“And when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD
raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them, even Othniel the son of Kenaz,
Caleb’s younger brother.” (Jud 3:9 AV)
“But when the children of
Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son
of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded: and by him the children of Israel sent
a present unto Eglon the king of Moab.” (Jud 3:15
AV)
There are times when someone
like a child needs help because he is stuck and you immediately assist the
troubled child. There are other times
when you let him sit in the mess he is made until he is so sick of it he cries
out for help. The LORD often allows us
to suffer in the consequences of our own choices so that we learn no to do that
again. Such is the case above. God did not help until they got sick of their
situation and were willing to take full blame for their predicament.
The alarming thing is the
first time they cried, it was after seven years. The next generation let their troubles go for
eighteen years. The third generation let
it go for twenty. The last time the
phrase is used, it was eighteen years of hardship before they cried unto the
LORD. It seems as though it often takes
on average, half a generation for that generation to learn that God is in
control! But I digress.
We had this toy activity table
for the grandkids to play with. My
grandson, being a boy, discovered new and interesting ways to play with this
small furniture for which it was not designed.
We warned him not to turn it over and climb in and out of it because he
could get trapped. Low and behold, guess
what happened. The first time we
released him rather quickly when it was evident he was becoming frustrated. Warning him not to do that again, we set him
free. Thinking he had it all figured
out, over went the table for round two.
Again, the yelps of frustration arose, but we let him stay in it for a
bit longer. Once again, trapped a third
time, we watched him carefully so that he would not cause harm, but let him
stay there until he had worked up a holler!
He had a come apart. This time,
we let him cry unto the Pawpaw.
What we often learn the hard
way is that God often does not move until we do. The father did not chase down the
prodigal. The prodigal had to come to
the end of himself before the father moved.
The question is, how big of a mess are we going to get into until we
learn that God is in control?
No comments:
Post a Comment