the presence of God until one day all that is left is His fierce and righteous Judgment. Please do not let that happen to you dear one!
Running toward God,
dlkemp
