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Tuesday, February 6, 2018

I AM - in control {Numbers 11:1 - 14:45}

February 6, 2018

Do you live on your own?  Are you married?  Are you a mom?  Do you work outside the home?  Do you have a boss?  Are your parents still living? 

Isn’t it amazing that you have all these things?  Children, a job, parents and a home!  Or do you find yourself complaining about some hardship?  Your kids are sick.  Your boss or co-workers are less than pleasant.  Or the work is unlikable.  Your parents nag you about something.  Or your home is not picture perfect.

Are you still complaining after all you’ve read in our study so far?  You’ve witnessed the amazing power of God, yet you are somehow unsatisfied.

Perhaps you’re like Moses and you’re fed up with other people complaining and you want to quit.  Maybe you’ve lashed out at God asking Him why the situation you are in has not ended.

In our reading for today, we see God’s provision of sending 70 people to take on Moses’ burden of dealing with these people and God sent yet another miracle – meat – to feed over 600,000 people!  We see the complaints over who's the leader.  We see the fear of the unknown.  We see those who wholly follow the Lord, and those who rebel and get punished.

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Are you willing to take the risk of allowing someone else to take on responsibility?  I know many parents struggle with this.  It’s much easier to do it yourself, than allowing your children to learn.  Or possibly you belong to a group or committee and you’ve worked together for years and have a system of doing things, but your pastor or boss is new and wants to bring in new people and their ideas and talents to the group.  Are you willing to trust them with your old job/tasks?  Are you willing to let them be part of the team and use their gifts and talents?

We complement each other -  but sometimes they don’t do things the way I would do them.  If I’m a wise leader, I’m going to be appreciative of the different values and strengths and unique gifts that these people bring, and I’m not going to be insecure when God puts His Spirit on their life or in a way that He hasn’t revealed in mine.  I’m going to rejoice when God uses them.

We all need the fullness and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, in whatever God has called us to do at this season of life.  We ought not to try to serve the Lord without that anointing and the empowering of His Holy Spirit.  Without the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing.  So the burden of being a wife and mother, the burden of going to work, the burden of mentoring or discipling, the burden of serving God cannot be borne successfully apart from the enabling and empowering of the Holy Spirit.

God can put His Spirit in anyone.  God will enable you to do things that He calls you to do that are extraordinary – things that you could not do in your own strength.  When you see people doing something different than you, perhaps you have learned or always believed that a particular denomination is not doing the Lord’s work correctly, just remember that we cannot control the work of the Holy Spirit.  (Numbers 11:26-29 and Luke 9:49-50)

There’s a broad spirit that includes any and all of God’s servants who are set apart by God and anointed by His Spirit to do His work.  They don’t have to do it our way and we don’t have to control when and how and where it happens.

Aren’t you glad for people that God raises up to be influences in your family and friend’s lives?  If you feel like you have to be the only one who’s mentoring or training them, you’re living in a very small world.

God may put His Spirit on others to speak a word of truth or blessing or encouragement to the ones you love.  Can you rejoice in that?



Image result for You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you