A woman I know, I'll call Leah, had an experience
with God that was grounded in a physical item.
Several other people have had experiences that were related to this
particular item as well. I find it
interesting how often God uses items in the physical world to interact with His
people.
This happened in the Bible as well. One particular story comes to mind from
Numbers 21.
"The people spoke against God and Moses,
"Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we
loathe this miserable food." The Lord
sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many
people of Israel died. So the people
came to Moses and said, "We have sinned, because we have spoken against
the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from
us." And Moses interceded for the
people. Then the Lord said to Moses,
"Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about,
that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live." And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on
the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked
to the bronze serpent, he lived."
Numbers 21:5-9 (NASB).
God could have just as easily pronounced them healed
if He wanted to, but He chose a physical item for the people to look at in
order to give them healing.
Unfortunately, we tend to get attached to those
physical items that God uses. I suppose
it's because we serve a God we are unable to see with our own eyes, so if He
gives us something physical, we grab hold of it as tightly as we can.
The book of 2 Kings tells how, many years later,
Israel misused the bronze serpent that God gave them for a specific purpose and
a specific moment in time.
"Now it came about in the third year of
Hoshea, the son of Elah king of Israel, that Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of
Judah became king. He was twenty-five
years old when he became king, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem;
and his mother's name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. He did right in the sight of the Lord, according
to all that his father David had done.
He removed the high places and broke down the sacred pillars and cut
down the Asherah. He also broke in
pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the sons of
Israel burned incense to it; and it was called Nehushtan." 2 Kings 18:1-4 (NASB).
Israel began worshiping the tool God gave them rather than worshiping the God that gave it!
Israel's focus on the bronze snake brings me to
think about Leah again. I've noticed her
beginning to struggle, and I see her return again and again to that physical
item, as if it is a talisman that will bring her closer to God again.
I don't know Leah well, so I can't say everything
that's going on in her life, but I know that the answer to her problems are not
found in something that is created, in something she can touch. It has been used by God many times, but it is
only useful as He allows it to be useful.
Over my life as a Christian, I have had more than
one special experience with God, and each one came through a certain set of
experiences. If I want to have another
experience with God, I could try to go back to where one of those experiences
took place. I could bring back the same
people if I wanted; we could sing the same songs or do the same
activities.
But the power is not in the place, the people, the
music, the activities, or the things.
The power is in God. Click to tweet!
When you want answers to a problem, look to
God. When you want to experience God, look
to Him.
He might use a song or an item or a place or a
person that He has used before, or He might have something new for you. Let Him give it to you rather than try to
take something that isn't there anymore.
Thanks for sharing these words Kirra. They are meaningful and I pray that God will use them to bring others closer to Him. Good idea with the "tweet" link. I'll have to figure out how to do it!
ReplyDeleteHow are you feeling?
Grace,
Donna
Donna, I'm feeling so much better! I still have a cough lingering but that's minor compared to everything else!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you like what I had to say. Idolatry isn't always obvious, and good things can become idols, too!