Numbers 12: Pray for Those Who Oppose You

So Moses cried out to the Lord, “Please, God, heal her!” -Numbers 12:13

Of all the people who can hurt us, family members tend to hurt the most. When a spouse, brother, sister, or parent speak against us, the pain is much greater than when we receive spiteful words from others. So when Miriam, the sister of Moses, spoke against him, I’m sure it stung a bit more than the complaints of the other Israelites in the wilderness.

In fact, what Miriam did was wrong. God judged her by giving her leprosy. Her skin turned white. Moses could have said, “Good for her. She deserved it.” But he didn’t. Instead, he prayed for her.

Numbers 12 specifically notes that he cried out to the Lord for her, saying, “Please, God, heal her!” God did, though it included seven days of confinement outside of the camp.

One lesson for our lives today is this–when someone opposes us, we are not called to hate them, but to pray for them. Jesus would later speak of praying for one’s enemies, but Moses showed how this could look fourteen hundred years earlier.

If you have someone against you today, pray. God can handle your problem and the others who oppose you much better than anything we can do in our own strength.

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Dillon Burroughs is the author and coauthor of numerous books and is handwriting a copy of all 31,173 verses of the Bible at HolyWritProject.com. Find out more about Dillon at Facebook.com/readdB or readdB.com.