This morning I (Janet) spent time with our son reading the Bible and praying together. We were reading Exodus chapter 15—the Israelites have just come through the Red Sea, and now they’re in the desert. They’ve just seen God do another amazing miracle in parting the sea so they can safely escape the Egyptians, but they end up grumbling to Moses because they are thirsty. They come to a place called Marah, and God performs another miracle to turn the bitter water available there into perfect drinking water for them! Amazing!

Then God instructs them – He tells them that IF they are faithful to listening to Him and following His voice, then He will be their healer and will never inflict sickness on them like He did to the Egyptians. God offers them this conditional promise – it’s a ‘goes both ways’ type deal! It requires relationship and faithfulness. As we read about this, my son and I had a wee chat about God’s character. I think that often when we read these kinds of passages, we can picture God as a harsh father or a slave master. It can feel like He’s making us behave in a certain way in order to earn His love or something? But nothing could be further from the truth! God is LOVE!!! He is so perfectly loving that He simply can’t do anything that is unloving! We can always trust that! So, why does He give us conditional promises?

I believe that when God gives us these promises it only highlights His heart for two way relationship with us ❤️ It shows that He trusts us with His heart! He invites us to be close to Him, and remember God can see ALL, meaning He knows the full picture ALL THE TIME! God knows and understands things we simply can’t. He knows what is required in any given moment in order to see things come to pass! We can only see parts of the picture at any one time and so sometimes we don’t understand why God is requiring something from us in a moment. It’s like He is handing us a key to open things we don’t even know are locked!! If we don’t understand that God is always loving then we can so easily interpret His request as harsh or like it’s Him making us earn something from Him.

As we begin to trust that God’s character and nature are LOVE, then we can begin to approach conditional promises, and God’s instruction, from a place of trust! He always knows the way, He always makes a way, and He always loves us and He wants our love in return ❤️