Elevated Rank
Psalm 106:15 is always a little disturbing:
“So He gave them their request,
but sent a wasting disease among them.”
A little scary to think that we could make a request before God, and that He has the full authority and prerogative to answer in a way that strikes us as outright harmful. The reason? A couple of verses before, His children had ‘forgotten His works,’ had 'not waited for His counsel,' and ‘tempted God’ (v. 13-14)… Does that contradict my understanding of how God answers prayers? Perhaps I live in the bubble that says, even if I pray wrongly, omniscient God will correct to my good the requests made in ignorance…
Except that’s exactly what He did! A ‘wasting disease’ hardly seems a gracious correction, some providential display of mercy, but how often, when we pray squarely against the will of God, are we quick to recognize that the answer He gives remains consistent with His good intentions toward us? If He hadn’t sent a wasting disease, if He hadn’t checked the Israelites' ‘intense craving in the wilderness’ (v. 14), would they have ever had opportunity to turn back to Him? How humbling when we realize that what God has given us, even in strong rebuke, is exactly what He knew we needed in order to be set back into right relationship with Him.
James 4 points to the Israelites’ condition (and ours) as this: “You lust and do not have… You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives… You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?” (v. 2-4). Was it not ‘hostility toward God’ which prompted those off-kilter prayers? Was it not the error of elevating our own desires above all else which led us into the death-like disease which is inevitable when we look outside of the Source of Life?
We fail to submit, or (as the military term in James 4:7 literally means), to “fall under the rank of” God. So long as we maintain that fulfilling our own desires is more pressing than obeying His; that receiving answers as we see fit is more critical than where we stand with Him, we’re placing ourselves in the precarious place of being answered with what we need: of being given the correction that says we have not aligned our motives with His, and are still hostile toward our Savior and Maker.
But praise be to Him, that – if even it meant He sent a “wasting disease” – He would not fail to align us with Him until we fall under His rank, and are again restored to the only One who truly knows how to ‘satisfy the desire of every living thing’ (Psalm 145:16) – not because His creatures are always wise to ask, but because His intentions toward us are always that we may have “life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
“So He gave them their request,
but sent a wasting disease among them.”
A little scary to think that we could make a request before God, and that He has the full authority and prerogative to answer in a way that strikes us as outright harmful. The reason? A couple of verses before, His children had ‘forgotten His works,’ had 'not waited for His counsel,' and ‘tempted God’ (v. 13-14)… Does that contradict my understanding of how God answers prayers? Perhaps I live in the bubble that says, even if I pray wrongly, omniscient God will correct to my good the requests made in ignorance…
Except that’s exactly what He did! A ‘wasting disease’ hardly seems a gracious correction, some providential display of mercy, but how often, when we pray squarely against the will of God, are we quick to recognize that the answer He gives remains consistent with His good intentions toward us? If He hadn’t sent a wasting disease, if He hadn’t checked the Israelites' ‘intense craving in the wilderness’ (v. 14), would they have ever had opportunity to turn back to Him? How humbling when we realize that what God has given us, even in strong rebuke, is exactly what He knew we needed in order to be set back into right relationship with Him.
James 4 points to the Israelites’ condition (and ours) as this: “You lust and do not have… You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives… You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?” (v. 2-4). Was it not ‘hostility toward God’ which prompted those off-kilter prayers? Was it not the error of elevating our own desires above all else which led us into the death-like disease which is inevitable when we look outside of the Source of Life?
We fail to submit, or (as the military term in James 4:7 literally means), to “fall under the rank of” God. So long as we maintain that fulfilling our own desires is more pressing than obeying His; that receiving answers as we see fit is more critical than where we stand with Him, we’re placing ourselves in the precarious place of being answered with what we need: of being given the correction that says we have not aligned our motives with His, and are still hostile toward our Savior and Maker.
But praise be to Him, that – if even it meant He sent a “wasting disease” – He would not fail to align us with Him until we fall under His rank, and are again restored to the only One who truly knows how to ‘satisfy the desire of every living thing’ (Psalm 145:16) – not because His creatures are always wise to ask, but because His intentions toward us are always that we may have “life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
posted by Purple at 11:01 AM
1 Comments:
oh, rebecca! i love it when God talks to me thru you! it's always easier to take that way! :)
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