Today’s Reading, Numbers 21-22
Focal Scripture: Numbers 22:31 “Then the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the path with a drawn sword in his hand. Balaam knelt low and bowed in worship on his face.”
How do you view things around you? For most of us we see what we see and do not think twice. Events happen and we will just say it was meant to be that way. However, how often to we stop and ask if there is a spiritual reason for events not going our way. I dare to say not very often.
In today’s reading Balaam was told to not to go in a certain direction. Unfortunately, he decided not to listen and journey down his own path. Unbeknownst to him the Lord sent an Angel to stop his journey. Balaam was content to be disobedient. The donkey was determined to protect her rider and to honor the Angel that was in their way. The donkey had better spiritual eyes than the man.
The challenge for us today is to see things spiritually. I am not saying we need to blame everything on a spiritual matters or battles. Sometimes our difficulties come from our own bad decision making. What we need to do as believers is ask ourselves “Am I involved in a spiritual battle at the moment?” By doing this we can evaluate if our struggles are self inflicted or if we are experiencing guidance or judgement from God.
If Balaam would have put this into practice it would look like this:
- Does my donkey usually act this way?
- If she does not could there be a reason for this behavior?
- Could there be a spiritual reason for the problems I am facing?
- Am I disobeying what the Lord has asked me to do?
After these questions are asked I believe a person can determine if they are suffering natural consequences or are in a spiritual situation.
I encourage you to live life with one foot in the physical world and another foot in the spiritual. We need to be a people that can ask good questions and challenge our earthly thinking.
You never know what lies ahead of us in our spiritual battles. It is a frightful thing to ignore the war around us.
Tomorrow, I plan on reading Numbers 23-25
