Whinging to God

This is another post inspired by my reading of Hosea. Yesterday I drew some lessons from Hosea 13:9. Now look at 13:10,11:

Where now is your king, to save you in all our cities? Where are all your rulers, those of whom you said, “Give me a king and princes”?

I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.

We often talk about the “problem of unanswered prayer”. There is a much worse problem, and that is when God answers our incessant whinging. In the days of Samuel Israel demanded a king. At the time this angered and upset Samuel, but God told him to grant their request, and said that they were rejecting God not Samuel. (1 sam 8:6-10). God gave them what they wanted, but it did them no good. They looked around and saw that all the other nations had kings and princes, so they wanted to be like them. They went on and on about this, and eventually God gave them a king, but warned them what the consequences would be. And, sure enough, the consequences came to pass, and a king proved to be no source of security or peace. Peace comes only when Christ is our only king.

Now, look at ourselves, we can make a similar mistake. We think there is something we desperately need in order to make us happy, or to save us from some danger or other. The urge to have this thing in our lives is so strong, we feel that we cannot live without it, cannot live unless this or that situation changes. But we are wrong. Only the Lord will save us, true rest and peace is found in Him alone.

If we are going through such a time just now let us do the following:

• Recognise that it is normal, it is our flesh crying out incessantly.
• Recognise that our flesh usually has no idea what we really need.
• Recognise that if God did grant what we are incessantly whinging about ( we may dress this whinging up a prayer, but God is not fooled, it is whinging, pure and simple) it would be a disaster.
• Recognise that true peace is found in the Lord alone, and nowhere else.
• Recognise that we need to change, and God wants to change us.