Bound For the Promised Land

Double YIKES!
Days 74-87 reading assignments:
Numbers 22:21-36:13
Deuteronomy1:1-10:22
Luke 1:57-8:21
Proverbs 11:12-12:3

My absense at the page is a direct result of satan's effects on and in my life.  Busy-ness is back as well as my recent experience of a mini crisis of faith.  In the midst of a burning desire to seek and know God, I managed to deposit myself right smack back in the middle of my own wilderness.  It serves me right of course for all the harsh judgement I have had of the Israelites, but it still feels crummy.  Forty years they stumbled around in the wilderness while their destination was never more than an eleven day journey away.  Now I wonder if I will be delivered from that same wilderness anytime in this lifetime.

For a brief amount of time I was feeling quite God led and Spirit filled.  Jane and I celebrated our birthdays with a lunch out and a day of shopping.  We shared a fun day and some fairly riveting God-filled conversations.  I yammered on with excitement about a book I had just finished that was all about how Christians and churches sometimes tend to ignore the Holy Spirit and never realizing the obscene power of my own ego, mistakenly believed I was finally "getting it" when it came to such subjects.  I was visualizing the many ways God might use me, newly enlightened as I was.  Seriously, I was quite full of the wonder of me, anxious for an opportunity to exhibit all this good Christian love to someone who might smite me in some way.  As we left the restaurant and got back to the parking lot, a large four wheel drive pick-up was parked at an angle that although it was awkward, it really didn't hinder my leaving.  I looked at the truck with disgust and sarcastically said, "Nice park job buddy!"  only to realize that the driver was in the truck, evidently with his window down and not finished straightening his park job.  He leaned forward and gave me a big smile and a wave.  He was obviously slightly more Spirit-filled than I.  I hate hate hate lessons in humility.  Like the Pharisees, I am seeing how craftily I wrap my sins up in respectability and like the Israelites I keep myself in the wilderness not because I am geographically challenged- although I do tend to get lost in Safeway- but because of the condition of my heart.  I am beginning to understand that while I struggle to seek out this personal relationship with Him, one of many stumbling blocks is the discovery that for all these years I have believed in the concept of God instead of genuinely believing God.  Another is satan's powerful tool of pridefulness.  The more filled up with "me" I am, the less room there is for anything else.  I keep thinking that any day now I will wake up a new person who will automatically think first of God and make all the right choices.  In the face of hardship I will recite scriptures and my strong faith will have me leaning dependently on HIM.  In His incredibly patient way He is showing me that He knows I am a work in progress, an infant in this journey, more like a two year old that is screaming for her own way.  Thankfully He doesn't give in to my demands.

-God shows us our poverty of spirit when we try, in our own strength, to walk in a way pleasing to God...and yet continually fail-
Kay Arthur, Lord, Only You Can Change Me