Like Smoke

I have been reading Exodus druing my quiet times with Jesus; and once again I was convicted, as I read about how the children of Israel were so apt to not trust God!  It seems to me that if God would have done some of those kinds of miracles in my life, I would not have turned to distrust as easily as they did.  But of course, God reminded me that I too, am like the saints of old.....a human being with a sin nature.
As I was pondering about the time that God's people worshiped the golden calf and partied like there was no tomorrow, it seems to me that after what they had been through, they would have seen how silly that was, and yet I believe that they truly thought that the golden calf was going to be their god, and that their tomorrows may never come.
If you remember, Moses was up on the mountain top, communing with God and  receiving the 10 Commandments, when God told him to go down to the people, because they were corrupting themselves.  I was struck with the fact that the Bible tells us that the people went to Aaron, the priest, and told them that they wanted him to lead them, since Moses was delaying his coming.  Maybe they thought that God had killed Moses, or maybe they thought that Moses had forsaken them.  Maybe they thought that God had forsaken them.  I don't know, and the Bible doesn't tell us why, we just know what they did.  It is written that the children of Israel were told, by Aaron, to remove their earrings, and the earrings of  their wives, and of their sons and daughters.......the earrings that were a symbol of their slavery (I am not totally sure if the Egyptians used earrings as a symbol of slavery at this time, but I do know that this is the case later on in Israel's history).  Then Aaron took the people's earrings and melted them down into a gold calf.
The Lord showed me that the people took the symbol of their slavery and made it into something they thought would help them in that moment of time, something that they hoped would lead them, and save them.
Isn't this so true of you and me?  When we became believers we were set free from being a slave to our sin, and yet we still have the tendency to take the things of our slavery, and try to make them into something that will help us today.  I so often use my own wisdom, and my feelings to lead me.  And weren't they the things that caused me to stumble and fall so many times in the past?  I try to make people be what helps me today, turning to them to take away my pain, turning to them to make my day, my life easier.  Now, I am not saying that we can't seek godly counsel or encouragement, but what if these don't help us?  What if the trial and the pain is still there? Will we attribute this to God?  Will we distrust Him and His word?  Will we then try to fix ourselves or our situation, telling ourselves that God's way didn't work?  This is basically what the children of Israel did.  They were so willing to trust God when they had the signs of the plagues on Egypt, and the sign of the Red Sea parting, and of the Egyptians perishing right before their eyes in that same Red Sea as the waters came crashing down.  And yet, when ever they were put in a position to trust without seeing, they failed miserably.  What would have been the outcome if they had instead choose to trust God, and thrown their earrings into the fire as an act of surrender and obedience, burning them up as a sign that they no longer considered themselves to be Egypt's (Remember that Egypt is a type of the world, and of the world's system) slaves?
You see I so often in the past (and if I am honest, I do this even today) put my faith in myself, in others, and even in a worldly way of thinking or acting.  But God came into my heart and changed all of that!!  He came to show me that He, and His ways, and His words are what I should be heeding and following.  God is trustworthy.  I know this in my head, and yet so often in the midst of a trying time I forget that He is there, watching over me.  The trial of faith is not so that God can see how I will respond, He already knows that!  It is so that I can see how I will respond, for this builds and strengthens my faith and trust in God.  Faith is like a muscle, it must be stretched and used in order for it to become stronger.  We all have been given a measure of faith, so what will we do with it?  Will we turn in trust to Jesus, or will we try and use the things from our slavery, to help us?  The choice is ours to make, but God will be faithful despite what that choice may be. 
So, for today I choose to take the symbols of my slavery and throw them instead into the cleansing fire of God's perfect love for me......may they burn and vanish into the air like smoke.