5:10-12 | j o s h u a

posted in: Devotional | 0

God needs to test and prepare us before He allows us to move on to new chapters in our lives. We need to prove to Him that we can be faithful and obedient before He lets us grow.

What happened was that the Israelites celebrated the Passover. So, they are pumped and ready to defeat these kings that they’ve been waiting to take over for 40 years. God tells them to wait for a few days and circumcise themselves which hurts and forces them to stay put at their camp for a while. While waiting for the pain to stop or for God to say, “go,” they remember to celebrate the Passover. They have proven themselves faithful and obedient. So God moves them on to a new chapter in their lives.

This whole time God has been spoon feeding them manna (like a bread kind of thing) from heaven every day. Now that the people were in a new place, the land had grain and stuff to make the Passover meal with, so they did. God thinks this is a good time to move them on to a new chapter in their lives. He stops spoon feeding them manna and lets them eat the food that the land was producing. If you think about it, these people had probably eaten manna their whole lives. God started providing manna for the Israelites when they were hungry in the desert. All of these people who crossed the Jordan, were born in the desert. Nobody who was alive before they went into the desert was alive now. This is such a new thing for them to be picking fruits and vegetables and harvesting grain. However, if we are spoon fed our whole lives, we’re just babies.

We need to grow up and start getting food on our own. God wants us to grow up (not just physically, but spiritually, emotionally, mentally, etc) but we have to prove that we are ready. We need to do grown up things like be odedient to Him especially when it goes against what we want to do. Think of a little kid who’s mom tells him to do something. A sign of immaturity is if that kid refuses to do it no matter how many times he is told. Even if the kid finally does it, the more times the kid refuses, the more immature we’d say the kid is. But, if the kid were to obey right away, we’d think that kid was a good kid and mature. We’d probably give him more responsibility and treat him better. That’s what God wants from us, obedience and faithfulness. Without it, we’ll never grow into better people that can shake this world with the power of God. We’ll just be sitting around until other people who have grown come and shake the world for us. Let’s get involved with what God is doing in the world. But we’ve got to grow up first.

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