Great Scott! It's been a long time since I've posted word or picture. I apologize to anyone who has been checking my blog with a sad tear in their eye for lack of anything from Miriam. To prove my remorse, I have here a little lesson that I'm learning, that I would like to show you.
Isn’t it funny how when God wants to teach a person a lesson, He starts peppering every area of your life with some new way to learn that lesson? Well, here’s some of that ‘pepper’ He’s been seasoning me with. It’s called “Being Content.”
First of all....... through my daily Bible reading. There’s a lot of things in the books of the law that if you’re not paying attention, you can easily miss. But thankfully, I was paying attention and her they are:
- When the Israelites harvested their crops in the fall, if by chance they forgot a couple “sheaves of grain” as Deuteronomy puts it, God instructs them not to go back and gather the rest, but to leave them there for strangers/widows who would come by later looking for food.
- At the end of every seven years, everybody was required to: Release anybody from any and all debt they owed to that person, and to free any Hebrew slaves they had acquired.
- Every day, more than once a day, each person had to pick out a quality animal from their flock (it had to be flawless, which would make it very expensive) and give it to God.
- For the year of Jubilee, which came very 50 years, they couldn’t plant or harvest any crops, or do any trade with each other for products.
Do ya catch a pattern here? In each of these instances, the people had to give something up—whether it was animals, land, or people, they had to give it away and be rid of it. Why? Well maybe God wanted to teach the people not to be so attached to their possessions. After all, if they knew that they would be giving their most quality animals to God for sacrifice, they probably wouldn’t let themselves get too fond of those animals, and their focus would be taken OFF of their stuff, and ON to the fact they were just there to please God.
Secondly.........I heard a sermon. The guy who preached it pointed out Hebrews 13:5, which instructs us not to have covetousness in our conversations, but to be content because God will never leave us or forsake us. Gee willakers, how could we want more than that?????? He gave another verse that is a little more shocking in its nature: Eph. 5:5- “…No covetous man , who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Why is covetousness idolatry? Ok, let’s take that back a question farther. Why would anyone want to worship idols? Because they’re not content with God! They think He’s not good enough and they want something else. When we covet things we don’t have, we say “God, you’re not good enough. I’m not happy that you will never leave me. I want more,” and that's the same as idolatry. Sobering, isn’t it?
So there you have it! That’s what God has been teaching me, and there are actually several different things in my life that He is using to teach it to me, but I don’t want to be really long and boring, because I would like people to actually READ this! I hope it helps other people out.
