QUARANTINE: 40 Days of Spiritual Health and Hope Week 3 - Not By Bread Alone

So, where’s your focus right now? On things you’re missing? I’m sure your list is growing:

Visiting parents, Hanging out with friends, Our “normal” routines: school, workplace, etc., Ministry

I’ve told you this story before – it was on my way back into town on an early Sunday morning. I was in a bit of a rush… and all of a sudden I hit that dang red light there at Veterans and 97. I was inconvenienced, frustrated, a bit angry. I had just expressed my…uh…disappointment when I felt God moving my head just 10 degrees to the right and this is what I saw…

That moment was the only time I was going to see that sight, for just 2 minutes later, the snow clouds covered it up for the next 3 days. What a difference it makes to have a different focus!

So, let me ask you to think of another list. This time, focus in on what you have been learning. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m one who doesn’t like to waste time. Let me ask you this: If your financial institution credited your account each morning with $86,000 – BUT allowed you to never carry over any balance into the next day, restricted you from keeping any cash in your account, and whatever part of the $86,000 that was left was zeroed out at the end of the day, what would you do? Wouldn’t you come to understand that the best way of using this money would be to draw out every dollar every day and use it to your advantage?

Well, we actually DO have such a bank, and its name is TIME! Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it rules off as lost whatever of this you failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balances, it allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account with you. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours.

Church, I don’t want you to waste this time – this experience. I would hate to have lived my time during this pandemic ONLY frustrated and discouraged over things I can’t even control! But there are SOME things – like what I do with my time – that I CAN control.

When God freed His people from slavery in Egypt, it was only days before they started murmuring and complaining against God, making a list of all the things they missed in Egypt and all the things they hated about the wilderness.

The protesters are out in force nowadays, demanding an end to the quarantine, murmuring and complaining. They’re tired of having to wait. To think of having to do this for another 40-day period stinks!

Imagine being on restriction for 40 YEARS

That’s what happened to the Israelites as they came up out of Egypt and began to complain. God would use not just a 40-Day period, but a 40 YEAR period to re-focus His people on what is most important – and that is to learn to trust and obey when the Lord leads.