God's Got My Number... Well He speaks through Numbers

¹ That night all the members of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. ² All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! ³ Why is the LORD bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” ⁴ And they said to each other, “We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”  Numbers 14:1-4

Ouch! It is not often that I open up the scriptures and read and have the real sense that God is wanting to speak so plainly and seriously to me as i did as I sat down at Lunchtime to belatedly do my scripture reading for today.

I am using Tyndale's 'The One Year Bible' to read through the bible each year and as it is March I am working my way through the Pentateuch and in particular the story of Moses and Israel's wilderness wanderings.

For the past three years I have been involved in church planting amongst University Student's in Auckland City. I have to admit that I find it a very hard task and have found myself prone to winging and complaining about this. In prayer and in conversations with people who ask about how things are going. As I read the people of Israel's reactions to the spies who Moses had sent up to the land of Israel I realised that it echoes my own concerns and complaints. Yup the land looks fruitful, but to tell you the truth the problems feel like giants. I often feel very alone in things out numbered. I worry that I have lead my family up here from napier where we lived on a surf beach and somehow if it all falls to pieces and does not succeed that it will like they will be the ones who pay the price. I often thing well God maybe it would have been better if I had stayed down in Napier, which is not exactly a wilderness and we could have lived by the beach and simply kept on doing what we were doing there.

But to have ones negative attitudes so uncovered by scripture is rather a wake up call. So why this blog entry you may ask...

1. To remind me and keep it fresh in my mind... God hears the wrestling I am having, and wants to challenge that.

2. I don't really want to go back to Egypt.

3. I need to rehear the testimony of Joshua and Caleb... Yup it's a tough call but God is with us. It's Gods call, God's vision, God's work.