This is your daily reminder. God has not run
out of mercy, not for you, not today. Welcome
to the New Mercies podcast. Welcome to Deuteronomy
chapter 8. It is Wednesday, February the 18th.
My reading today is the chapter of Deuteronomy
chapter 8, and it kind of goes hand in hand with
Haggai 1 that we read yesterday. I encourage
you, if you didn't get a chance to listen or
watch Haggai 1 yesterday, go and check that video
out. It is talking about misplaced priorities.
And so it kind of helps us lead into Deuteronomy
8. Deuteronomy 8 talks about what happens with
prosperity. God is telling the people of Israel,
you've come out of the wilderness and you're
going to go into a land that is beautiful and
amazing. And just don't forget me. Don't forget
me. There is a... A couple of verses in here
I want to read today. I encourage you to read
the whole chapter. It's all great. A couple of
verses that stood out to me that I think are
important for us, valuable for us, and maybe
we can get something out of today. In Deuteronomy
8, I want to read verse number 4. The Bible says,
Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your
foot did not swell these forty years. Know then
in your heart that as a man disciplines his son,
the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall
keep the commandments of the Lord your God by
walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the
Lord your God is bringing you into a good land,
a land of brooks, of water, of fountains and
springs flowing out of the valleys and hills,
a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig
trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees
and honey, a land in which you will eat bread
without scarcity. in which you will lack nothing,
a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose
hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and
be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God,
for the land he has given you is good. I want
to emphasize just a couple of things out of this
text. There is a lot in Deuteronomy 8, in every
one of the verses. I encourage you to go read
all 20 verses. It's amazing and incredible. But
today I want to encourage you with this, two
things. Just two things. We're going to be...
So I hope and pray that as you read Deuteronomy
8, that you take out more than just the two things
that I'm going to say. Read it for yourself.
See what the Lord says to you. I'm just telling
you what he's telling me, right? I'm seeing a
thread as I prepare and study, and as I'm in
the Word every day, I see these threads that
God is beginning to weave through for me. This
one is verse number four specifically, and it's
a weird verse. He says, when you were wandering
in the wilderness, a couple of things had happened.
Your clothes didn't wear out. Your feet didn't
swell. 40 years your feet didn't swell up. I
don't know about you. I can't walk for a week
and my feet not swell up, right? That just doesn't
make any sense. Physiologically, my body will
do things. 40 years they walked, and he says
your feet didn't swell. Your clothes didn't wear
out. I took care of you. He talks about in this
text the manna that was provided. You know, as
I look at all this, he says in here, It's a daily
walk. For 40 years, every day that you were walking,
your feet didn't swell, your clothes didn't wear
out. How is that the case? How is that possible?
It's possible because there were daily miracles.
Do you know the term day or daily appears 2 ,626
times in the Bible? That's a lot of times. 2
,626 times. I believe it's because God wants
to emphasize this is a daily walk. It is not
a weekly walk. It's not a monthly walk. It's
a daily walk. It's something he does every day.
And we will miss the miracles because they seem
really small. Your clothes didn't wear out for
40 years. 40 years. I don't know. There needs
to be a clothing company that comes out that
can guarantee a 40 -year run on clothing. They'll
sell out, right? Forty years their clothes didn't
wear out. Forty years their feet didn't swell.
Forty years manna showed up. Those are miracles.
Miracles. And God is trying to help the people
around us. Don't forget that. Don't forget I
took care of you when you had nothing. I am about
to give you a land where you have everything.
You're going to have so many crops. You're going
to have streams flowing. You're going to have
beauty. You're going to have all kinds of amazing
things. Don't forget me. Don't forget me. I don't
want you to have prosperity and then be comfortable
and not remember what I've been doing for you.
Sometimes in our lives, I think we grow to areas
of influence and maybe affluency, and we grow
to areas of comfort, and we don't rely or lean
on the Lord as much as we did, and we don't go
back to that childlike faith we had. I'll never
forget the day I got saved. It was a Sunday evening
at a church in my dad's office. I was so excited.
I was a kid. I was eight years old and about
to turn nine. I remember going up to my kid's
choir practice, my kid's music practice thing,
and telling my teacher first thing, I just got
saved. Then I remember going to school the next
day on the school bus. telling my friends, I
just got saved. I have my Bible with me. I have
my cool Bible with me. And I was carrying it.
I was like, let me show you what the Bible says
about this. And I was telling my friends, here
I was this, I don't know, your third grade or
something. I was telling it, you know, here's
what's going on. Let me read the Bible to you.
I was so excited. And now I look and I've gotten
older and it's harder for me to do that now.
Why is that? Probably because I've gotten comfortable.
Probably. I've lost a little bit of that passion.
Now, I hope and pray that that passion continues
to grow in my life, and it's always on the forefront
of my heart and my life. But I do know that sometimes
we may find ourselves getting comfortable and
forgetting about all of the miracles. The breath
you have in your lungs today is a miracle. You
don't have tomorrow guaranteed. You don't. You
have today, and it's a gift from God. It's a
miracle that we're here. It's a miracle that
Jesus came and died and rose again. It's a miracle
that he gave us life. It's a miracle that he
saw me and he wanted me. It's a miracle that
he gave me life. He brought me back from death
into life. All of those are miracles. It's a
miracle that I'm here today, and it's a miracle
that we have the ability to communicate with
God. We can talk to God. We have full access
to him, greater than they did in the Old Testament.
We have the mediator, Jesus. We have the one
who is interceding for us right now. We have
the Holy Spirit. God who's in us that's connected.
That's all miracles. Every bit of that. I am
a life full of miracles. Have we forgotten? Have
we forgotten? My encouragement to you today,
there's a lot in Deuteronomy 8. Please go read
it all. It's so good. It's so good. Such great
reminders. As the children of Israel are about
to inherit a land, we have the same God that
gave the land to them. is the same God who has
given us miracle after miracle after miracle.
Don't let our prosperity and our influence and
our wealth or whatever it is that we have, don't
let it distract us or cause us to not remember
how great this God is. Today, I'm challenging
you in this. Write down some things God has done
in your life that maybe you tend to forget. And
just see if he'll continue to bring those back
to your mind so that you can worship him more
fully.