Marah turns sweet!
Verse for Today: Thursday, February 14, 2013
Exodus 15:23 – When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place was called Marah.)
Our anticipation and great expectations sometimes sour in our mouths when we get bitter experiences in life. Such disappointments make us sometimes wonder why we are led to bitter spots in life. The Israeli sojourners were taken by surprise many times by their wilderness experiences. When they found the Egyptian army following them to annihilate them and at the fierce Red Sea which made them stuck on the way, they were frustrated. Their thirst which culminated at a bitter water source made them exasperated. Each of these situations made God’s people to grumble rather than handle it by faith. Of course the past trials ended in miraculous victory secured for them by God which ought to have made them turn to God in prayer at Marah. Instead they grumbled against God and the journey they undertook. They forgot the past victories and the miraculous deliverance from the tyranny of Egypt. God expected them to grow spiritually and exercise faith as they progressed in their journey, but they were still at the lowest ebb of their spiritual ladder. They didn’t have the faith to trust the God of the Passover and the Red Sea to believe that He would find a way out at Marah into sweet. God went a step further to make water sweet which is far beyond what one would expect from normal drinking water. Today we must understand that Marah is a test to see how we would respond to bitter experiences in life. If we trust God, He would make our Marah experiences better. Our God makes our bitter experiences better to quench our thirst to refresh and revive us.
Dear friend, are you at the crossroads of bitter experiences in life lately? Are you finding it difficult to see why things are stark opposite to what you expect or desire? Are you frustrated that wherever you go, you find bitter and painful experiences in life and wonder why you are made to go through it all on a regular basis? Your tough experiences are the testing times God sends your way to strengthen your faith. God is interested in how your faith grows day after day and whether you respond to events and incidents by faith or not. He wants to know if you learn from past experiences to keep trusting God to lead you forward. He has delivered you from bitter enemies and formidable seas in life. So when the new enemy of thirst confronts you, God is trying to see whether you would pray and ask Him to make the water better rather than grumble about the bitterness. When the creator of waters is with us as the captain of our entourage, we should trust Him for water to drink rather than allow ourselves to lose hope and get agitated. He has already prepared a way to transform our bitter experiences to better and sweeter blessings. He will not allow us to break down with thirst and hunger. By faith we can expect something better from our Lord. Let us not fall into the temptation of grumbling which comes from our unbelief and faithlessness. We murmur out of our sheer forgetfulness about all that our Lord has done for us in the past. He will not let us be destitute in the wilderness of life. Our Lord knows all about our bitter experiences. He will give us the faith to trust Him to make the bitter waters of life better and sweeter to quench, nourish and revive us to keep marching forward.
Exodus 15:27 – Then (Israelites) came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water.
Thought for Today
Our God transforms our Marah experiences into sweetness and leads us further to Elim experiences of springs of water with palm trees.
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