Prodigal: I think this fence will protect us.

Me: Don’t put all your trust in the fence. We need the Lord also.

This is from the book It’s Not Supposed to be This Way by Lysa Terkeurst

The Moabites were lulled into a false sense of security. Without challenges and changes people tend to grow increasingly distant from God and resistant to His ways.

The Moabites lived in a place geographically where they escaped the invasion of the Syrians and Babylonians who came in to destroy Israel. The Moabites were untouched. Because they were untouched, they could settle into complacency while their neighbors, the Israelites, were forced to depend on God and to learn to survive suffering, captivity, enslavement. The Israelites appear to be the ones not being “saved” from hardship by God. But if we look through the lens of what’s best in the long term, Israel was being strengthened by God for its eventual good.

Settling into complacency might seem to be comfortable for today, but in the long run we, like the Moabites, may suffer more if we go untouched by God for too long.

Make no mistake: being lulled into a false sense of security is worse than going through the process of suffering.

Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. James 5:13 (NASB)

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org