I will lift up my voice, I will joyfully sing not for what He has done but for who is. You are the joy of my heart, melody in my heart the reason I sing is to praise You Lord! He reigns x3 forever more.// Let the Spirit of the Lord come down x2, let the Spirit of the Lord from heaven comes down, let the Spirit of the Lord come down.
Redeemer, we Thank You, we bless Your Holy Name, we worship You, we give You praise. Thank You for the rain, thank You for the latter rain that You give to Your people. O Lord, we blessed Your Holy Name, we worship You with the twenty and four elders in heaven, Father receive our worship this day in Jesus Name. Thank You for the gift of live and vitality Lord. Thank You for preserving us from all thoughts that highly exalt themselves above You. Glory be to Your Holy Name. Amen!
Beloved, our God is good! and His mercies endureth forever. He is the vine and we the branches. For every branch that beareth not fruit He takes away; and every branches that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Then I ask you, are resistant to the pruning God wants to do in you? If you are, then I smell trouble. Why don’t you humble yourselves under the Mighty Hand of God, Who will yet exalt you as He did His Son Jesus Christ.
Beloveth, what are those little foxes that spoil the vine in your life? The list is inexhaustible but you must locate your weakness and deal with it. We are the “Ambassadors of Christ”, we must live worthy of our calling lest we make light of this Holy calling bestowed on us which I count a privilege among many other things.
We are soldiers of the Christ and must not engage in any civilian acts lest we are cut by the arrows of the enemy in the battle field. We have to be diligent in our calling, carry out every instruction with sense of duty not trivializing the work set before us.
Do you remember when the children of Israelite we crossing over to the Promised Land, at point in their journey they grumble and murmur against Moses. And God was not happy about it and for every of then died in the wilderness except two- Joshua and Caleb. They preferred to be slaves bond other than freedom God was offering them. They preferred cumber, cabbage and carrots then the manna, heavenly meal prepared by God and serve by the host of angels.
How do we connect to such behavior at our time? How do we identify with same in our world today? Those who did that in the wilderness never made it through to the promise land. One reason was that they were murmurers and grumblers, complainers and faultfinders.
Every time something did not go right, they found fault with Moses. Their negative attitude was just another evil and carnal way of life that included indulgence in immorality. And a result of that indulgence, one day twenty-three thousand of them fell dead. And remember they were put out of the way entirely by the destroyer (death).
Why did that happen? As 1 Corinthians 10:9 said, because the people tempted the Lord, they tried His patience, became a trial for Him, criticized or critically appraised Him and exploited His goodness.
When we do not open our mouth and give thanks, but instead murmur and complain, we are exploiting the goodness of God because no matter what is going on in our life, God is still good. The death of the entire adult that came of the Egypt, if we have sense at all, would put the fear God in us.
Take out time and examine your live and identify those little foxes, begin now to hand them over to Jesus, and as He begin His pruning, be patient enough to bear through. It is only a son with a Father that is disciplined, if you are not chastised by your Father, ask again, you may be by the way of a bastard (Heb 12:7-8; Rev 3:19; Deut 4:36). Praise the Lord.
Can we run along? Let us consider today’s teaching:
“Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines.” Song 2:15
A little thorn may cause much suffering. A little cloud may hide the sun. Little foxes spoil the vines; and little sins do mischief to the tender heart. These little sins burrow in the soul, and make it so full of that which is hateful to Christ, that He will hold no comfortable fellowship and communion with us.
A great sin cannot destroy a Christian, but a little sin can make him miserable. Jesus will not walk with His people unless they drive out every known sin. He says, “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love, even as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”
Some Christians very seldom enjoy their Saviour’s presence. How is this? Surely it must be an affliction for a tender child to be separated from his father. Art thou a child of God, and yet satisfied to go on without seeing thy Father’s face? What! thou the spouse of Christ, and yet content without His company! Surely, thou hast fallen into a sad state, for the chaste spouse of Christ mourns like a dove without her mate, when he has left her.
Ask, then, the question, what has driven Christ from thee? He hides His face behind the wall of thy sins. That wall may be built up of little pebbles, as easily as of great stones. The sea is made of drops; the rocks are made of grains: and the sea which divides thee from Christ may be filled with the drops of thy little sins; and the rock which has well nigh wrecked thy barque, may have been made by the daily working of the coral insects of thy little sins.
If thou wouldst live with Christ, and walk with Christ, and see Christ, and have fellowship with Christ, take heed of “the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes.” Jesus invites you to go with Him and take them. He will surely, like Samson, take the foxes at once and easily. Go with Him to the hunting.
And discover all the foxes and drop them one after the other. Remember we have mentioned earlier that one of the foxes we can identify today is our murmuring or grumbling or complaining.
Beloved, let us point it out that groaning is permitted but you can’t grumble. Who are you to grumble before the Almighty God? And for what are you murmuring, grumbling or complaining for? Let us continue reading:
You Can Groan, But You Can’t Grumble
The pilgrimage from here to eternity was never intended to be easy.
So naturally, we are inclined to grumble about our circumstances! Perhaps our grumbling is related to the fact that we are confused about the sequence of events: Rewards occur after we get to heaven! The present however, is the time for character training in preparation for eternity.
The comforting news is that amidst this time of testing and development, we have been given the enabling presence of the Holy Spirit:
“We ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit… groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:23)
And so… understandably, we groan.
But grumble? That is quite another matter!
When we grumble, we signify a basic discontent with our lot in life, and a challenge to God’s sovereign purposes. In effect we are saying that God has unfairly violated our rights by allowing us to experience difficult circumstances. We feel we deserve better than this!
In their trek across the desert en route to the Promised Land, the Jews responded similarly to adversity:
They grumbled.
From their perspective, there was never enough water and comfort, and the food was of the wrong variety! They felt they deserved better than this!
Citing their example, Paul admonishes us:
“Do not grumble… (or) test the Lord as some of them did… God was not pleased with most of them… ” (1 Corinthians 10:10a, 9a, 5a)
QUESTION: Amidst the trials of your life, are you groaning or grumbling? How you answer that question reflects whether or not you understand and accept the fact that this earthly sojourn is God’s time and means of making you Christlike in preparation for eternity. (Romans 8:28-30)
Beloved, do You know how many doors we open for the devil in our lives through murmuring and complaining? Sometime we ask God for something and He give us and afterward, we start murmuring and complaining because we have to take care of it.
We complains of not married and then complain because we are married. We complain because we don’t have a big house; then we get a big house and complain because we have clean it.
But look at what Phil 2:14 tell us to do all things without complaining. “All things” means everything. We clean without complaining, we mow the yard without complaining, drive to work without complaining, do our job without complaining.
Devote time and seek out those areas in your lives that needs the touch of our savior Jesus and surrender all to Him.
Be patient before Him and you will be a new creature afterward. Don’t forget groaning is permissibly but grumbling, murmuring, complaining is forbidden. Praise the Lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Remain blessed in the Lord.
