In our journey of faith, God often leads his people into cycles of testing, not to harm them, but to transform them.

Our sinful nature pushes back on these tests. We don't like the barriers, and we're prone to grumble when things don't go our way.

Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall exposes these common pitfalls. He's teaching from Exodus chapter 15 through 17,

where we read about the Israelites who, in the afterglow of their Red Sea miracle began to

bellyache. Chuck titled today's message, a heavenly diet versus an earthly appetite.

I have found in the passage before us, verses 22 through 27, the wilderness in miniature.

In fact, I see a cycle. I see a cycle of events that the children of Israel went through for 40 years.

And it is illustrated here in these few verses at the end of chapter 15.

There are five areas that pass in the cycle.

We begin and end at the same place, only to repeat it because we don't learn from history.

We should, but we don't.

First of all, in the cycle there is abundance.

Where the people of God look up.

God abundantly proves himself faithful and we look up in praise.

That's the first part of chapter 15, where they're singing praises saying,

he took us through the Red Sea. They're looking up. And then I have observed in the study of

the people of Israel that that leads to expectation. When we have abundance, we then expect continued abundance. At that particular

juncture, we are looking ahead. Maybe you have done that recently. God has expressed his grace in a tangible way and you had an abundance of

something. And if you don't watch it, you will expect the same thing as a regular habit.

That's an unrealistic expectation. You look ahead expecting him to continue the abundance.

That leads third to disappointment, where the people of God look down. For example, in verse 22, we find disappointment. Moses led Israel from the Red Sea, that's abundance.

They went out into the wilderness, that's expectation.

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