Paula Wiseman

Faith and life meet in a story

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When Listening to God Is Hard

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So Moses told the people of Israel what the LORD had said, but they refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery. Exodus 6:9 NLT

I’m sure you’re familiar with the story of Israel’s bondage and deliverance. Moses has made his first appearance because Pharaoh and the response was an intensification of the burden placed on the people. In Exodus 5:22-23, Moses returns to God with questions, nearly accusations. In summary, Moses said, “I did what you said, and things are worse, not better.” God responds with seven amazing promises He had committed Himself to:

  • “I will bring you out.”
  • “I will rescue you from bondage.”
  • “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.”
  • “I will take you as My people.”
  • “I will be your God.”
  • “I will bring you into the land which I swore to give.”
  • “I will give it to you as a heritage.”

When Moses relayed God’s message, the people of Israel wouldn’t listen. You can almost hear them- No Moses, we dared to hope things would change and look what happened. It’s worse now. I don’t have the emotional energy to believe anymore. It takes everything I have just to get through each day.

Perhaps we hear them so vividly because we echo them. We sometimes reach the place where, because of the challenges and struggles we face, we no longer hear the promises of God. We bring jaded cynicism with us to worship. We respond to Scripture with doubt and distrust. So how do we get from the place of discouragement to a place of peace and trust?

Remember that Pharaoh determined to set himself in opposition to God’s plan and the freedom of God’s people. We, too, have an enemy who constantly works to frustrate the revealed intentions of God, and who tirelessly works to keep us enslaved, at least emotionally and mentally through discouragement, frustration, and despair.

Remember that God was doing something much bigger than Israel understood. Yes, He was bringing them out of slavery, but He was demonstrating His power over Egypt and their false gods. He was acting out in type, breaking the power of sin over mankind and the finale deliverance Christ would bring. He was revealing to His people truth about His character and His ways. He was teaching them patience and dependence, which is far, far easier said than done. God works in our lives in ways we don’t understand, doing things we haven’t imagined, laying foundations for the future, revealing Himself, teaching us.

Yes, sometimes listening to God is hard, especially when our circumstances fly in the face of His promises. Waiting for Him to act is hard. Not knowing what He’s doing or when He intends to do it is hard. God never denied or minimized the suffering of His people as His plan moved forward. And the time DID come. When the waiting was over, Israel experienced the manifest presence of God and displays of His power in ways that defy description. His words to us are just as certain.

 

 

 

Fire

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Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. Exodus 19:18

Fire is unlike anything else.

It warms.
Enlightens.
Reveals.
Refines.
Signals.
Shapes.
Purifies.

But fire also destroys.
It devours and it consumes.

Many times in Scripture, God chose to reveal Himself in fire.

He is not through revealing Himself in fire.

What kind of fire will He be?

 

 

 

Shiphrah and Puah

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Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah: Exodus 1:15

Pharaoh was the most powerful man on earth.
He led the greatest civilization the world had seen.
He ruled an empire.
He conquered his enemies.
His people worshiped him as a god.

But we don’t know his name.
We have some guesses. Some deductions.
But we don’t know.

Shiphrah and Puah were peasants at best.
Slaves more accurately.
They delivered babies.
Pharaoh commanded them to kill the male Hebrew children.
But Pharaoh wasn’t their god.

We know their names.
We know the risk they took.
We know their fear of God.

You see, it is not our position, nor our wealth.
It is not our education or our accomplishments.
What matters, what sets us apart is our fear of God.

 

 

 

New Owner

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A while back, the house across the street sold, and the new owner spent several evenings and a couple of Saturdays moving stuff in, pitching other stuff to the curb, and redoing the landscaping. I expect he’s painting and reworking some of the insides as well. That’s only right. He bought the house. It’s his to inhabit, rearrange, and redecorate however he chooses. It’s the right of ownership.

Imagine what would happen if the previous owner showed up and started moving stuff back in, or started repainting the kitchen to match what it had been. “I know it’s your house now, but I like it better this way.” That’s crazy, isn’t it?

Now consider this…

Paul says, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

We are not our own. We are bought with a price. And the new owner has some definite ideas about how He wants things arranged in us. The Holy Spirit is constantly at work reshaping, remaking us so that we are more and more like Christ.

It’s our job not to be like a crazy previous owner who tries to move our junk back in, or fights to restore everything to the way it was before He bought us. Trust the new owner. He knows what He’s doing.

 

 

Have You Seen the King?

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So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts.” Isaiah 6:5

I have taught Sunday school for older elementary kids for ten or fifteen years now. I love teaching. I’m not always crazy about the choices of material the curriculum writers settle on. More than once, I have abandoned the safe, sanitized stories to guide the kids in grappling with the reality of who God is and who we are as presented in Scripture.

Isaiah 6 is one of those moments of grappling.

In a time of political turmoil, unrest, and uncertainty about the future, Isaiah– a man who was already God-fearing and devout– went to the Temple to pray. He was seeking the comfort and solace of God’s presence. We would do the same thing.

But Isaiah wasn’t met with soft words or sentiments from a grandfatherly deity. He saw the LORD. What he saw was terrifying. The seraphim stood above the throne. We know the word is plural, so there were at least two of them there. The word seraphim means burning ones and when they declared the holiness of God, their voices carried such power that the building shook. Smoke filled the house.

And these were just angels.

Isaiah’s response was hopelessness. He was sinful. He knew it. And he also recognized that response of holiness to uncleanness was to obliterate it. He was a dead man.

Unless …

Unless there was cleansing. What Isaiah saw, what he understood was that God chose not to obliterate the sinner with his sin, but to offer cleansing. This was an eternal solution, an eternal comfort, not just a temporary easing of the circumstances. It was a message what far exceeded Isaiah’s expectations and questions. Isaiah grasped it with such intensity that God had barely asked who would go, before Isaiah said, “Send me.”

When we soften God, when we explain visions like Isaiah’s away as merely “an Old Testament thing,” when we contend that THAT was God, but now we deal with Jesus, we cheapen the gift of salvation. We remove the compelling need for deliverance. We strip away the urgency of the gospel.

Don’t do that.

When you see this King, this holy, awesome, terrifying God for who He is … then the fact that He comes near, the fact that He invites us to come into His presence, the wonder that He would cleanse our sins is even more amazing. He is even more deserving of our worship and devotion. We leave His presence even more committed to honoring Him with our lives.

Have you seen the KING?

 

 

 

Most High

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For You, LORD, are most high above all the earth; You are exalted far above all gods. Psalm 97:9

What is Most High?

That to which we offer:

The most time

The most energy

The most thought

The most consideration

The most of our talents

The most of our resources

The most of our attention

The most of our affection

Are there times that someone or something else may, in fact, be Most High?

 

 

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