Daily Devotional – July 23, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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going well for you. I wanted to share with you the gift that my wife got me for my birthday this year.

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It's really kind of a cool thing. Let me show it to you. It's a little, it's not a lanyard, it's a little clip.

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Clips on my belt, got this cool little brass clip. You push the button and it opens up and locks onto your belt.

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But it's a thing called the Wonder Club. And attached to this ring are all these little smaller rings, have a hole in them and so forth.

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And each one of those rings, well you can get a couple of different forms of them, but the ones that she got for me, each one of those has a symbol on it that stands for one of the national parks.

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And so the idea of this Wonder Club keychain is you put these little rings on there every time you go to a different state park.

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So there's one on here for Acadia National Park, for the

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Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for Denali National Park up in Alaska.

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And what other parks? Did I say Acadia? I think I did. But Everglades National Park, been to Everglades National Park and so on.

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So there's a whole bunch of these. And so she got me this for my birthday and it's for the

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Wonder Club. You can also get them for different states that you have visited.

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And I think maybe you can get those little things for different countries of the world. I don't really remember about the countries part of it.

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But I thought that was a very clever gift and I really appreciate it. It's very nice. I like it. I really do.

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I like it a lot. It reminds me though also of a t -shirt slogan that I've seen.

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I've seen it on coffee mugs and things like that too in the hiking community. And it's a slogan that says, not all who wander are lost.

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Not all who wander are lost. So just because you're in the Wander Club doesn't mean you're lost and you don't know where you're going.

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So the whole idea in that arena of backpacking, hiking, traveling, and so forth, the idea of wandering has a kind positive connotation to it.

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It's a good thing to do. But I thought about that in relation to what you read in the

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Bible about wandering. And I discovered it did a little search, word search, on the word wander in the

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Bible. I looked it up in my Logos Bible software. And I saw it in vain for a positive reference to wandering in the

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Bible. Isn't that interesting? It's like every expression of wandering in the

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Bible, that's a negative thing. So for example, in Numbers 32, wandering is a form of punishment or chastening.

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Moses is speaking to the children of Israel before they're going to go into the promised land.

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And he says that the Lord's anger was kindled against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness 40 years until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the

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Lord was gone. I don't think there's a person that had survived that wandering.

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And the only ones who did were those under 20 years of age, Joshua, Caleb, Moses, and Aaron.

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I don't think any of them, when they're on that eastern side of the Jordan River and they're looking across the

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Jordan into the land of promise, who would have looked back over those 40 years of wandering and said, man, this was a great thing.

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This was a wonderful trip. So glad we got to do that trekking and wandering all those years.

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I imagine those young people who were 15, 16, 17 years of age probably grumbled more than once about what their parents did in turning away from the

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Lord and not going into the... Can you imagine that? When they're now 30 years into this wandering, they're 45 years of age and they've been wandering around this wilderness for 30 years.

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And I wonder how many times they said, man, why in the world, dad, mom, why in the world did you say let's not go in?

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Not a wandering was not a positive thing. Well, and then Psalm 119 verse 10 also speaks of wandering as a departure from the right path.

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So he says, the psalmist says, with my whole heart, I seek you. And then he prays, let me not wander from your commandments.

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This would not be a good thing. I want to stay true to your commandments. I want to stay on the right path.

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And in Ecclesiastes chapter six, wandering is not looked upon as being a satisfying way to live.

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Listen to what he says. He says, the writer of Ecclesiastes, he says, better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite.

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This also is vanity and a striving after the wind. What's he talking about? That it's better to be satisfied with what you have in front of you, what you can see and is there on the table than it is to have a wandering eye constantly looking around for something that might be a little better, something that might be a little tastier.

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And we say it, one of the ways we put it is, you know, the grass is always greener on the other side.

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And what we're expressing in that sentiment is that our wandering eye looks across the fence at the grass that seems to be so much greener over there.

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And in our wandering eye, we want to go over there and nibble on that grass.

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And then we get over there and we find out that, well, maybe the grass over on that side of the fence where I just was is actually better.

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And we're living a life of dissatisfaction and discontentment because we're constantly wandering.

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So, you know, it's one thing to wander recreationally and I enjoy doing that.

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And it's not hapless and it's not, you know, without purpose and it's not without a guide or a map that wandering it, but it's one thing to wander recreationally, if you will, it can be quite refreshing and rewarding.

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But certainly do not allow yourself to wander spiritually.

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There's no good that can come from that. It can be a miserable experience to wander away from what you know is right, from the path that is true after something that seems to be so much, so much better and yet really isn't.

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So let's ask the Lord to keep us from wandering. Our Father and our God, we thank you for this challenge from your word and the encouragement not to allow our eyes to wander to a path that will take us astray, but to be grateful and graciously accepting of that which you have given us, the truth of your word, the path that leads to life.

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Deliver us, we pray, from wandering from that path. This we ask in Jesus' name and for his sake.

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Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your day and stay on track.