God's Will, My Way

God’s Will, My Way

Exodus 2:11-17

Have you ever found yourself impatient, wanting something to happen and just couldn’t wait for it to happen? I remember a time when I was trying to decide on career move from secular work into ministry and how it exciting it was for my family. Nancy decided that she was ready to be a preacher’s wife and what an emotional time it was when she told me.

I like to be in control. So, I began to mash the buttons, make the contacts, and do the things that I thought would be beneficial to move us from secular work into the ministry. But, it wasn’t happening. This door was closed, that door was closed. Nothing was really transpiring. I began to think in my mind “Is this suppose to happen?” I turned to my heavenly Father and said, “Ok, look, I’ve taken over again. I’ve tried to move into areas that You are involved in and is Your work. I have to beg your forgiveness. But if You want this to happen, it’s Yours. I’m done with it.” Within just a few months, the door had opened up. A congregation that would accept us and support us plus provide us housing and pay our utilities. We put our house on the market to sell. It was all set up for me to go and complete my education. Somebody came by and bought the house in a very slow market. This was in February and I wasn’t scheduled to go to school until August.

So when they came by to buy the house, I was thinking, “what are we going to do”? As it turned out, the man wasn’t buying our house for his own use but as rental property. So we sold our house to him and rented it from him until we got ready to move. We didn’t have to move a stitch of furniture. Nancy’s work said it was impossible to transfer her from the Chicago district to the Dallas district. But if she wanted to quit and try to find employment again with JC Penny’s, that would be ok. She has lots of talent. In just a few months, somebody had called from Dallas and said they needed a spot filled as a merchandise manager and wanted to know if Nancy would be willing to transfer. It just so happened that the Store Manager, where Nancy was going to be working, was a deacon at one of the largest churches in the Dallas area. Did all of this just happen? No. I believe God was involved in it. I remember trying to do myself what I was incapable of doing more than what God could do. You see Moses is brought to that same situation in our text this morning from Exodus chapter two where Moses becomes impatient with his destiny.

The first thing we look at this morning is God’s will. For those of us who have read the Bible before know the story. But if it’s our first time to read it, we still get a since that God is in control here and that something great is about to happen. Especially when we see God’s will for his people and to raise up a leader for them.

Amram and Jochebed, Moses’ parents, protect him in a time when babies where being killed. His mother hid him in the river and Pharaoh’s daughter finds him She needs somebody to take care of the baby. So Miriam, Moses’ sister, knows somebody who can take care of Moses which is his original mother who nurses him and then brings him to Pharaoh’s daughter to raise in Pharaoh’s house. God is in control. This is His will to raise His leader for His people. God’s will also is to free His people, to bring them out of slavery. It is God’s will for Moses to be the leader.

There is another will acting in all of this. That is ‘my way’. God’s will by my way. That’s what Moses wanted to do. He began to see his destiny. He was beginning to set up what God wanted to do. But he was going to do it in his way and on his own timetable. I don’t believe that God wanted the Egyptian to be killed at that particular time. When Moses visited his people and sees the Egyptian beating on of his own kind, Moses, in verse 12, looked this way and then he looked that way. This was premeditated murder. Moses slew the Egyptian and buries him in the sand.

Moses decides to use his talents in bringing his people to God. I say his talents because an event happens in Acts chapter 7 that coincides with our scripture reading. It’s about Stephen. Now Stephen is really coming down hard on his own people. They have not accepted Christ. So Stephen begins to tell the story of the Israelites and does so chronologically. He comes to the part of Moses. In Acts 7:22 he says, “Moses was educated in all the ways of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action”. Moses was a very talented person. He had been raised in the finest libraries of the world. He had been raised in military action. I say military action because in other places that we find outside of scripture, Moses was leading another group in an assault that was a mighty victory for the Egyptians. So Moses used his own talents in bringing forth God’s will. Moses thought everything would kind of fall in place. In Acts7:25 Stephen said, “Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not”. You see Moses was pushing forth his own destiny in his own time using his own talents. But, there’s a problem with this. When we understand what God’s will is for us in our lives and things are not happening as fast as we want them to happen, we become anxious. So, rather than giving it to God, we try to become God’s hand in all of this. Moses wanted the destiny of being a leader way too soon or sooner than God wanted it to happen. Moses runs into all kinds of difficulties in not following what God wanted but what Moses wanted.