e193 Your Past is Lived Out. Your Present Belongs to Jesus. (gather God’s morning manna)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd. 

Season 3 Episode 193 Your Past is Lived Out. Your Present Belongs to Jesus. (gather God’s morning manna)

Here’s the gist, human. We crave a blank slate. Starting again. I can picture the excitement of the Israelites packing for the exodus. 

Everyone loves a blank slate.But when the post Red Sea reality settles in, we begin to romanticize the past. 

The free fish, the cucumbers, the lemons, the garlic.

We crave that which we no longer have now that we see it in the rearview mirror. 

Numbers 11:4-6

4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”

Sometimes God leads our exodus to a future we didn’t plan for. A future we didn’t want. I show up a little heroic in these circumstances, veiling my perspective in an undying commitment to God’s Will, but my soul continues to pine for what I am leaving behind. 

Join us to consider what happens when our past challenges God’s daily provision.

E193

I can’t stop thinking about manna. The manna God rained down on the Israelites every morning for 40 years in the wilderness. Such a sweet honey taste to the palette, but 40 years, day after day? It was their daily portion, with two portions on the sixth day to get them through the Sabbath, their seventh day.

Exodus 16:1-3

16 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Also, 

Numbers 11:4-6

4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”

So God responds by providing quail. He answered their request. That didn’t go well for those who ate it. But today is not about quail, it is about manna.

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host.

The Israelites provided slave labor to the Egyptians. Surely they wanted to be free. They worked as slaves under the decree of the reigning Pharaoh for 86 years leading up to the exodus across the Red Sea. So why is it that they barely made it to the middle of the second month, the second month on the other side of the Red Sea? The “rabble” within them, the dissenting mob, began to do what? They began to crave. And they said “we have lost our appetite.” 

It’s true, they had enjoyed the freedom and fruits of the Egyptian land and culture during Joseph’s leadership, before bondage. Surely now their morning manna was falling short, even by portions allotted to a people in slavery. Because they didn’t have choice.

They no longer wanted what only God could provide. A daily portion of manna to sustain them on their journey to the Promised Land. To something anointed, divine, and by God’s hand. 

So this chosen people bent God’s ear with their grumbling. With their rebellion and false gods. When Moses sent 12 men, one from each tribe to explore the Promised Land, only two, Joshua and Caleb, came back with a positive report. Because of their stiff-necked behavior, their rebellion of going to the Promised Land, having to fight for it, their rebellion of God’s Will, his Covenant, God tells them this:

Numbers 14:29 

“In this wilderness your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me.”

They would not enter the Promised Land because of their stiff-necked ways. 

Numbers 14:34 

“For forty years—one year for each of the forty days you explored the land—you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me withdraw my support.”

God had them wandering for 40 years until every last one of the men (20 and older) recorded in the census, the older generation, died off. They caused their own wilderness wandering for four decades. 

Wandering is living without a sense of purpose. It was as if God said because you cannot keep your sights on the promise I have made, you will spend your days going from here to there with no sense of direction, no satisfaction that your life has a measure to it. 

A measure to it. 

It had sounded so good. While they were in Egypt, on the threshold of the exodus the Promised Land represented the future, the deliverance from all the persecution that comes from living in the present. They were going to be free of 86 years of bondage as slaves to the Egyptians. 

But now they craved the past. 

And they lost their appetite for the hope of the Promised Land.

How could they do that?

It’s Not Their Manna Anymore. It’s Our Manna.

Let’s stop talking about “them.” It’s not their manna anymore. It’s our manna.

It is about what happens to the past when we wander aimlessly for very long in the present. When we are tired of living in this present condition that gets us to our future Promised Land. We want to go back to what we had.

The past looks better now. Better than the present. The trouble with this is that when God makes plans to deliver us to a new season, we project our own planning into it. We have such clarity, and an eagerness about what we will be leaving behind. Any number of things.

Stale, listless relationships.

Unresolved debts. Social debts. Emotional debts. Financial debts. Psychological debts.

Normalized sunrises, predictable sunsets that have lost their magic.

And tired daily routines in the middle of it all.

Leaving it all behind for the unknown, the adventure of clearing the slate and starting again. Freed from the bondage of the lives we create, the lives we burrow into in our human folly. We crave a blank slate, starting again. I can picture the excitement of the Israelites packing for the exodus. 

