Photo Credit: Heartlight
Photo Credit: Heartlight
Just in the course of a few hours after that conversation, the Lord worked His grace in my heart, and I’m back in the life He has so generously given me.
5 lessons God taught me…again:
- Let go of the past. – We can romanticize and pedestalize previous seasons of our life and work. We look back over the plow (Luke 9:62) and long for other days. This is the field. This is the day where He has us now. I don’t want to miss what He has for my life today because my thoughts are languishing, settled in the distant past. We don’t forget the past, but we remember it, glorifying God, not glorying in our own supposed “usefulness”. Sigh…
- Check your heart. – Anytime a spirit of complaining clouds our thinking, it is a good reminder to see what’s going on in our hearts. Am I feeling unseen, unappreciated, under-utilized? [So what?! If that happens then we’re completely free to listen more closely to how God is directing.] Arm-chair quarterbacking is not a good look for any of us. I remember my mom was a treasure to the young pastors she had through the years. In fact, three of them preached her funeral…with others in the room, with the same testimony. They talked of how she loved them, spoke truth to them, and prayed over them faithfully. In her own quiet life, growing older…closer to God. The Lord got hold of me the other day in this area. So thankful for His love and care…and forgiveness.
- Watch for the new thing. – God is always with us and at work in us. He may take us down familiar, well-worn paths (those we get caught up longing for), but He also chooses to stretch our faith and build our capacity for loving Him and loving others. Not necessarily in grand and glorious ways, but in small and subtle ways where we have the opportunity to decrease while He increases. Whew! Watching for it.
- Will there be barriers? Always. The thing we should have learned from previous seasons of life and work is that God is our over-comer. More often than not, we find the battle belongs to God; all we have to do is stand. We forget that sometimes. We stare at the barriers (fashioning them, at times, to look like our own brothers and sisters in Christ), and fume about them…forgetting that our battle is NOT against flesh and blood…nor is it really our battle. [There’s a very short story that comes to mind about how we’re called to push against what seems an impossible weight…but God* (see below, worth the read). Compared to the person and presence of God, all seeming barriers are small.
- Eyes on God – The most beautiful reminder out of this pity party of mine is that setting our eyes on God changes everything. If He means for me to finish in this life’s “Promised Land” or, like Moses, looking down into it but not quite arriving…it is His to make happen and for me to follow. The Scriptures do not record Moses grumbling about not getting to enter with all those he led… I think the reason it’s not recorded is that it didn’t happen. For Moses, being with God was enough. More than enough. Period. Full stop. Eyes on God.
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. – Colossians 3:1-4
OK…so Moses…he may have felt sidelined…and except for the years in Pharaoh’s palace, he did the sidelining to himself. God, however, did not let him stay on the bench. Singer songwriter Ken Medema wrote and performed an incredible account of Moses’ early encounter with God (the verses above, Exodus 4:3-5).
Worship with me, or listen to this amazing and revealing story of God…and His servant Moses. [In the video, you may notice Ken Medema is blind…but in his heart, he can see and sing God so clearly!].
“Do you know what it means, Moses?
Do you know what I’m trying to say, Moses?
The rod of Moses became the rod of God!
With the rod of God, strike the rock and the water will come;
With the rod of God, part the waters of the sea;
With the rod of God, you can strike old Pharaoh dead;
With the rod of God, you can set the people free.”
What do you hold in your hand today?
To what or to whom are you bound?
Are you willing to give it to God right now?
Give it up, let it go, throw it down. – Ken Medema
I Stutter All the Time: Moses by Ken Medema
Photo Credit: Rick Warren, Heartlight
Thanks for joining me today. Do you ever struggle in this area? Maybe you don’t…yet. Maybe you do. Would love for you to share some of your own insight on how God redeemed that season for you.
Prayerfully…
What do you hold in your hand today?
To what or to whom are you bound?
Are you willing to give it to God right now?
Give it up, let it go, throw it down. – from Moses by Ken Medema
Exodus 17:1-7 and Numbers 20:1-13
The Two Hurdles of God’s Will – Greg Matte
Intimacy with God Is the Main Thing – Letter to My 30-Year-Old Self – Kim Cash Tate
I’m Too Distracted with Life to Meditate on Christ – John Piper
*Pushing the Rock – Joshua Adams
The greatest gospel force is the lay person in the pew equipped by the preacher in the pulpit! – Scott Sullivan
This is the day where he has us now. So good to remember. ?
Yes, it is. Thanks also for being that friend who stayed with me in that conversation of sorting out what was going on in my head/heart…leading me to sorting it out with the Lord and rediscovering what is true. Blessing!
Loved this – “ Dr. Curt Thompson is spot on when he talks about how we can come “to our senses” just in the simple experience of being seen…being known by a trusted friend. At the end of that conversation, as we prayed, the tears flowed (which is rare for me), and God reminded me of His own goodness and good purposes – and while I had breath, nothing was about to thwart what He was doing in and through me…in and through all of us.”.
Just had a time where some trusted friends made me feel seen and known and loved. Was such a powerful reminder of His ever-present love
Thanks, Matt, for commenting. It is such a beautiful thing…this whole seen, known, loved thing. Real community. A taste of Heaven. Thanks for stopping by. It means a lot.
Two things:
1) I don’t think Moses was sidelined. I think God put him into a special training school – sheep! He grew up in a palace being waited on. He needed to learn to serve and to shepherd because those skills would be necessary for leading people. He also needed to live a repentant lifestyle in front of non-believing people who would join the Israelites in the promised land. (Judges 1)
2) Moses did make it to the promised land – Matthew 17. Although he did not make it in the time and ways he thought, he got there without the years of the people’s disobedience which would have brought agony to his exhausted soul.
Sweet! Thanks, Susan, for your perspective that adds so much. Moses DID make it. He was faithful and we all are better for his life, both in training and in leading. Thanks for commenting!
Sometime going through The Life of Moses with BSF, I was bemoaning the fact that Moses wasn’t getting to “go in”. My daughter, as adult children sometimes do, gave me one of those looks. “But mom, HE DID GET TO! Remember the transfiguration?” Somehow, that has always been quite a comfort to me. And, those sheep I spent a few years with – yeah, that too, from this perspective, looking back, is positive now as well!