Rachel Whisman

Some gifts during the holidays you receive with joyful hearts. They are exactly what you wanted, and you have a purpose for them. While others you receive with a quizzical brow. You might look at the present and think to yourself, “What in the world am I going to use this for?” You stumble over your words to share your thanks to the person who has gifted it to you. Sometimes we get gifts that we don’t want, and this is what I remembered while reading Psalm 106:24-25, 

“Then they despised the pleasant land, having no faith in his promise. They murmured in their tents, and did not obey the voice of the Lord.”

Israel was led out of captivity from Egypt, and they received a bad report about the land that they were supposed to enter. They ended up trusting the false reporters rather than the promise keeper. Since they despised the gift, it naturally led to disbelief, producing murmuring and the fruit of disobedience. The “I don’t like this” attitude eventually ended with disobedience to the Lord. Their heart posture is no different than ours. Can you think of something the Lord has allowed in your life where the immediate reaction is disdain, repugnance, or dislike? Who are the people in your life that you interact with day in and day out that are not so pleasant? What are the circumstances that squeeze your tolerance? 

When the thought, “I don’t like this,” starts to circulate in your heart, it should be a warning sign to yield and “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5) because in that moment, you are at a fork in the road. Your next action will either be to obey yourself or obey Christ. You can either choose to continue down the vortex and walk into disobedience or walk by His Spirit and do the opposite of what the Israelites did. Instead of despising, you draw near to the Lord. Next, you put off doubting His promises and direct your heart and mind to the truth of who He is and His promises. Mark Vroegop says it this way, ”Be reminded not what you don‘t know or what you‘re not in control of, but what you know to be true about God in this moment.” From drawing near and directing our hearts, we rejoice in who he is and can “give thanks in all circumstances” rather than murmur in the muck of discontent. Whatever is brewing in our hearts will eventually spill out through our words and actions. These are all small acts of obedience that produce much joy and contentment in the heart of the believer. 

Therefore, what are you not satisfied with what or who God has given or withheld from you? It is the same trick satan played in the garden to question God’s goodness. It continued to slither its way into the Israelites, and we are not foreign strangers to the same temptation. Their hearts were rumbling before their lips murmured complaints. Their unthankfulness led them to doubt God’s heart for them, and it will do the same to us. 

Christ is the gift we did not want. He is the pleasant land and the oasis that we needed, but our hearts murmured in bitterness because we thought sin was better. His obedience into the vortex of our disobedience is what rescued us so that we could be free from sin’s power (Gal. 5:1).

“Our murmuring is the devil’s music and the sin God cannot bear.” Thomas Watson

“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.” Jude 1:24-25