Everyone loves a blank slate. 

But when the post Red Sea reality settles in, we begin to romanticize the past. 

The free fish, the cucumbers, the lemons, the garlic.

We crave that which we no longer have now that we see it in the rearview mirror. 

Let me take it a step further. 

Sometimes God leads our exodus to a future we didn’t plan for. A future we didn’t want. I show up a little heroic in these circumstances, veiling my perspective in an undying commitment to God’s Will, but my soul continues to pine for what I am leaving behind. 

A solid personal example is my love for New York City. That is home to me. Why do I not get to do what I did—work, play, live, smell the smells, walk the streets—in that glorious place? I chose to leave it at one point. At the time I thought it was beating me up a little. Anyone who has lived and worked in NYC for any extended period of time is laughing out loud at this. Because NYC beats everyone up. But it is so alive with the journeys of 8 million people passing each other, working with each, taking in and giving back to its energy, breathing in the good and the bad of that city air, and doing bigger than life things in a towering City just waiting for you to conquer it. A City filled with all the messiness of coming and going as a human in a tall-concrete-and-sprawling-parks world.

Do Not Squander God’s Portion Over Your Past 

Could I live in NYC, at this time, this age? I could. In a different way. But it isn’t mine to do. I answered to such powerful reasons for where God has me now. My right now is his “manna” for me, his portion to grow my spiritual character. There are days when it seems too quiet.  I feel lost in the silence. I would love to hear a city siren, the subway running underneath, the mixed chatter of people on phones making their way through it all.

God gives me my portion every morning, noon and night. He’s preparing me for his kingdom, a new heaven and new earth. That isn’t a sad thing. It’s an “it’s that time” thing. I hope he lets me grow on this path awhile… I don’t want to wander, to live without purpose or a sense of direction. I want to take deliberate steps toward him. Toward his Promise.

This is all to present a telling question for all of us: What do we look back to, long for, that splinters our focus on what God has for us now? What past circumstances, victories, life gifts squander his daily portion for us now over a memory of what was?

There are longings for our past that we need to put to rest in our daily life, so as not to waste the manna we receive every morning from our sovereign God. 

I love God so much. I am confounded by my self-inflicted perspective that tries to split my allegiance to his Will in two. The past and the present. 

My past is lived out. My present is His.

I am speaking personally here. It’s my witness today. This isn’t for everyone right now. The past has its pain points, the past has its demons too. Abuse, addiction, an anthology of false gods that God rescues us from. Why does he do it? For his glory. I am grateful for his right hand. A hand that rescues. There are things in our past that we want to leave behind. 

From Morning Manna to Hidden Manna and a New Name

But for those who are listening, who are longing for how things were, who may or may not know God, who may be seeking him, take this question to heart. What do you long for in the past that is keeping you from your present? What has you wandering aimlessly through your days lamenting for free fish, and a time you felt more joy? Are you missing your morning manna? Or are you trying to hoard it like the Israelites did, to only find it was molded and crawling with maggots? Sorry. That’s an awful image, but it happened.  

God’s manna is a daily portion. God let his people wander the wilderness because they had lost the divine connection to the Promised Land. God is our Promised Land, the only future we should live toward. His covenant, his promise, his kingdom.

We each journey toward our promised land. We each live our way through the wilderness. 

This should be a revelation in our hearts. I always take a deep breath when I quote Revelation. Listen to this. 

Revelation 2:17

Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To those who are victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give each of them a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.

Jesus said “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) and brought spiritual sustenance to the people on his earthly path and as he sits at the right hand of his Heavenly Father.

Hidden manna is made known to the believer. To everyone who believes Jesus is the Son of God who died for our sins. His sacrifice represents intimate spiritual nourishment. A white stone represents victory, that we are victors in Christ. A new name represents that we have a secure, unique identity in Christ. The Romans practiced the custom of giving victors in athletic competitions a white stone inscribed with their name. This token, this stone  served as their “ticket” to enter into an awards celebration later on.

Our hidden manna, our ticket, gives us access to the kingdom, as a unique believer of Jesus Christ.

So we go from morning manna to hidden manna. If you want to be embraced more closely by God, gather your daily manna, and eat.

Because God has a new name for you.