How long must I put up with this wicked community that keeps complaining about me? I’ve heard the complaints the Israelites are making about me. So tell them, “As I live, declares the Lord, I solemnly swear I will do everything to you that you said I would do.”
Numbers 14:27–28
Complaint is disbelief—disbelief that God is who he says he is and is alive and well in your life. When you complain, you criticize the things God has given you. It’s shortsighted and naive to act like God has in some way swindled you out of something you should have gotten, but it is not unusual. The Israelites had been freed from slavery and set free to enter a promised land, but when life got dry and the desert got hot, they complained. They started to doubt God’s faithfulness and love, and they took matters into their own hands. But when God heard them whining, he was not happy. In fact, he decided that he would give them exactly what they were afraid of, and so it was a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The same is true today: believe the negative things this world pours on you, and you’ll find yourself in possession of those same things, but believe the power and truth in the Word of God, and you will find everything it promises in your hot little hands.
It’s easy to be lied to by what you see and easy to believe that the way things look is the way things are, but how sad it is to believe what you can see more than you believe the God you can’t see. When God gives you a vision of things to come, when he shows you a path you’ve got to take, don’t be surprised when you’re tested along that journey. And don’t run in the opposite direction when the testing comes, but stand still in your faith and hold on to the title of God Girl. Even though everything in the world says he’s wrong or absent, your heart and your mind have to hold fast to the truth that he is always right and always present.