Keep Journeying On
Persevering is not easy. It’s not easy or particularly enjoyable when we have to keep going without seeing how things will all align. Or if the seasons of waiting will ever end, or if prayers that seem to be going unanswered, will ever be answered. It seems that life has slowed to a crawl in these seasons.
I recently finished reading through the book of Numbers in the Old Testament. I’ll be honest. It was hard. It was difficult to keep plugging along, waiting, and listening to see what God would share with me.
There was so much discord. What seems like ungrateful hearts and disregard for authority. And they were quarreling about anything and everything.
God had led the people, the Israelites, out of slavery from Egypt. This was supposed to be a happy, thankful time! But because of continued sin and doing everything but trust God, they wandered in the desert for just shy of forty years. What should have only taken eleven days took much longer. The journey to the promised land was difficult.
Because of the disobedience of the first generation, God punished them. This first generation did not make it to the land God had promised, but future generations did. Why? Because they persevered.
In the midst of all the rules that were broken and sacrifices that were made, we sense the ultimate promise of Jesus. Though he had not yet come, we see that even years before his birth, God had spoken to Moses about how sin would be overcome forever.
Numbers 23:19 AMP
God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken and will He not make it good and fulfill it?
The book of Deuteronomy then speaks, from Moses’ point of view, of the times that the people had just lived through. A time of remembering all that God had done to lead them out of pain and chaos. There had been a lot of rebellion and sin on their part, but God had been faithful even in the midst of it. That’s the God we serve, even still today.
I have learned even while I didn’t think I would while reading through these pages of the Old Testament. Regardless of how things may currently seem. Regardless of what decisions other generations before you have made. Regardless of what is yet to come.
God is always one step ahead. He knew us before we were born and knows already just how long you and I will be here on this earth. May this remind you today that you are loved. You may feel like you’re in the wilderness today but rest assured, the promised land is up ahead. Keep journeying on.
Deuteronomy 4:29, 31, 35-40 AMP
But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul…For the Lord your God is a merciful and compassionate God; He will not fail you, nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them.
It was shown to you so that you might have [personal] knowledge and comprehend that the Lord is God; there is no other besides Him. Out of the heavens He let you hear His voice to discipline and admonish you; and on earth He let you see His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire. And because He loved your fathers, He chose their descendants who followed them, and brought you from Egypt with His Presence, with His great and awesome power, dispossessing and driving out from before you nations, [nations that were] greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land as an inheritance, as it is this day. Therefore know and understand today, and take it to your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on the earth below; there is no other. So you shall keep His statutes and His commandments which I am commanding you today, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and so that you may live long on the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time.”
