If you are like me, then you may be a problem solver. When I come across obstacles in my life or the lives of those around me I like to find solutions to them. This aspect of my personality is not always helpful however when I am in one of the tougher life seasons and I think that I can see what the problem is. After all, the problem is obvious, isn’t it? I can have the tendency to proceed to let God know what the problem is and confidently ask Him to remove it. This is my polite way of saying that I stamp my feet like a toddler and demand of God that He does what I want…preferably yesterday, adding a few bible verses to the demand to remind Him that I am right. After all, most of us who have been Christians for more than a few years know a few promises of God in scripture and are relatively well versed in declaring them over our lives.
While I genuinely think that it is good and right to declare scripture over ourselves, and I make a point of doing this in my life, it is after all the word of God and that can only be a good thing, I think that perhaps we may have missed the point on some of this. I know that God wants the best for us as He is a good God and a loving father. I also know that He wants to be glorified in our lives, and will always use the opportunities we give Him to do just that.
The problem we face when we demand of God without first checking in with what He is doing in our lives is that we miss the bigger picture. Let’s take the Israelites in slavery in Egypt as an example. Moses knew that God was calling the people out of slavery and into their new promised land. However, before they could step into the promise they had to get out of Egypt.
The problem that the Israelites had is that they could not see that what God was doing in their slavery was to move them out of Egypt. All they could see was the brutality of the Egyptian masters in the confines of their slavery. Egypt was a beautiful and lush land. The Nile was a bountiful river teaming with fish. The combination of the desert dust and soil with the waters of the Nile provided a rich and fertile farmland. It was a great place to be! The problem to the Israelites was not the land, it was the Egyptians.
From God’s perspective, however, the problem was that the promise that He had made to the Israelites all those years before was not in the land of Egypt but in Canaan. His purpose and future for them was in a land far better than that of the Egyptians. The Israelites had forgotten their promise. They had become comfortable in Egypt and had put down roots, settled and grown into a significantly large people group. God had blessed them greatly in this land but He wanted to increase that blessing to the next phase of His promise for them. But people don’t move when they are comfortable The world and it’s ways does not want us to be in the fullness of God’s blessing and will either lull us with comfort to keep us away from it or come against us with harshness to stop us moving forward . In this story the world and its ways are seen as the land of Egypt with its comfort and Pharaoh and the Egyptian slave masters with their harshness.
I believe that God could have come in to rescue His people from the Egyptians easily and wiped them all out. But He didn’t. Instead He grew a discontent in the people of Israel against the comfort of the land and the harshness of the slave drivers. He had to prepare their hearts to leave the land for their promise. God knew that His promise for them was greater than their present.
In Romans 8:28 (NLT) we read “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” I don’t think that if God had removed the harshness of the Egyptians from the Israelites that they would have left Egypt. If He had removed the Egyptians from the land the Israelites would have stayed there and and settled in it. They would have missed out on their promise! They would have settled for good instead of God’s best.
So the challenge is this. The next time the troubles of life come and we feel pressed in from every side, take a moment with God and ask Him what His purpose is in the situation we face. We may just find that the problem in front of us is the very thing that is ushering in our greater promise.
