Deuteronomy 1 Devotional

Carried All the Way

“and in the wilderness, where the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way by which you traveled until you reached this place.””Deuteronomy 1:31 (BSB)

Moses begins his farewell by retelling a failure. At Kadesh-barnea, Israel stood at the edge of the land God had placed before them, holding fruit from the land, and refused to go in (1:25-26). They even said the LORD had brought them out of Egypt because he hated them (1:27). Moses answered with the truth: the LORD who went before them would fight for them, as he had in Egypt, and in the wilderness he had carried them the way a father carries his son (1:30-31).

Unbelief here is not a lack of information. It is a refusal to trust a God who has already proved his care. And when they tried to fix it on their own terms, marching out after God said he would not go with them, they were routed (1:42-44). Yet even in judgment God kept his promise alive: the children they feared for would inherit the land (1:39). The God who carried Israel still carries his people. You can bring your fears to him instead of treating them as evidence against his love.

To think about: Where have your fears been telling you a story about God that his past care for you contradicts?