HEED RESISTANCE

Consider the next time you are delayed on your journey somewhere, literally or figuratively that God was involved. Perhaps God was protecting you from some kind of harm to your body or property. Perhaps God had an additional goal or opportunity in mind. The big take-away here is not every instance of resistance is of the Devil.

Remember the account of Balak, Balaam and Balaam’s donkey? (Numbers 22, 23, and 24) King Balak of the Moabites saw the Israelites as a threat to his kingdom. Balak sent for the prophet Balaam to come and pronounce a curse on Israel for him. Balaam rejected the first wave of entreaters after consulting with the Lord about their intentions. But after the second wave of officials came and invited Balaam, God gave him permission to go, but with a caveat – speak only what I tell you to say.

Something that is not documented must have gone wrong, because God’s anger burned against Balaam. God was so disgusted that He sent an angel to resist Balaam in his travels. The catch was that only the donkey could see the angel blocking the road and was not moving an inch. This caused Balaam to get irate and beat his donkey. Then God does a humorous and amazing thing to open up the lesson – He gives the donkey the ability of Balaam’s speech/language.

After holding a conversation with his donkey, the zinger from the donkey was – “The donkey said to Balaam, ‘Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?’” (Numbers 22:30) Balaam’s answer was “No.” Then his eyes were opened so that he saw the resisting angel standing in the middle of the road and bowed down before him. The angel restated God’s mission for Balaam and Balaam followed through with flying colors – blessing the nation of Israel and cursing Israel’s enemies.

Even though Balaam was delayed, he still carried out his mission for God because God cared enough to supernaturally intervene and get him back on track. There are times in our lives when-it-rains-it-pours. The negative outweighs the positive in droves. It is during these times that we need to train ourselves to pause, step back and make sure we don’t “beat our donkey” or curse the vehicle of our delay. Abraham had a major pause with God asking for Isaack to be sacrificed – he passed. Job had a major pause with everything taken away from him and tempted to curse God and die – he passed. David received resistance from God not allowing him to build the temple but allowing him to design it. 

Again, we too must develop another sensitivity to challenges, delays, or resistance that comes our way. That developed sensitivity must consider the source, stop “beating our donkey” and Heed the Resistance.