When
It Goes From Bad To Worse
"I was pretty sure I
understood what God was asking me to do. I
was obedient. I took the next steps...but
now I'm wondering if I got it all wrong.
Instead of things going right they seem to be
getting worse!"
Sound
familiar? We think we understand what God is
asking of us, but the further we go down that road
the bumpier it gets. We start to wonder..to
question...to doubt...and maybe even conclude we
missed it. The clearness of the initial
message gets cloudy and somehow lost in the
realities of life...some of them quite
difficult.
There is a principle
found in chapter 5 of Exodus that might help our
perspective. Moses heard correctly. He
knew what he was supposed to do, and he did
it. At first things went well...the
Israelite leaders listened and believed. So
far so good! With that affirmation
energizing him, he was off to the next
victory... presenting his request to Pharaoh
and watching God grant his request.
Didn't happen.
In fact things got ugly rather quickly.
Pharaoh didn't just refuse; he actually
decided to punish them for even asking. It
definitely went from bad to worse! So Moses
came back to God with a series of questions and
doubts. "You made a promise God...what
happened?"
You may have been
there...or might be there right now. You
thought you heard correctly, you obeyed the best
you knew...but the seeming promise has not been
fulfilled. What happened?
One of the things
that happened is the principle we can draw out of
Exodus 5 and 6. We can call it the principle
of fulfillment and judgment. It seems that
quite often God is working out a carefully
balanced plan involving both fulfillment...the
promises he has made for the good of his people,
and judgment...the promises he has made for those
who disobey.
Moses, Aaron and the
Israelite leaders were totally focused on the
promise God had made to them. When that was
not the immediate outcome, they began to
question. But God had another side to the
whole scenario. He was also bringing
judgment on those who had exploited his
people. Early on in the process, the
Egyptians saw things as going well for them, and
Israel saw just the opposite. But the
process was not done. God was balancing the
promise of victory for Israel and the promise of
judgment for Egypt.
As it turns out, we
don't usually know all the players in our
scenarios with God. We don't know whom he is
intending to bless with his promises of victory
and whom he may be judging because of their
disobedience. So when we see things only
from our personal perspective, we can easily
conclude that we didn't hear God correctly or that
he just isn't that interested in our
situation. But there is always a larger
perspective...the other side, so to speak...what
God is orchestrating in the larger scheme of
things for the proper fulfillment of his promises
of direction for us, and what he is orchestrating
to bring his judgment where necessary.
Take heart!
God's perspective is from a little higher vantage
point than ours. He can see the whole
picture at once, so trusting his timing is
probably more productive than relying on our
own!
