It is only when we resist and refuse that we will fail to thrive!
"The Lord bless you, and keep you:
the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious unto you:
the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace" (Numbers 6:24-26).
This, the blessing of the Lord upon the children of Israel, reveals the will of God for His people. This includes His will for us! Yet, we read in Ezekiel 15:7-8, "and I will set My face against them. They will go out from one fire, but another fire shall devour them. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I set My face against them. Thus I will make the land desolate, because they have persisted in unfaithfulness, says the Lord God".
"We owe our very lives to God. Without Him, we are a mess. Without Him, we wallow in our own blood, unable to grow and thrive. He sees us in our moral ugliness and yet says to us, 'Live!" (Dr. Stanley's commentary on Ezekiel 16:6). Ezekiel paints a word picture of a newborn baby left uncared for--
"on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut,
nor were you washed in water to cleanse you;
you were not rubbed with salt (a ritual back in the day)
nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. .
but you were thrown out into the open field,
when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born.
And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood,
I said to you in your blood, 'Live!' Yes, I said to you in your blood, 'Live!'
I made you thrive like a plant in the field;
and you grew, matured, and became very beautiful."
(Ezekiel 16:4-7)
As a nurse, I have seen babies brought back to the hospital and admitted with the diagnosis of "failure to thrive". Often, this is due to a lack of care on the part of a young mother who may not understand what a newborn baby requires. God desires to nurture us as His children and He is the perfect father. He will not neglect us or fail to care for us. In our situation, the problem lies in the fact that we may think we do not want God's nurturing--we don't need it. Oh, that we could recognize that we are in the hands of the perfect father! We have not been left neglected and spiritually abandoned. God gives us every opportunity to thrive spiritually! He has the means and the power! He wants to nurture us, to give us the care we need. He wants us to live spiritually and He knows and provides exactly what we need!
God wants to grow us,
mature us,
and make us a beautiful thing!
"Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us!
For we are exceedingly filled with contempt.
Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorn of those who are at ease,
with the contempt of the proud"
(Psalm 123:3-4).
"A faithful man will abound with blessings, but he who hastens to be rich will not go unpunished" (Proverbs 28:20). Faithfulness can be toward God, toward right principles (knowing that it is wrong to seek something for nothing), toward family, toward our jobs, toward living a healthy lifestyle, etc.
The Israel in Ezekiel was under the first Covenant. "For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second" (Hebrews 8:7). There was nothing wrong with what God and Israel had agreed to in the first covenant and God faithfully kept His part of the agreement. Verse 8, clarifies the reason the first covenant failed. "Because finding fault with them"! The fault was not with God nor was it with His Law ("The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. . the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes" (Psalm 19:7, 8).)
In the new covenant, God writes His Truth on the hearts of believers. "Because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts;
and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'
for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness,
and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more"
(Hebrews 8:9-12).
God's mercy on our unrighteousness cost the life of His Son, Jesus Christ. He took our sins and gave us His righteousness (listen to the sermon on Forgiveness that is linked to this site). God is so eager to "make His face shine upon us and give us peace"! Just as Jesus wept over Jerusalem, saying, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that killed the prophets, and stone them which are sent unto you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not" (Matthew 23:37)!
May it never be said of us as believers that we "would not"! God has opened the door and made the way for us to draw near to Him. He promises that in return, He will draw close to us (James 4:8). It has been said that spiritual awakenings may not come from prayer, but out of desperation. If we are wise, we will fill our lamps with oil while there is time (see Matthew 25). We will not wait for desperation to motivate us, but will desire with all our hearts that God's face would shine upon us, that we could enjoy today, the blessing of His graciousness and of His peace! God leaves it up to us what we will choose.
Why would we not want the perfect Father
to grow us,
to mature us,
and to make us a beautiful thing?
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