Be Careful

Monday - February 6, 2012

Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood. – Isaiah 7:4

I know. This is last week’s verse. I have learned something new about this verse and wanted to share it with you.

It is much easier to “keep calm” and “don’t be afraid” when you have first listened to God and “been careful”. I have only been back from Africa for a little over a week. Saturday morning my stomach starting hurting. I began throwing up. It got worse and worse all day long and I ended up in the emergency room on Sunday morning. I asked the doctor “could I have malaria”? I was not as calm and unafraid as I could have been because I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. Yes, I went to Africa without malaria pills. I took all the recommended shots. I wore bug spray as perfume. I slept under a mosquito net. However, I did not take the malaria pills. You may be asking - why not? My reasons really do not matter. The simple fact is I wouldn’t have been worried that I had malaria if I had just taken the pills. I could have stayed calm and waited for Monday to go to the doctor. I could have saved the emergency room charges. I could have not been afraid.

How often are we like this in our spiritual lives? We do not follow God’s counsel for a variety of reasons. We do not take time to find out what His word says regarding our situation. Or, we do not like His commands and reason that our logic is sound. Or, we feel that we deserve to “let loose” once in a while. Our capacity to reason our way out of doing what God tells us to do is truly boundless. I often get aggravated at those silly Israelites who kept falling back into grumbling, complaining and idolatry on their way out of Egypt. Then I realize that I am not all that different.

My prayer for all of us today comes from Deuteronomy 12:28 “Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the LORD your God.”