Psalm 81:7 TPT You called out to me in your time of trouble and I rescued you. I came down from the realm of the secret place of thunder, where mysteries hide. I came down to save you. I tested your hearts at the place where there was no water to drink, the place of your bitter argument with me.” Pause in his presence
Psalm 95:7 TPT For we are the lovers he cares for and he is the God we worship. So drop everything else and listen to his voice! For this is what he’s saying: “Today, when I speak, don’t even think about turning a deaf ear to me like they did when they tested me at Meribah and Massah, the place where they argued with me, their Creator. Your ancestors challenged me over and over with their complaining, even though I had convinced them of my power and love. They still doubted my care for them.
Exodus 17:5-6 NASB Then the LORD said to Moses, “Pass before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. [6] Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.” And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
Numbers 20:7-8,11-13 NASB and the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, [8] “Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink.” [11] Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank. [12] But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.” [13] Those were the waters of Meribah, because the sons of Israel contended with the LORD, and He proved Himself holy among them.
When you put all these verses together, there is a powerful story about the kind of faith that brings pleasure to God. From the Exodus 17 passage and the Numbers 20 passage, we can see that God told Moses to do two things in reference to the rock from which water would come forth in abundance. God told Moses to strike the rock and speak to it using the rod God had given him to use as a symbol of faith extended. We are told in the Numbers passage that Moses went to the rock and struck it twice, and the result was this strong rebuke from God, “because you have not believed to Me, to treat Me as holy and the site of the sons of Israel…”
I believe God reacted so strongly to Moses because, when striking the rock twice, Moses was trying to help God make it happen. He added his own human effort to make sure God would respond. God doesn’t need our help, and the kind of faith that He responds to is not “trying faith,” but He always responds to “resting faith.” God is not looking for copilots; instead, He’s inviting us to sit back and rest in His activity. Resting faith is not a matter of our inactivity, but it is abiding restfully in His divine activity as we step into any and every situation. God doesn’t need our anxious striving; He wants our restful abiding. As I’m sure you know, the word “holy” simply means “other” or “distinct” because He is not like people even though He is a person. He’s beyond normal because He is supernatural, and therefore, the miraculous, which seems so abnormal to us, is totally normal to Him. By trying to help God out by striking the rock twice, Moses was treating God like He was just like everybody else who might need aid in accomplishing this miracle, and that’s why God was offended by Moses’ straining faith. In the Numbers Scriptures, the people were complaining, and they called the place a “wretched place.” Have you ever found yourself in a situation you would describe as wretched, full of the unknown, the uncertain, and the seemingly impossible? These kinds of situations are God’s specialties because, in those places, God is able to show off and display His glory. What He does not need is our anxious straining and struggling, trying to help make it happen. The miracle had nothing to do with how hard Moses struck the rock or how many times he struck the rock. God just gave him a way to exhibit His faith because faith looks like something, but it does not look like stressful begging or straining. Faith just simply looks like peaceful, confident action, or sometimes inaction if God hasn’t told you to do anything yet, that joyfully and restfully celebrates God’s adequacy even before you see it with the physical eye.