Moses

Praying for Our Children

/ pastorpete51 / 5 Comments 
Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. 
Psalm 90:16 ESV

When our children were young, we had big plans for their lives. We sacrificed, saved, and struggled so that they would have better opportunities than we had. But the day came with each of them, when they moved out on their own and began doing things on their own, sometimes in directions we had never thought of. Though it wasn’t easy, the reality was that we had to learn to let go of our control. We needed to trust that just as God had lovingly directed and corrected us over the years, that they would also have to fall down here and there in order to experience God’s power in helping them back up again. That is something of the situation in which Moses writes Psalm 90. The children of Israel were somewhere in the desert on their forty-year journey. They definitely had some huge missteps along the way. They grumbled, tried to elect a new leader to take them back to Egypt and even built a golden calf. Yet, after some grave consequences, along with Moses pleading for God’s mercy, they eventually made it. It amazes me that Moses didn’t plead for himself to be allowed to go into the promised land, instead, he prayed that God would show His power to the next generation. With all the focus that is put on discovering our gifts and fulfilling our purpose, sometimes we forget that God also has a purpose for the next generation. Sometimes the most important job we have is to pray for God to help our children experience His power for themselves. We may not have the opportunity to cross every river ourselves, but we can ask for God’s grace and power for those who will. God gives each of us a small but special part in His enormous plan. First we need to be faithful to do all the work that God has given us, and then we need to pray for the ones coming after us to discover His will for themselves. Our job is to pass along our faith, not our plans. In our case, though our kids haven’t done a lot of things we planned on, what God has given them to do is better than anything we ever imagined. If we will be willing to pray, for them to see God’s power for themselves, then one day, we will meet on the other side of the river and rejoice together because of both God’s amazing plan and HIs amazing grace

Stretch Out Your Hand!

/ pastorpete51 / 5 Comments 
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.  And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. Exodus 14:21-22 ESV

In our walk of grace, we sometimes begin to think that since nothing happens without God’s approval and that everything comes to us by grace that we have no role whatsoever in God’s plan. Nothing in the Bible however gives us any indication that such thinking is accurate. All of the heroes of faith listed in Hebrews chapter eleven are linked to action! Abel offered a sacrifice, Noah built an ark, and Abraham left his native land. Moses was hidden by his parents and Rahab protected the spies. Not only these brave men and women but in fact all of us who belong to God’s family have a distinct, active and essential role to play.

Notice the order of the verses we are reading in Exodus: Moses stretched out his hand, and then the Lord drove back the sea. The people of Israel passed through the sea then God closed the waters over their enemies. The staff Moses carried wasn’t some mystical gift from an angel or a golden scepter which he had taken from Egypt.  Moses’ staff was simply the tool of his shepherding work. When the people of Moses’ time saw the staff Moses lifted up, they didn’t think of it as something quaint or impressive in any way. The fact that God chose to honor his simple obedience had nothing to do with the staff and everything to do with the humility of surrender. What are the tools of your daily life? Whether you carry a chain saw or a laptop to work, God can use anything you surrender to his command. Stretch out your hand! God is waiting on your surrender to open a path through the sea!

Photo by Thach Tran on Pexels.com

Quiet Time or Prayer?

/ pastorpete51 / 9 Comments

Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee. Isaiah 12:6 KJV

It seems that everyone is insisting lately that we have a “Daily Quiet Time.” But with all the discussion about it, maybe we have gotten a little off track. For starters, the phrase quiet time doesn’t occur anywhere that I know of in the Bible. Of course Jesus spent plenty of time teaching about prayer, but the prayers we read about in the Gospels are not always private and very few of them were quiet. In fact if we prayed like Jesus prayed, our time would be far from quiet –  

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, … Hebrews 5:7

And King David did not have much to say about quiet prayer either.

This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. Psalm 34:6

You could add to the list of these noisy prayers others; like Moses who was often crying out to the Lord because not a day went by without a problem, first in Egypt with Pharaoh, then in the wilderness with complaining Israelites. Elijah prayed loud enough for thousands to hear him on Mount Carmel and those loud prayers didn’t stop in the Old Testament. During Jesus’ ministry the Syro-Phoenician woman with a demon possessed daughter had the disciples begging Jesus to send her away because she was crying out too much. Then we all remember Blind Bartimaeus, whose friends kept insisting he sit down and shut up. But Jesus wasn’t disturbed at all by his noisy request. What impressed Jesus then and what impresses God today is when we believe in His ability and willingness to answer us so much that we cry out to Him from the bottom of our hearts. God values neither quietness nor loudness but when you and I need Him way too much to be quiet!