Today's Reading: Numbers 22:22-41

 

Speak Only What God Has Spoken

God had previously spoken to Balaam.  He told him not to go along with king Balak’s plan to curse Israel.  Balaam heard him loud and clear, but decided to “tempt fate” and go along anyway.  As he went, he had one of the most amazing and terrifying encounters with God recorded in Scripture.  First, his donkey stopped. Then Balaam struck the donkey to get him going again.  Then the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth and he spoke in human language.  Then the most amazing thing happened, Balaam’s eyes were miraculously opened to the spirit world around him, and he saw “The Angel of the LORD”. Wow!  Just wow!

Prior to meeting the Angel of the LORD, Balaam was spiritually blind.  As a “diviner,” he had spent his life dabbling in spiritual things, attempting to see into the spiritual world. He used to speak whatever “spiritual lingo” the people wanted to hear.  He made his living as a fortune teller by collecting the “diviners fee” from his gullible customers.  But he was still blind.  Until the day he “was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.” (2 Peter 2:16)

After this encounter, Balaam’s view of the spirit world changed.  His convictions changed.  His passion for truth changed.  His very life was altered by this encounter with the Angel.  He realized that only God’s words are true.  And he became passionate about speaking only the “word that God puts in my mouth.”

It is the same for us.  The moment we meet and receive Jesus by faith, our eyes are opened to the truth of the spiritual world.  And God places a fire inside of us.  A growing passion to speak His truth.  “For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:20)  So, speak!  Let it out!  Speak the word that God puts in your mouth.  Don’t hold it in.

As Jeremiah the prophet said, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9)