Remember God in your Land of Plenty
IN YOUR LAND OF PLENTY DON’T FORGET GOD
DEUTERONOMY 8 V 2 – 4
“Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. Yes, He humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone, rather we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
Nobody likes to be tested in the wilderness experiences of life. Our natural propensity involves complaining, grumbling, and muttering to ourselves and God – and to anybody else who cares to listen! It often takes us along time to learn that the quickest way out of the crisis of a wilderness experience is to turn to God in our challenges and make Him Lord of the situation – i.e. He is in charge. Our resources and best efforts can all dry up like an empty store cupboard. That is not always necessarily a bad thing. When it’s all gone and all our hope is gone and we don’t know what to do to move our lives forward, God is waiting for us to turn to Him. When we do, He feeds the inner depletion of our empty lives with spiritual manna from heaven as well as giving us natural resources. God has and will pour out an endless storehouse of blessings when you humbly recognise that with Him there is so much more than bread. In the New Testament the Apostle Paul tells us that we serve a God who is the God of the ‘abundantly more than you can ask for or imagine’. Ephesians 3 v 20
This is what God promised the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:
“For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land of flowing streams and pools of water, with fountains and springs that gush out in the valleys and hills. It is a land of wheat and barley; of grapevines, fig trees, and pomegranates, of olive oil and honey. It is a land where food is plentiful and nothing is lacking. It is a land where iron is as common as stone, and copper is abundant in the hills.” Deuteronomy 8 v 7 – 9.
God promises more than food for our bodies. He also promises to strengthen us within:
“I ask that out of the riches of His glory He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Then you, being rooted and grounded in love, will have power, together with all the saints, to comprehend the length and width and height and depth of the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3 v 16 - 19
Let us examine ourselves. Do we acknowledge and thank God for the blessings in our lives or are we ungrateful and indifferent? Moses said to the people:
“When you have eaten your fill, be sure to praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God and disobey his commands, regulations and decrees that I am giving you today.” Deuteronomy 8 v 10 – 11.
God wants us to be dependent on the power of His Word speaking into our lives such much more than He want us to be dependent upon Him for just our daily sustenance. Our focus on God’s ongoing blessings in our lives will guard us from developing a prideful spirit and keep Him in our daily remembrance.
“Do not become proud at that time and forget the Lord your God, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 8 v 14
When the crisis of your wilderness experiences of life is over and life is great again, do not forget God who brought you through it.
Amen xxx