Waiting Upon God

This is my favorite: Peter was told by Jesus in the book of Acts to wait in Jerusalem until the baptism of the Holy Spirit came, but what did Peter do? John 21:3 says that he went fishing. He wasn’t going to wait. And what did the other disciples do? They went with him. And so, what does the Bible say? They caught nothing; they did not catch any fish. If we are out of God’s will, how can we catch anything? But when we are in God’s will, we’re going to catch all kinds of fish. When Jesus appeared, He told them to cast the net on the other side of the boat. And now they were not able to pull in the net because of the multitude of fish.

Numbers 9:1-5 says, “Now the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying…” By now, they had been here by this mountain for two years. Two weeks earlier they had fashioned and worshipped the golden calf, so God had just forgiven them. “Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time. On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, you shall keep it at its appointed time. According to all its rites and ceremonies you shall keep it.” So Moses told the children of Israel that they should keep the Passover. And they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month, at twilight, in the Wilderness of Sinai; according to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did.

Here are four things to consider. First, sometimes we get bummed out. Why do we get bummed? We know what God wants. But we have constantly messed up; we have sinned. Lord, You’ve warned us many times and still we are not able to keep from falling. Notice in the above few verses, God wanted Israel to keep the Passover observances even though they had messed up so poorly. Four times, He stressed for them to keep it. In the same way, God is asking us to keep our relationship with Him, even though we have sinned and missed the mark. But we make the excuses for why we can’t. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons that come up. This often happens when we are backsliding. We want to come back to God, but we feel like we can’t. We feel like what we have done is horrendous. We feel like the things that we have accomplished in our lives have destroyed any possibility of God using us or loving us in a very powerful way. How absolutely wrong we would be. God wants to love us and God wants to extend His grace to us. The Bible says, “Come now, and let us reason together, says the LORD…” (Isaiah 1:18) In other words, God is willing to talk with us and just share what is going on. The Bible also declares that all the years that the swarming locust has eaten up, God will restore. (Joel 2:25) So, think about it…all the years that we have messed up, God is willing to make it right. The crooked areas in our lives are going to be made straight. Those bumpy areas are going to be smooth. And the hills and the valleys are going to be filled up. The way back to God is a highway.