And he answered and said, “Must I not take care to speak what the Lord puts in my mouth?” Numbers 23:12 – More Christians should be like Balaam. Now don’t stone me for saying that, here me out! I know after everything I said of Balaam in yesterday’s devotion for Christians to be like Balaam would seem like an incorrect direction to go. We have a pagan prophet who doesn’t follow the Lord using his divinations to hopefully bring about a divine curse over God’s people. Not the best role model for Christians, so why would I ever say we need to be more like Balaam? For while being a false prophet in the past, speaking whatever the enemy may have told him to speak, in this case with his prophecies within these chapters Balaam is speaking only the true words of the Lord. Was Balaam corrupt and doing all this for selfish gain? Absolutely. Yet were his words from the Lord false? Not at all, he spoke whatever the Lord put in his mouth to say. He was compelled and couldn’t say anything but what God told him to say. Whether that was because God made him unable to say anything else or because Balaam recognized the true power of God when God spoke with him and fear kept him from speaking anything else, we don’t know. Either way the only words that Balaam spoke were the words God gave him, and that’s something all Christians can grow to be more like. Too often the words that we speak to others find their root in something different than the Lord. Influences we watch and listen to are feeding our soul and out of that comes the words we speak. Sadly some of those influences are unholy making our speech unholy. Instead allow the root that feeds our speech to be the holy words of the Lord so what comes out is only what the Lord bids us to speak. The world needs less people speaking the words of this world, it needs more disciples speaking the words of Jesus. I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac – Daily DEVO 3373
Question To Ponder: Why might God have chosen to use a pagan prophet like Balaam?
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