Bronze Serpents

So, this week's post probably won't have photos. But it will have an awesome devotional that comes from last night's sermon by Dr. Chad Brand at Little Flock Ministry Center. He preached a wondefully challenging sermon about "knowing God in the present" and not looking back to victories and deliverances of the past, but expecting victories and deliverances in the future! Great challenge to a church who has lost several ministers on staff and are in a tailspin because of change!!

So, this is my devotional thought for you all this week:
2 Kings 18:1-6, focusing on verse 4: "He removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan."

The serpent this passage refers to was created by Moses and was introduced in Numbers 21:8, when the disobedient Istraelites were being bitten by serpents God sent against them because of their lack of faith. God told Moses to create a sepent, put it onto a pole, and He said whenever the people had been bitten, they could look to it IN FAITH and they would live.
Over the next 700 yrs, the Israelites held onto the bronze serpent and it became an idol to them. This led to the need for it to be destroyed in 2 Kings. It became an idol because they forgot that God healed them and began to attribute the healing to the serpent.

How does this apply to me, you say?? Well, often as Christians, we getted stuck in times of the past when we've been stronger in our faith and when God healed us, or delivered us, or stirred us in exciting ways. We have a tendency to get stuck there....listening to the music that we listened to then, wishing we were still at the church we went to then, wishing we had that dynamic preacher we had then and thinking God is not present with us anymore.
We need to remember to put our faith in the present God who gave us past victories, knowing there will be new victories and new experiences with that same living God!!

Hopefully this will give you the same excitement it gave me, as we remember this week that God is living and active, no matter our circumstances!!