Day 3081 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 95:8 NIV

We have a really long history of putting God to the test. And well, that has an equally long history of really not going well.

There just seems to be something about our incessant arrogance and its corresponding sense of entitlement that has always seemed to seriously rub Him the wrong way. It might have something to do with the fact that He’s always provided everything we’ve ever truly needed and our demanding more just has us coming off as entirely ungrateful instead of humbly appreciative.

Don’t know, I’m just spit-balling.

Why is it that we’ve yet to learn that all we’re really doing by putting God to the test is setting ourselves up for failure? Have we actually ‘advanced’ so far that we truly can’t see just how far behind we are? The fact is that He owes us nothing, never did. All that He’s done has been done simply to show us who He is, not as a response to who we think we are.

That's the ultimate danger to be found down a road followed under the impression that we know the way. We've just got it all figured out and there ain't a lesson or improvement or correction we need to make. No, we're just here to enjoy our time living these lives we've perfected to the point that we tell everyone else how to live theirs, whether they ask for input or not.

Indeed, we even think ourselves able to tell God how it's to be, because we think ourselves equal in both stature and strength. Simply because we've still not learned the lessons our ancestors failed to see so long ago.

It's truly amazing that within the couple thousand years since God led folks out of slavery in Egypt toward a promise they didn't deserve, we still live as if we deserve something. In fact, our minds still share that same misunderstanding that they had so long ago in that we can't compute how a single choice made in a lone moment of misplaced focus could carry with it a cost our souls can't bear.

And because of our unwillingness to comprehend a reality outside and far above our own fallen version, we find ourselves a people making those very same errors every single day, without fail. We wake up each morning with a renewed arrogance aimed at testing God hoping that today will be the day He finally bends and agrees and succumbs to our will. All because we've placed Him in a box in which we thought we had the power to force Him to remain.

But coming soon to an end near you is the grand opening of the final chapter of a powerful tale of a people so wrong they thought themselves right.

You know, it's one of those tragic ironies that we keep repeating like some twisted broken record. It's always the silliest things that get us into trouble with the Almighty. An apple. A bit of water to quench our thirst. A golden cow. A lady bathing in eyeshot. Wanting some real hearty sustenance instead of the bread of Heaven. I don't know why, but we seriously seem to pick the pettiest of ways in which to poke a storm we can't weather.

And even more ironically, most of them seem to sprout from our stomachs in the form of hunger, thirst, a craving, a kind of gluttonous greed only reasonable to a people who've lived their entire lives in excess they neither deserve nor appreciate.

Sounds a bit like Philippians 3:19 to me. "Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things."

Be it an apple on the one tree we were instructed to leave alone, one more wife as we're bored with those we already have, some meat to break up the monotony of manna, a bank account with a bit more to boast about, a congregation so large we need a new building and a fourth service, or simply a few more followers so we feel as if we're seen and therefore somehow heard, we keep our hearts and eyes and minds and lives firmly affixed to the world in which we live.

And through it all, we demand that God fill these lives in the way that we see fit only because we can only see what we want in a place that's taught to live as if we've nothing close to anything we need.

But to the God who has indeed given us all we need and has been doing so since before we began breathing, all of this entitlement being thrown in His face through prayers demanding blessings of our own choosing is nothing but these little sparks which will one day finally ignite a wrath which will prove the consuming fire you might have heard Third Day sing about.

He is a consuming fire, the Lion of Judah, the First and the Last, the Almighty God who is fully justified in what He's going to one day do in response to our lack of an appreciative response to all He's always done for us.

Because for us to take all of life and all it's filled with for granted is to both deny His provision and refuse to accept that He is truly all we need. But that'll be the last lesson humanity learns the hard way. Sadly, it will in fact prove the hardest way of them all.

For this time we're not only going to never enter the Middle East. No friends, this time, should we continue rejecting God, denying God, refusing God, testing God, well, we will never enter the ultimate Promised Land. Instead, we'll find ourselves forever in a place entirely opposite of the Heaven we've been offered.

All because we wanted God to offer us something quicker.

Make no mistake, we're still very much the same people who don't trust God to provide for our basic needs. Why? Because we don't care about our basic needs. We don't care about food and shelter and one more breath to breathe in more second of this life that isn't ours forever. Those things are assumed. They'll always be there. Tomorrow will show up. Someone will hand us a hot meal or two before the sun goes down.

Yeah, it will all always keep working out in our favor simply because we've grown accustomed to never being in need of anything because God is unspeakably too good to a people like us. Except that it won't always be okay. It won't always be good. We will not always be in these lives in this place in this mindset that has us forgetting the good we already have because we want only what we think is better.

When that day comes that God does answer our testing, we'll only find that we end up the ones who fail. And friends, we're gonna fail hard.

