Tag: Waiting on God

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Leave a comment

Life brings all kinds of interruptions to our plans. And those interruptions come from all kinds of different sources. But sometimes they come from nothing. What I mean is that sometimes our lives get interrupted when what we expected to happen, what we expected God to do, doesn’t happen. We find ourselves facing downtime when we thought we were going to be actively doing something…anything. As we continue in the second-to-last part of our teaching series, we are talking today about what to do when we face the interruption of waiting.

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

So, the other day, I had told somebody that I would show up to help them do something at a certain time. I’m the kind of person who would rather be ten minutes early than two minutes late. So, true to form, I showed up about fifteen minutes before I said I would be there. That gave me time to make sure everything was ready when they arrived. As I was pulling in, though, I got a text: “Running a bit behind.” Given who was meeting me, I wasn’t all that surprised. I went inside and started doing the things I knew I needed to do. By the planned meeting time, all of that was done. So, I twiddled my thumbs for a bit. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen. I expected a little late, but not that much. So, I started doing some other things I hadn’t planned on doing. Then I got those done too. The waiting wasn’t what I planned, but it turned out more useful than I expected. 

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Exodus 32:1

Leave a comment

‘When the people saw that Moses delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make gods for us who will go before us because this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt — we don’t know what has happened to him!” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We recently purchased a new (to us) vehicle. It was an owner-to-owner purchase. As a result, I got to go make a pilgrimage to the state licensing bureau. It’s basically the DMV, but privatized…sort of. Actually, I got to go there three times. In two days. It was awesome. Actually, the people who helped us were all delightful. But it did mean standing in line. A lot. With one person helping customers while the other three employees seemed to be standing around doing nothing. That was fun. We hate to wait. We especially hate to wait when we want something. Waiting leads to impatience, which regularly leads to bad decisions. If we were watching a TV series about our journey through Exodus, the next part we are starting today would be introduced with something like, “Meanwhile, back at the base of the mountain…” We’ve been on the mountain with Moses for several weeks now. Back down at the base of the mountain, though, the people were waiting with growing impatience for him to return. And they were about to make a really bad decision. Let’s talk about it.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Exodus 3:1

Leave a comment

“Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

On occasion people will compare the times in which we live our lives to those before us. Usually this is done in a spirit of nostalgia, and we don’t come off looking very good. I’m not typically a fan of this. Nostalgia is a deceptively tough master that will leave us longing for a past that never really existed and discontented about the present. That being said, there is one point in particular at which we come off looking worse than our forebears that I would like to give some attention to this morning: We don’t like to wait for things. Humans have never been well-known for patience, but in our instant society, we’re particularly bad and getting worse. This creates problems when we serve a God who literally has all the time in the world. We get a glimpse of this as we move into the next part of Moses’ story. Let’s talk about it today.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Exodus 2:15, 23

Leave a comment

“When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well. . .After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor, they cried out, and their cry for help because of the difficult labor ascended to God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are some people everyone wants to be. This is usually because of what the person has accomplished. Many of these folks are athletes. Kids in particular watch these people perform and try to mimic what they do in their own playing. The trouble is, most of these superlatively talented individuals make doing what they do look easy. The truth, however, is anything but that. Doing what they do the way they do it has taken them years of hard work and sacrifice. We want to reproduce their success without the time in the wilderness. That, however, is not how life works. This truth is something we see borne out in the Scriptures including Moses’ story here. Let’s talk about it.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Habakkuk 2:1

Leave a comment

“I will stand at my guard post and station myself on the lookout tower. I will watch to see what he will say to me and what I should reply about my complaint.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever asked somebody a question and then didn’t stick around for an answer? Better yet, have you ever had somebody ask you a question and then didn’t stick around for your answer? My kids will occasionally do that. They’ll ask me something and just as I mount my soapbox of parental wisdom to impart to them the secrets of the universe, they’ve already either asked me something else or are talking about the next thing. It drives me crazy…in no small part because it wounds my ego. As frustrating as this is for us, imagine how God feels. Think for a minute about how many times you’ve asked Him something only to not wait around for the answer. Habakkuk has asked God some really big questions. He does something next that is really important for us to mimic.

Read the rest…