See naturally, they would die if they got no water, but here's the thing. Why would God bring them out into the desert, go all to that effort to do all the miracles and get them saved, just so they could die here, because they had no water? Clearly He had a plan. Now the dilemma is, God doesn't tell you the plan, not until you cry to Him; and you'll find in the Bible many situations - there's another one where the disciples, Jesus told them to get in the boat. Now they resist to get in the boat. The Bible says: He constrained them, or forced them, or pressured them, to get in the boat. Why would they not want to get in the boat? They're fishermen! They can tell there's a storm coming. No one wants to be in a little boat on the sea when there's a storm coming.
They get in the little boat. Next thing, it's in the middle of the storm, and now they're in a place of stress. Now Jesus knew all about it, and this was an opportunity for them to grow in faith, which they flunked.
I don't know how many ones I've flunked. I've flunked a few over my life, a few little things have got me. But here's the first thing: Number one, you need to cry out to God. Number two, you need to listen for God's direction. It says: God showed him something. Do you realise that God can speak to you, and show you things, in the middle of your trouble? I remember being in the midst of one of the greatest challenges I had in my life in ministry, and right in the middle of it, God showed me something about myself that needed healing; something about myself that needed changing, something about my heart attitude, that He'd exposed in the middle of the situation, and He wanted me to change.
So the first thing then is: cry out to God, and then give a bit of space for Him to speak to you. How would He reveal things to you? He could easily reveal it as you're just spending time in the word, could reveal it to you as you're talking to someone. You could be sitting in a meeting, and then suddenly God speaks to you. Just this last week we had Pastor Anwar Fazel here, and one of the meetings I felt like God just spoke to me so clearly, just like it was a directive from heaven, just like that. So we've got to tune in our heart to the spontaneous flow of God; so God showed him a tree. In the Bible, when the Bible's talking about the word tree, it's a picture of the cross, the cross of Jesus Christ. It's a picture of Jesus Christ. God showed Him a bush. Now here's the thing; the bush was always there. He just didn't see its significance in solving the problem. He came there, and he's got two million people plus, and they're all complaining and groaning, and they're all going to die in a couple of days, they're going to start dying off, and the water they've got is a mess, and he's got nowhere to go. He cries out to God, and God's opened his eyes, and points out to him something that was always there, which he didn't see.
Now here's the thing. At the cross of Christ, at the cross, Jesus has broken the power of sin, broken curses, made it possible for every person to be blessed. It's just sometimes, in the middle of your problem, you just don't see it. At the cross, Jesus demonstrated He loves you, He's so committed to you, no matter what you've done, and what you've been in, and no matter how bad your life has been. He's willing to give of Himself to help you, but when you're in a fix, you just don't seem to see it; and so what happened in the midst of his time of praying, God showed him something he hadn't seen before. He gave him revelation, gave him insight to the work of the cross, the power of God to heal and transform any situation.