It might have been the cheesy nachos at 1 AM, my crazy-awesome, Jackson date night with Dawn, to hear Christine Caine and Kari Jobe PREACH IT! It might have been the insomnia that has arrested me and refused to release me. It might be this stirring in my gut that my 30 days of high definition is revealing...
But y'all! Y'all!
I need to use my words. I need to type my words. I need to get them out. Not necessarily for you, but for me.
Christine Caine was preaching out of the book Joshua. (*side note* If you don't know of Christine Caine, go google her RIGHT NOW!) The journey of the Israelite's, a story as familiar to me as my own life. But that's what is so delicious about the Holy Spirit, He makes the word, the stories, the passages new. He opens our spiritual eyes to see. And it's only because of HIS work in our hearts that we are changed because of what we read, hear, and experience. One can stand in front of a mirror all day long and see flaws and changes that need to be made in one's life, but it is not merely the recognition of one's need for change that causes change. One must actually BE CHANGED!
Back to the squirrely Israelites. God, in His great mercy, rescued his people from 400 plus years of captivity from the Egyptians. They were excited for like five seconds before they started longing and complaining to go back to Egypt, (yes, the place where they has been held in captivity, beaten, abused, and oppressed) because the dinner entrees were better there. The manna and quail that God was faithfully providing in the morning and the evening, was not getting five stars on their Trip Advisory App. I know that this exact same selfishness and discontentment resides in me. I know my maiden name really is, Israelite. :)
But in Joshua 5, after forty years of faithfully meeting the needs of His ungrateful people, verse twelve says, "the manna ceased!" The way in which the Lord was providing for His people was about to change. And while our God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the WAY our God sees fit to nourish, satisfy, and provide for his people can change. God ceased to serve them manna because He wanted them to now eat the fresh produce of the promised land; Canaan. God was so before His time, eating all local, organic, and fresh market. All the granola heads just THINK they are cutting edge. :)
Imagine for a minute, the child who was born during the forty years of the wilderness experience. The child who has never eaten anything BUT manna. Manna is comfortable to this child; now grown adult. The manna is predictable, the manna comes without work, the manna is all this person has every known. And if I know the human race at all, I am sure somewhere in the million people that Joshua was leading, someone opposed the eating of the manna because, "we have never done it this way!". Christine so politely pointed out that those seven words are the death sentence to every church in existence. Furthermore, I would say they are the death sentence to every personal walk with the Lord, every marriage, every family, every friendship, every parent-child interaction, every school, every community, every establishment.
"The manna ceased," not because our God is an angry God who was punishing the contentious hearts of a rebellious group of whinos. The manna ceased because God had something better for a people that He adored.
Christine said two extremely profound things that I cannot shake.
One, "how many of you are still eating manna when God desires to serve you promised land produce?"
How many of us refuse to make a change in our marriages, in our parenting, in our hearts, in our patterns, in our addictions, in our routines, in our churches, in our friendships, in our homes, in our worship styles, in our schools, in our communities, in our jobs, because we are comfortable consuming manna because we've never tasted anything else. All the while, the manna is a sad, moldy, stale, representation of what "once was". One of the greatest quotes I've ever read was by Jasoslav Pelikan, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living!" This will also be tattooed to my body at some point. How many of us are eating a daily diet of traditionalism? Because it is what we have always eaten....
We all do it!! We are ALL guilty. We all get comfortable with the manna somewhere in our life. And we all stake our claim in the dirt, "You will have to come pry this manna out of my cold, dead, hand before I (fill in the blank).... And then marriages, families, churches, schools, communities, relationships, ministries, parent-child interactions, friendships, jobs, and a whole entire world dies because no one is willing (because of fear, arrogance, complacency or ignorance) to change the method is which one might nourish, satisfy and provide for the well spring of life; people's hearts and lives.... RELATIONSHIPS!!!
I'm done.
I'm done munching on a diet of manna.
I'm done doing it the way it has always been done....because!
I'm done being controlled by fear, arrogance, complacency, and ignorance.
I'm done consuming a diet that has zero nutrition all under the banner of traditionalism (the worship of tradition).
There is freedom, life, peace, and unspeakable JOY when you taste and see the Lord is GOOD! When you taste Jesus, when you taste the produce of the promise land, when you taste the hope that He can plant in our hearts and lives. When you stop feasting on "what was", when you break free from the bondage of the way it was done in the wilderness and you enter the promise land of really KNOWING JESUS!!
In closing, Christine marked my heart with these words. "We have an entire generation of Christians who have been set free from captivity, but who will spend their entire lives wandering in the wilderness."
HEART.BREAK!
There are people who will never taste and see that the Lord is good on this earth, because they think Christianity is only about being saved from an eternity in hell. Fire insurance. Meanwhile, there is a God who is begging His dearly beloved people to stop their malnutritioned diet on manna, and feast on HIM!!!!!
WATCH OUT! I'm GETTING FIRED UP!!! This is only the beginning!
~Sara
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