Numbers (Letter 4, Larry Crabb’s 66 Love Letters)
Numbers – Making You Holy is Hard Work for Both of Us.
You will experience terrible failure and crushing conflict on the road that leads to where I’m taking you, but it is the right road even when it feels like it’s killing you.You will begin every new adventure in life with naive hope and excitement. Disappointment in this life will lead you to wonder if you’ve missed the right road, if perhaps there is a better, more satisfying, less bumpy road through your life. There isn’t, not one that leads to real joy.
But God, that’s not what I’m hearing from some pastors of really successful churches.
C.S.Lewis said: I’m not safe, but I am good.
Numbers begins a trip that would have taken eleven days instead of forty years had they concerned themselves more with holiness than comfort.Everything in you that’s bad I destroy in order to release everything in you that’s good.
NUMBERS: The Incomplete Christian Life – From Ray Stedman<-(click here for entire Bible summary)
In Numbers we have dramatically set forth what is perhaps the hardest lesson a Christian has to learn – to trust God instead of his own reason.
The first division is a picture of God’s provision for guidance and warfare.
The second division is a description of the murmuring and rebelling of the people.
All of it is simply saying to us, in the most vivid language God can find, that though we are disobedient, though we are rebellious, though we turn and refuse to go into blessing, though we wander in a wilderness of defeat and despair and barrenness year after year after year – nevertheless, the Holy Spirit will never leave us
Numbers – David Jeremiah (Understanding the 66 Books of the Bible)
Key thought: There’s nothing worse than taking a wrong turn into the land of unbelief, for God wants to lead us forward by faith.
Key Verse: Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.”
Key Action: Trust God’s Word even when challenges loom, for His promises are as secure as His power.