 ™ |
Hang In There!
'You may not know it – but you are on the way Up!' |
Watch Moses!
• He had obeyed God and returned to Egypt.
• He had won the support of his people, and confronted Pharaoh on their behalf in the Lord's name.
• He had done everything right, to the very best of his ability —
• He had won the support of his people, and confronted Pharaoh on their behalf in the Lord's name.
• He had done everything right, to the very best of his ability —
And it all went horribly wrong!
found yourself in such a situation – where things go all wrong after you really have done your best?
No? ...Well, try and imagine it – for it may be on life's agenda for you also.
So, listen now to how this greatest of God's prophets experienced it. . .
prayed to the Lord and said –
"O Lord, Why hast Thou brought harm to this people?
Why didst Thou ever send me?
Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he has done harm to this people;
and Thou hast not delivered Thy people at all!"
Why didst Thou ever send me?
Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he has done harm to this people;
and Thou hast not delivered Thy people at all!"
Which Way?
loyalty to what we believe may refuse to think these thoughts, but this is sometimes what our feelings are saying when we are depressed.
Moses was filled with feelings of futility! He felt that God had let him down! God had failed him and His people!
How could this great prophet ever say such a thing – to God? What unbelief! How could God ever use Moses with this kind of
attitude? Surely he needed to be rebuked for his doubts and despair.
We probably would have done that – but God certainly did not!
this mean it is OK to give in to negative feelings? No! Moses had not given in. He went to God with these feelings of utter futility, but he never questioned his dependence on God!
True, nothing at all made sense to him any more. Nothing fitted in to his expectations according to what God Himself had said. But, in his confusion, discouragement, depression, he never turned away from his communion with God, even when it seemed utterly useless.
Faith (not a feeling) – faith in God beyond understanding – is the bottom line of God's way for our lives! Without a faith that does not fade in the face of internal conflict and doubt, God's wonderful plan for our lives will just never happen. Moses-kept-going-with-God – regardless!
is not freedom from feelings of doubt. Faith is the deliberate practical defiance of those feelings and thoughts. Moses felt no defiance toward his own doubts – but he learned to disregard his feelings and persevered in his relationship to God!
The failure of Moses' efforts for his people at this stage, that had even made their circumstances worse than before (as well as their justifiable anger toward him), were huge issues. He felt terrible! And, yes, everything was wrong – everything that could go wrong. Even his wife and his sons left him and returned home to his father-in-law. However, it was Moses' action in just keeping going with God, while still feeling overwhelmed by confusion and despair, which allowed God to do the unique events that we remember Moses for – the supernatural deliverance of his people and the birth of their nationhood!
God's plan for each of us will always include painful prunings – not as punishment because we have done wrong, but simply for greater fruitfulness in our lives: fruitfulness, greater than our expectations – just like Moses. With what amazing results for him!
Let's not even talk about the laying the foundation of a new nation and a unique religion for them that included their diet and private and public hygiene. Something even greater than that was God's personal response to Moses while he still felt so terrible! God said to him –
| "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God-Almighty, but by My name, YHWH, I did not make Myself known to them." |
This did not mean that the name Yahweh for God was unknown before this statement. The name of Moses' own mother shows this not to be so. It refers to the special significance of that name as revealed by God in His personal relationship.
is to do more through Moses than He had ever done through Moses' greatest ancestors. Wow! Can this be true? Well, that is precisely what God said!
| Note below: the human feelings of despair in the words of the Messiah/Christ, prophesied to us by Isaiah in 49:4-7, indicating His human/inadequate psychological state during His time as God's 'Suffering Servant': |
| "But I said, 'I have laboured in vain; I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely My right is with the LORD, and My recompense with My God'." |
| (Isaiah 49:4). |
Moses was to receive a revelation of God's nature or character that even the three great patriarchs of Israel, for whose sake Moses' people were even considered as God's people, had not received. A greater revelation than even Abraham?! What greater honour in knowing God could be given to Moses than this!
it coincidence that God makes this awesome statement to Moses when he comes to God in such utter despair. No! Every 'down' in the life of every believer is planned by God (with all His resources) to be preparation for a new 'high' in the value of your life.
This is the divine way for all life. Every advance, discovery, achievement, etc., in life, is in response to a problem, a difficulty, a challenge, in defiance of defeatism. The lessons are all around us from insects, from animals, from secular history. The very processes of life, from the level of a virus and upward, are geared to adjust to challenges and difficulties so as to produced better adaptation and weed out inadequate response-mechanisms.
God, our future is planned and prepared to ALWAYS be better than our past.
| May God's people be blessed by your perseverance also . . . |
Moses' whole ministry would never have come into being if he had not cried out to God from within his earlier depression.
Of the 150 Psalms in the beautiful book of that name, we are told that one, only one, was written by Moses – Psalm 90. This psalm tells us something very wonderful about God's answer to Moses' prayers at this time – aged 80.
Although Moses was a sincere believer before his burning-bush experience, his state of mind before his mission to deliver Israel from Egypt is expressed by the words that describe all humanity's unhappy end – "we finish our years with a moan" (90:9).
But self-analysis is not the focus of this psalm. It is a cry to God, in contradiction of these common human frustrations:
"... establish the work of our hands for us — yes, establish the work of our hands."
God surely did, for the man that prayed that prayer!
Forty years later, after unparalleled productivity and impact on his own generation, Moses is described as –
God certainly knows how to answer generously to a heartfelt prayer – even from the most depressed of persons!
Let it lay hold of what you do not know ... in praise of God!
Let it reach out with joy to touch what it cannot see –
according to everything that God has prepared for your day ahead.
and you will have opened the way for your spirit to receive it.'
| Waiting to be rescued is frequently a symptom of self-pity which negates faith |
Remember how it all began for Moses?
Moses had been born into a terrible problem, BUT God always honours faith that moves forward into action, and perseveres!
