There are so many days that we struggle right…life is hard, days are challenging, there are so many new things that we deal with on the daily that seem to come out of no where and give us a run for our money. The Israelites also struggled during their time wandering in the desert and today we are going to study a lesson we can learn from the collecting of Manna that you may never have considered before.
The scripture verse(s) we talk about today include: Exodus 16:4
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Sarah Elizabeth
Our Faith Your Day Declaration!
Jesus, thank you so much for loving me in the way that you do! You designed me on purpose for a purpose. I want to live to my full potential today, with a mindset that honors you and a soul that seeks to know you better. Jesus I know that you are the way, the truth and the life, and I ask you to guide me and reveal to me what it is that you want to show me here, have me experience here, and learn from this season. Help mold me and shape me into the best version of me. I will live today as your vessel ready to receive your word, respond to your promptings, and pour out your overflowing love to those all around me. Please allow your thoughts to become my thoughts, your ways to become my ways and your will to become what I truly desire. Jesus if you are in it I want it and if you are not I don’t! I choose to faith this day of life! I am so grateful to be your girl! In Jesus name Amen!
I love reading about the Israelites and their exodus from slavery in Egypt, their 40 years of wandering in the desert and their eventual arrival in the Promised Land. Just the other week we talked about Moses and how his doubt caused a huge delay in their progress. There are so many lessons and examples to learn from this book…quite honestly because it’s a book full of struggle, and what makes that so good for us today, is that struggle is all too relatable to us isn’t it. When we can see that God’s people struggled even with his physical presence with them…because remember they had the cloud that guided them by day and the fire at night to illuminate their way…and somehow knowing that people struggled even when they could actually see his presence there…makes me feel so much relief. There are so many days that we struggle right…life is hard, days are challenging, there are so many new things that we deal with on the daily that seem to come out of no where and give us a run for our money. So to read evidence of God’s people going through struggle too just makes me feel like what I deal with and what you deal with is simply part of being a human in a broken world.
In one very pivotal example of God’s love and provision for his people we read about how he rained down Manna (literally-what is it) from Heaven each evening so that in the morning his people could collect it from the ground and have enough to eat for the day. It’s a very familiar piece of scripture to read about his provision, and most of the time we seem to focus on the people learning to trust in God for their provision during this story. We learn about how on the 6th day the Israelites were told to gather twice as much as on the following day…the Sabbath there would be no manna. But they were also warned that if they tried to collect double on any other day that it would spoil, and sure enough there were people who tried and in fact maggots appeared by the next morning if they did! Gross! So all of this continues to point to the common theme and lesson about trusting God in his word and his provision. In
Exodus 16:4- Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.
You’ve likely heard that verse before…but here is where I want to show you what God showed me that I had never noticed before. God revealed to me a lesson about endurance and persistence here. First what we need to realize is that each day the people were instructed to collect an Omer of Manna. An Omer in dry weight is between 3.4 and 3.9 pounds…so let’s just say three and a half to four pounds. I don’t know if you’ve ever considered how much that actually is. Imagine collecting a wafer like substance that is described as flakes in many translations of the bible. I don’t know about you but a flaky substance that fell like dew on the ground sounds pretty light doesn’t it. I can only imagine that even in it’s abundance it would take a chunk of time to collect 3.5-4.0 pounds of it…I’m envisioning collecting 3.5-4.0 pounds of kale chips, or nutritional yeast, or phyllo pastry stuff that is light and flaky by nature. That’s going to take some time my sister…and here’s the thing…for 40 years the people had to do that six days a week simply in order to eat. That right there is a lesson in endurance and persistence on it’s own. But here’s where God showed me something even deeper. Five days a week the people each had to collect their Omer of Manna…that was their daily provision, however in the verses from Exodus we read On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days. …that would mean on Friday…because in those days the Sabbath (the Shabbat) was actually on Saturday…that was their Holy Day of rest…where now a days we think of God’s day…the day of rest on the Sunday. However, in theory, before the introduction of the Monday- Friday 9-5…it was Sunday that was actually the first day of the week and not Monday like we commonly think today. Ok so…now let’s do some math…if this means that 5 days a week they each collected 3.4-3.9 pounds…one Omer…then on the 6th day they needed to collect 2 Omers worth which would be 6.8-7.8lbs. That’s a heck of a lot of light, flakey wafer-like substance wouldn’t you say! Like imagine someone gives you a bucket and dumps out a bag of fish food flakes onto the ground…and tells you to just keep on picking until you get roughly 7-8 pounds of it! I don't’ know about you but the thought of doing that once seems daunting…let alone once a week every week for 40 years! But this is what his people did! This is what they had to do in order to survive. And this is what I learned from this passage. My sister…sometimes God will have you double up on your work, double up on your effort and double up on your struggle before he lets you rest and before he sends you a breakthrough.
