DAY 63

WHAT DOES IT TAKE?

Numbers 29, 30 & 31 and Mark 9:1-29

What does it take…what does it take to stay on a diet, or to exercise three times a week, or to limit the amount of doing, eating, or drinking something, or to do something like pray, read your Bible…what does it take to stay committed to God?

We are on a journey trying to stay committed to reading the Bible in a year. I am learning what it takes to do that. Certainly it takes determination and discipline. Certainly it takes having a plan and allocating time. It also takes help from God.

As humans our sense of pride and accomplishment can spur us forward, but we can easily overdue it and become full-of-pride thinking we don't need God. The Israelites are no different as they wander through the wilderness and bring us to this chapter.

Numbers 31 is a difficult chapter as we read of God directing the slaughter of a people, the Midianites. Early on in this year long journey I suggested that I would try and deal with the difficult bits of Scripture. My firm belief is that if I (we) don’t, if we merely pretend they are not there, or even worse dismiss them, then we have started down the trail of playing “god”, of picking and choosing what only makes sense to our human (limited) minds. So with that said, what of Numbers 31?

I come back to “what does it take?” as the starting point. What does it take for you and me to be totally committed to God? The answer is it takes God’s intervention. We see a few chapters earlier in Numbers 25 the results of Moab's seduction of Israel. Israel is walking away from God and becoming involved in sexual immorality and idol worship.

I also come back to the point I made during the Exodus and the Plagues, the point of how serious God is regarding the salvation and redemption of His World – He is deadly serious. God’s actions here are to remove a threat, a deadly threat from the Israelites. It must be that God has concluded that “they don’t have what it takes” to withstand the threat.

Seems extreme, doesn’t it. Let me ask you to ponder a philosophical question, “If you could travel back in time would you kill Hitler before he grew up?” Seriously, think about it – because the society of that day did not have what it took to stand against him.

We cannot know all the reasons why God did this, we can only make a choice, to either accept God’s sovereignty and thereby accede to His actions, or we can reject them and stand in judgment of Him – not much middle ground.

I choose to try and accept Him and all that He has done, is doing, and will do. I certainly will fail at this ascent. I certainly need His help and grace. The key for me is to recognize this situation and my need. The reality is that I do not have what it takes within me to do all that He is calling me to do. I need Him. I think that is a little bit of what is going on in Marks Gospel where they cannot heal the young boy apart from Jesus. Jesus knows that do not have what it takes. None of us do on own…for apart from Me you can do nothing (cf. John 15:5).