Take heed....

1 Corinthians 10:3-5, 12 GNB

All ate the same spiritual bread and drank the same spiritual drink. They drank from the spiritual rock that went with them; and that rock was Christ himself. But even then God was not pleased with most of them, and so their dead bodies were scattered over the desert.  Those who think they are standing firm had better be careful that they do not fall.

We are constantly reminded of the danger of routine- doing the same thing over and over again every day of our lives. We live in a world where routine is accepted and change is resisted. Over time, our senses are dulled and the unusual is not noticed or recognised.
Israel found itselfil in a delicate situation. The land had been through hell in Egypt and gone through cycles of oppression and depression. God had brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand; they saw God at work battling their enemies and making even the elements and nature to favour them. But their reactions and experiences pose the challenge today: in spite of the great things they saw, heard and knew God did, they still had problems believing and cooperating with God. It was as if they had made up their mind that God wouldn't find it easy leading them into that promised land. They rebelled, murmured, complained and even made Moses so angry that he disobeyed God. Then the unthinkable happened: God wasn't taking this generation into the promised land; he was taking the next into it. Then began 40 years of wanderings till all of the 600,000 men who left Egypt,excluding Joshua and Caleb, died in the wilderness.
That is the danger- Joshua and Caleb were all in Egypt too, and had the same experiences with everyone. Why were their own experiences different? Why was their walk with God different? That is the thrust today.
We all come to church on Sundays. We all hear the same messages and are moved by the same inspiration. Yet, the end-product of our beliefs and convictions show a massive difference between what we hear and what we do. We live a different life when things are easy and a more complicated one when things go south. We can struggle through difficulties and learn to trust God in the most distressing of circumstances but we just can't sit up straight when success comes. We pray and fast when troubles come and then struggle to do the basic early morning devotion when all seems well.
That is the warning in today's text- if you THINK you are standing, take heed. Earthly comfort is deceptive; in fact, nowhere in scriptures did God lay empasis on earthly conveniences at the expense of eternal relevance. We will all hear the same messages and sermons, and have the same Spiritual experiences but it then boils down to the things that we allow God to do in our lives. Do we allow God hav his way, or does he have to knock hard, disrupting our peace or witholding our blessings before he can catch our attention?
God is the ultimate. He alone has all we need and there is no demand we can make on earth that can exhaust the resources of heaven. We must trust God completely and take our eyes off the physical manifestation of his blessings. Don't substitute God's reality with the emptiness of possessions, power and position. Take heed, allow God unhindered access into your life, decisions and destinations. His time of favour is here.