some questions to answer

As I was reading my devotions this morning in Hebrews 3:16-19 God brought something to my mind.  Why when we have such a clear example of what happened to those that did not trust God and obey Him, do we still follow the same path of mistrust and disobedience?

The Bible clearly shows throughout its pages what happens when we choose to ignore God and follow our own ways.  The children of Israel, as seen in Numbers 14, had a complete disbelief in God’s words and promises.  He had promised them a land that was flowing with milk and honey, but all they seemed to focus on were the “giants” that were in the way.  Why do we always focus on our problems and not the One who holds all the solutions?

God had already shown them that He would provide for them with food as can be seen in Exodus chapter 16!  First, God provided bread from Heaven, something that the people only had to go out and collect, no other work involved.  But then they had to start complaining about that, so God in His mercy provided them with quail.  However, even with something this miraculous happening for them, they still did not trust God!!  What more did they need to see in order to believe?  The better question is…what more do we need to see to believe?? 

If we call ourselves a Christian and we believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, then why do we have such a hard time believing it and learning from what is contained in its pages?  We make the same mistakes of unbelief and mistrust and disobedience that the Israelites did.   We don’t learn from their mistakes? Do we feel that we have to make our own mistakes in order to learn from them? Why do we love to put ourselves through the pain and heartache? Do we honestly think that our outcome will be different?  Do we think that we will slip one past God? 

My prayer for us today and every day that we draw a breath on this earth is that we will stop trying to rewrite history and learn from it.  The generation of Israelites that did not trust God lost their promised land. They died off wandering in the wilderness, never to see the land that was simply theirs for the taking.  How many mistakes that they made are we going to repeat daily before we learn? I pray that we can learn from the history and truth contained in the pages of scripture, so that we may be able to serve God better.