Reason

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Has my arm lost its power? Now you will see whether or not my word comes true!” [Numbers 11.23]

What was God saying to Moses here?

I don't know about anyone else, but my mind is constantly trying to make me think God no longer works in the earth. My mind, working in conjunction with my senses, tells me that God, regardless of what He's got going on elsewhere, is not doing anything here on earth - and certainly not at my house. My mind constantly tries to get me to reason that God no longer works among men because I don't see Him "really" working in my circumstances.

But, because I am committed to a daily "diet" of Bible reading, my mind also has to reconcile with the Bible. The Bible altars my mind's conclusions. The Bible, God's Word, challenges me to think - to reason - that there is another realm, the realm of faith, where God wishes all His followers to dwell, where miracles happen as a matter of fact - where promises made by God come to fruition. If for nothing else, the Bible serves to at least make me question, "What if..."

What if the little blessings I see are not just circumstance? What if God really is orchestrating His will through my life? What if the lives of others are being positively affected by my obedience to what I think the Bible and God Himself are directing me to do? What if God really wants to provide for me? What if God actually intends for me to be one of His representatives on the earth?

What if my disobedience to what the Bible teaches me causes others to miss God altogether?

It would seem here that Moses faced the same daily challenge. Even though he talked personally with God on a regular basis, Moses still felt the challenge of reality versus faith. Moses had to regularly remember that if God declared anything, it would be so. In the verse noted above, we see God Himself reminding Moses how he needed to think.

It seems to me that Jesus addressed how men think too... He spoke about nothing more than He spoke about the unseen Kingdom that very much affected the "realm of the seen" at Jesus' word and touch.

How do we need to think? Will we base our lives on "reality" or faith? Will we strive to see our faith grow (our reasoning that God and His Word are true), or will we default to our human resources to reason that what our senses reveal is all there is to it?

No one should stop reasoning. God never intended for us not to use our brain with all the marvelous capacity it has. However, what we feed our brains will determine the direction of our reason. Faith has no substance without the facts of the Bible to support it. For all the difficulties we face in living by faith (in effort to comply with the Bible), it is impossible to live by faith without knowledge of the Bible (the Living Word it teaches).

Here is truth: we can only think or reason with the information we have. Information is the basis for reason.

If a person will include the information of the Bible into their reasoning, there will at very least be the question: "What if the Bible is true?" to temper everything else their senses reveal to them.  At most however, those who reason the Bible is true (and therefore trustworthy to comply with) gain the additional resources to see "completion" in the universe as we know it. In other words, peace.

Father, I am challenged today to stop reasoning with worldly facts and reason instead with the facts of the Bible.