Hard Times - Better Than Evian Water Series

If I were God….How many times have you heard people say that? “If I were God I would have everyone love everyone else, eliminate war, eliminate poverty and win the lottery.” Yeh, that’s just what we need, some thirty five year old running the universe.

Have you ever thought that? Have you ever thought that you had a better plan for your life? I sure have, more times than I can count. Now, do I think I have a better plan when I am at the beach or when I am on vacation in Disneyland? Do I think that when I am holding my newborn child or when I am kissing my bride at our wedding? Are you kidding? Of course not. I always think I have a better plan for my life when times are hard, when times are painful, and when times look bleak.

Why do they think that they have a better idea? It is simple. They are thirsty – there is no water. They have a problem – there is no answer, and camping in a spot where there is no water is certainly not the answer. They can all see, as they look around at the dirt and the dust, that staying where they are is NOT the answer. They may not have the answer, but they know, the answer is certainly not where they are standing, they need to move on.

But remember what we saw last week: The people are going exactly where God wants them to go. God places them exactly where He wants them to be. God has lead them away from a place with abundant water to a place where there is no water. God does this to us too. Like the Hebrews here, God leads us away from the obvious, out into a desert – and worse, He stops. We look around and we don’t see the solution to our difficulties, we see rocks and dirt.

Even though these people have seen God provide again and again – they are in pain, they are thirsty, faint and they need an answer quickly – don’t we always need an answer quickly? But see, they see the end in sight. They logically know what will happen if they do not find water. They are aware of the circumstances and they know they need action now. So everything, everything else that has happened in their life, doesn’t matter – because if this current problem isn’t dealt with quickly – they are all dead.

We’ve all been there. We have an urgent situation. We pray, we plead, we pray again. But we don’t go forward. We stand there in the desert kicking rocks. Where’s God?

So you can imagine, they complain. Perhaps they are ready to pick a new leader, one who is smart enough to find water. We see Moses is worried, in verse 4 he thinks they are ready to stone him to death. They view the lack of water as God abandoning them and their cattle.

We see this in people’s lives all the time. Bad things happen. They get hurt, or a loved one is hurt. Very serious things happen, and do not get better, so people complain, they get angry with God and they turn their back on Him. They feel that if something like that could happen in their life, either there is no God, or God isn’t with them. Because they assume, like the Hebrews that hard times and difficult circumstances are an argument for the absence of God in our lives, when the reality is, hard times and difficult circumstances are in fact an argument for the presence of God in our lives. Assumptions are a poor way of looking at life.