I want you to think about your own workweek. Let’s just for assumption sake say that you work Monday to Friday…I’m guessing that if you are like the majority of people by Friday you are fading out a little bit…looking forward to the weekend, looking forward to a couple days of sleeping in and growing tired from the work that you have put in that week. Ok so now imagine that you are told that not only are you now going to also have to work on Saturdays…but your workload on Saturday is going to be double! Can you even imagine! You’re growing weary, ready for a break and boom…now double up the work the day before your day off! And this is what the Israelites lived. They were tasked 6 days a week with collecting Manna for their sustenance daily…but after 5 days of collecting one Omer…they had to push through doubly hard on the sixth day. I think that God wants us to realize that often times in our lives, things get harder…require more effort and strength just before our breakthrough.
When God created the world and everything in it in the book of Genesis…we know that he worked for 6 days and then on the seventh day he rested. We also know that it was on the 6th day that he created humans…his most prized creation…us. You see I think that we can learn such a valuable lesson from doubling up the effort before the rest because God himself showed us that he too practiced that. I can only imagine that on the 6th day…the day of creation that he created people in his own image…that he would have had to double his efforts…that he took the most time doing that, that it was when he was creating his most prized creations that that is when he worked his very hardest…and then he rested on the seventh day…showing us that we too require downtime, time to be close to him, and time to simply rest. The problem is that to often we want the rest before we put in the effort, we want the rest before we have completed the work, we want the rest before we experience the exhausting reality of double struggle, double challenges and the double patience required to persevere through it.
There is a promise of rest though…it might feel like lately you have doubled, or even tripled what you previously thought was a lot…maybe your marriage is feeling like double the work, maybe your finances are making you feel like even double won’t be enough, maybe it’s your career making you feel like you’ve been working double hard and that rest simply never comes. That addiction might feel like a double height mountain to climb, that loss might feel like a doubly deep valley to walk through, and that diagnosis may feel like a double wide ocean to cross, but my sister the message God wants you to hear is that you need to keep going, keep doing, keep stepping and keep believing that rest will come, breakthrough will come, your blessing will come. BUT it won’t come first…it will only come after you’ve been stretched to your limit, after you are tired, after you feel like you’ve put in all the work you possibly can…and it’s there in the struggle that he will stretch you further than you thought you even could, he will tire you beyond what you believed to be humanly possible and he will work you past what you would have guessed your limits ever were. Because it’s in the struggle that he can show you just how much you truly can endure. It’s in the struggle that he brings you past the limits you had set for yourself, and it’s in struggle that you grow and become who he always knew you could be.
The Israelites collected manna each day…they then had to double up and prepare what they collected on that 6th day in order to receive the blessing of rest on the seventh…and you my dear have to endure here…patiently gathering here...collecting his peace, joy, love, strength, and hope to sustain you through the challenges ahead. The story of God requiring his people to gather double on the 6th day is most certainly one of trusting in him for our provision…however, it’s also a fantastic lesson in persistence, in perseverance in resilience and in hope. It’s a lesson in faith as well. Knowing that even if you don’t see a break right now…even if your breakthrough hasn’t shown up, even if you are at your breaking point…that this is not your end and this is not where you will be staying…but you have to push through…even when it seems twice what you can bear…even when the expectations appear to have doubled…God will provide you rest and restoration at exactly the precise time…he modeled for us the importance of rest. He demonstrated in Genesis that we are not designed to be constantly on…but he also showed us by his example that we can and are required to first to put in the work, endure the struggle, and continue our efforts before he allows us to take a breather. It’s not for punishment sake, it’s not because he’s cruel, it’s not because he takes joy in seeing you grow weary here…it’s because where you are weak, he is strong, where you lack, he can do more and where you toil he brings the miracle. The miracle of sustenance after the suffering, of provision after the problems and of hope after the hardship.