This world has ingrained in us this entitled arrogance that has us blinded to our blessings and instead demanding our desires from the One whom we've never once shown any semblance of true appreciation. And this way of thinking seems to be running so deep so quick that the entirety of the human race is racing against themselves to prove just how little regard and reverence we have for the only reason that any of us are here to begin with.

If it weren't for God, the Israelites would still be Egyptians. If it weren't for God, Jericho's walls would be standing still today. If it weren't for God, fish wouldn't have hit a wall of water in the Red Sea. If it weren't for God, the desert would have ended everyone within days instead of 40 years. If it weren't for God, that cross wouldn't have stood upon that Hill and you and I wouldn't stand a chance.

Because if it weren't for God, that stone would still be sealing that tomb with you and I lying dead inside.

For us to take for granted a single second of life or a blessing we've grown so conceited to allow go unseen is a mistake so great that it will indeed cost us everything if we don't ask Him to help us stop making it. Because friends, we make it every day. We pray only to ask Him to make the pain stop hurting. We demand He heal our loved ones as that's what we want. We ask Him to bless us while we do nothing to honor Him.

Who do we think we are, and how much longer can we accept that lie?

I know that the world today isn't all that big on history. And in the case that you're among those who've never found nor felt any reason to look into the past in order to glean lessons to help with that which is still to come, let me share one lesson from the days of old that is of such crucial importance that literally everyone is promised to learn it at some point:

God isn't all that pleased with being pressed.

How do I know this? Well, let’s see: banishment from Eden, a flood that wiped out literally all but eight people from the face of the earth, plagues of disease and disaster that turned the Egyptians eager to lose their workforce, an entire generation left dead in the desert, Moses himself unwelcomed into the promise toward which he’d led all those people all that time, a bit of fire and sulfur raining down from the sky and even this one instance of the grounding splitting open in order to gorge itself upon the sinful.

And oh yeah, the crucifixion of an innocent Savior who chose to lovingly and kindly and compassionately and undeservingly die a brutal death on behalf of every single person who has ever lived as every single person who has ever lived has in fact lived in opposition against their loving Father through the endless rejection of the adoration and appreciation that He fully deserves.

Guess that’s what happens when we don’t learn from history: We never stop inviting an encore.

We may get hungry sometimes as we see the world gorging themselves on all that we're fighting to leave being. Might thirst for a drink in a dry place along this path spent following hope into the desert. We might crave the delightful delicacies we've learned to idolize through a misguided life lived only to please our palates. We may even find the gall to demand God prove Himself all over again when our faith inevitably proves faltering.

But Jesus already took care of all the above. "“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." First two, done! Third: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."

And as for that last one, well, "He answered, "'A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.'"

What more do we still need? Why do we still want more? What is there that we expect God to do beyond what's already been done if we truly believe that all that He's already done is in fact enough? If we can read the Bible, pour out our hearts unloading the weight of our worries through prayer, look upon the cross and turn away still wanting something else, I literally don't know what to say.

And that's saying all that needs to be said as you've probably seen through all these posts that I'm never really at a loss for words.

Friends, we can't win a battle against the Lord. That's the insanity the world is looking for. We can't tread water through a flood that lasts a year and ten days. We can't jump high enough to avoid landing hoping the ground will seal before we come back down. We can't enter a grave and walk back out. We are not all we've made ourselves out to be. We're woefully from it in fact.

Truth be told, we are entirely unprepared for what's coming because we don't know what coming. He does. He knows the way. He is the Way! But if we don't get our filth, our foolishness, our stupidity, our ignorance, our arrogance, our entitlement, our cravings, our demands, our desires, our delusions out of the way, then I'm afraid this world will be the best home we ever have.

And considering how we're so often entirely unsatisfied down here, that this might be the best it ever gets is an outlook too sad to accept. And yet, that's happening every single day as souls are leaving without having ever truly known the fullness of God nor shown Him the fullness of the glory He deserves.

This life isn't about us, but our incessant testing of God shows only that we still assume otherwise. We are the clay and He is the potter. We've absolutely no business showing Him as much contempt as we tend to through our lack of gratitude and humility. We just can't keep demanding our Heaven on this earth.

Because honestly, why demand the best part of our existence be the part we're leaving behind? Maybe I'm just angry today. Maybe it's because I've haven't gotten a good night's sleep in some time. But to me, asking Him to make this part perfect just seems stupid.

I'll take my Heaven in Heaven. Even if life sucks along the way.

Because I'd rather know I had something to look forward to than something I didn't want to leave behind.

Life is more than food and water and clothing and all this extravagance that we're used to having around. And the danger in all this excess is that we’ve not yet felt the trueness of real pain. But just because we’ve not felt His wrath definitely doesn’t mean we can withstand it. In fact, the Bible is filled with stories that perfectly prove we can’t. Truth is He’s always given us even more than we feel we are entitled to receive. Despite our displeasure, we really are blessed beyond measure.

So we should probably quit asking for more as we’re already way behind in showing gratitude for what we already have.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold