Get Set To be Flooded

O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good; for his mercy endures forever. – 1Ch 16:34

God is always good.

And if He was good to the stubborn, rebellious and ungrateful Israelites, you should be sure He will always be good to you.

If He gave the Israelites angels’ food: Manna from Heaven even though they didn’t really ask for it but were just murmuring waywardly; I’m persuaded that He’ll take care of you who has been faithfully praying to Him all this while.

If He added meat to the Manna, just because they mentioned it in their complaint; you can be sure He will not just barely meet your needs but will superabundantly give you even more than what you ask for.

If He supplied water as a flood in a scorched wasteland for 40 years to the Israelites, you don’t need to look at your bank account or your current circumstances to know that God can turn any situation around.

I’m pretty sure you did not wake up this morning yelling to God how lousy your life is because of Him. If God could preserve, clothe, feed and bless three million odd grumbling and rebellious people because of a covenant He had with their forefathers long ago, how much more do you think He will bless you just because of His Beloved Son Jesus.

Therefore, get your heart ready today; because superabundant favour and inexhaustible blessings are coming your way this season; In Jesus’ most marvellous Name.

AMEN!

GREG ELKAN

Don’t Forget the Scorpions

When we think of deserts and wildernesses, we usually think of tumbleweeds, cacti, and endless stretches of fine sand. But when Moses described the wilderness that the Israelites passed through, he called it “great and terrible”

He pointed out that the desert was not just inhospitable, but also hostile. It wasn’t just dry, it also had “fiery serpents, and scorpions” (Dt 8:15).

Now, no thanks to their rebelliousness and ingratitude, we know that that wilderness had fiery serpents (Num 21:5-6). However, but for Moses’ declaration, we would never have known that it had scorpions as well.

Because, the whole point of being delivered from scorpions is that you don’t actually see them! When 3 million odd persons pass through a wilderness with not as much as one person being bitten by a scorpion; you don’t conclude that that means the desert had no scorpions, or that the scorpions were on a forty-year hibernation. No! You conclude that God must have kept them away.

This is also true of their clothes and shoes. Moses says in Dt 8:4, “Your clothing grew not old upon you, neither did your foot swell, these 40 years.”

He didn’t say they got NEW clothes, or that their swollen feet were miraculously healed; he just pointed out that they didn’t need new clothes, and didn’t need healing for swollen feet.

These types of blessings are hard to detect: I call them “the miracle of NOT needing a miracle”. It’s easy to thank God for something; it’s harder to notice when you didn’t need to ask for it. That’s why Ps 103:2 says when you’re blessing the LORD, you should FORGET NOT ALL HIS BENEFITS.

When thanking God, remember the Manna, remember the water from the rock, even remember the fiery serpents. But while you’re at it, don’t forget the Scorpions!

“But we never saw any scorpions?” An Israelite may counter. And the LORD’s reply would be:

“PRECISELY!”

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

 

Ingratitude Will “Explain” ANY Miracle

“For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one.” – G.K. Chesterton (1925).

A student once asked a scientist if water could come out of a rock and he responded with an unequivocal “Yes!” This, of course, is deliberately misleading because, as was explained earlier, rocks can only serve as conduits, not sources, of water. And even at that, no rock on earth can channel water in the scale and manner the rocks of Horeb did for the Israelites. 

The Devil will always try to “explain” your miracle away – if you let him.

I once saw a documentary that essentially tied all of the 10 plagues of Egypt to a volcanic eruption across the Mediterranean at about that same time. Another book opined that the feeding of the 5,000 was just an expression of communal love: that is, everybody – following the lead of the little boy – brought out their own lunches and passed it round; leading to one big massive feast!

Patently absurd statements like these – along with the secular assertion that we evolved from rocks – are only symptomatic of this sinful age of ingratitude. (Rom 1:21; 2Ti 3:2).

I’ve observed that miracles are only dramatic at the moment they occur; after a while, we begin to observe rationalising factors that make it seem not so spectacular after all.

One key to not falling into the satanic trap of not appreciating God’s miracles in your life is to always rehearse your testimonies to Him. If it took you five years in marriage before you got your first child, keep thanking God for that, even if the child is now 25!

Another key is to keep thanking God for the seemingly ‘natural’ blessings. So if you got a child within the first year of marriage, thank – and keep thanking – God for that miracle (it really is).

Regardless of your miracle – spectacular or mundane – make up your mind never to allow the Devil steal it from you through gradual desensitisation leading to ingratitude. 

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

 

Ingratitude Will Normalise ANY Miracle

Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come. – 1Co 10:11

There’re only two instances in scripture where the Israelites queried Moses for water: Ex 17:6 and Num 20:11. But anyone who’s lived in a house that’s not connected to the public water system will readily agree that no size of tank is ever big enough to sustain a family; the water will eventually run out.

So, while the amount of water that gushed out of the rock that fateful day in Horeb may have been so plenteous as to satisfy 3 million odd persons and their cattle; it most definitely would not have been enough to sustain them for 37 years (the period of time between the two separate complaints for water).

So, either there were water bodies littered everywhere else they went during their journey in the wilderness (a highly improbable fact), or the water-from-the-rock thing continued for all those years – just like the daily manna that kept falling from the skies.

Logic, and a certain New Testament reference, seems to indicate that it was the latter.

1Co 10:4 (GW) says, “and all of them drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual rock that went with them, and that rock was Christ.”

“…the rock that WENT WITH THEM”.

There was always a rock – physically – everywhere they went, and that rock supplied them water continuously.

But at the first moment that it didn’t – which some Bible commentators deduce was deliberately done to test them (see Dt 33:8; Ps 81:7) – all hell breaks loose and they began their characteristic harping and murmuring.

Beloved, you can live a life so continuously miraculous, that you begin to take it for granted. There’re Christians who don’t know the price of paracetamol, because they’ve not bought it in years, yet they complain because God’s delaying their ‘breakthrough’. Some don’t experience satanic attacks whatsoever, and they assume it’s because the witches in the village have their hands full, or don’t know they exist. I could go on and on about our transport, our children, our sanity, etc. but I believe you’ve gotten the point already.

Meditate about a ‘regular’ thing in your life that would be miraculous to someone else – and make up your mind to live grateful about it from today.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN

Water-From-A-Rock Miracle

...and brought forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst, – Neh 9:15

Most, if not all, of us are familiar with the miracle of water coming out of the rock for the children of Israel during their wanderings in the wilderness.

The LORD had just previously rained down miracle food from heaven to feed the Israelites due to their complaint to Moses about hunger. The complaint now was about thirst, and they were threatening to stone Moses because of it.

In response, the LORD told Moses to strike the rock; and when Moses did, water came out for the people. Like I said, we all know the story.

But what did it mean that water “poured out from the rock?”

I’ve seen a few rocks in my lifetime; some of them quite iconic; and, yes, there’re spots that were always wet with water. You can tell them by the characteristic green mouldiness of the algae that always hang around there.

This is not that type of “water-from-the-rock”.

There’re also several places on Earth where water literally gushes out of rocks. Like “Twin Falls” in Rock Island State Park, Tennessee, an underground waterfall in Luxembourg, and another amazing waterfall in Sang Chan, Thailand.

But these aren’t Moses’ type of “water-from-the-rock”; because the “waters” aren’t coming from these rocks, they’re just gushing through them.

Moses’ rock was in the dry Sinai Peninsula desert; there weren’t water sources behind them. Furthermore, we often imagine the water from the rock as something like water from a gushing fountain. But considering that a rough estimate of the number of Israelites that left Egypt was about 3 million, (apart from the cattle’s that they mentioned needed water as well), any water that can satisfy them has to be of the order of a flood in the wilderness!

Think about that. That’ll be a miracle if it happened at the beach. Yet it happened in a dry wilderness. No wonder the Psalmists kept repeating it over and over again (Ps 78:15-16; 105:41; 107:35; 114:8).

Beloved, don’t place a limit on what God can do in your life. If He could overwhelm those grouchy, complaining and ungrateful Israelites in the wilderness, I believe He can do even much more for you, His Beloved.

           

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN