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.
Have you ever been there? Maybe you wanted a particular job? You’re doing all you can, making the contacts wanting that job, being pushy, pushy, pushy all of the way through. Then it ends up not really being the job for you. Have you to work in certain ministry? Just seeing a particular ministry and saying that’s what I want to do? You begin to do all the things on your own except without prayer, without going to God. Then you begin to see that it’s not really for you. Now, does God want us to have good jobs? Yes. Does God want us to do ministry? Yes. But is it His will? Is it working in our time instead of us working in His? I’ve known young people that were engaged for a certain length of time that finally begin to realize how in love they are. They wanted to be with each other but the engagement date is far away. They decided, “God wants us to be together. He put us together. God has matched us, a match made in Heaven.” The couple begins to do things in their own way with their own talents. Before long, they become sexually active without being married. Then all kinds of problems begin to happen in their relationship. Now does God want people to be married? Yes. But it may be on His time.
What about Abraham? God promised a son to Abraham. Abraham and Sarah decided it was taking a little longer than they expected. So they went ahead and did it their way by Sarah giving one of her maidservants to Abraham. Then Ishmael was born. By not waiting on God, we still have problems in the Middle East because of that decision.
If we’ll just wait upon God or make things known to God and let Him take control of our lives, so many good things can happen. In our leadership, prayer is to them. But sometimes, as with myself, we just get ahead of the game. We think, “Man, everything’s falling in place”. This is happening and this is happening and we just forget to pray about a ministry or mission. We just forget to pray. Yes, we could go and make do in our own time. But most of those plans are upset or turn out sour or not exactly what we thought it would be. But you know what? Not all is lost in all of this. Moses, in verse 15, fled from Pharaoh. He went to Midian and there he sat down beside a well. It’s interesting that Moses finds himself near the well. In the movie The Ten Commandments, Moses almost lost his life in the desert. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything of happened. But we do know that he came by a well. Moses begins to see what God can do in his life. That really coincides with the text read this morning, Psalms 46:10. “Be still and know that I am God.” Maybe there are times in our lives when we’re really using God and allowing Him to work when we want things to happen. Maybe it’s time to be still and know that He is God. It’s time to be able to drink from the well of His water; to be able to allow Him to quench our thirst; to allow us to get through the things that we’re really trying to push and trying to demonstrate in our own way rather than allowing Him to do what He can do. It turns out so much better when He does it rather than when we do it. It’s been proven over and over and over in our lives. But we’re still human beings. Moses was just a human being. He will be God’s man, God’s leader, and God’s friend. But he is still human. So Moses has to spend the next forty years of his life as a shepherd before God calls him. But God does call him. Moses would find, in the wilderness, God, the real God. The God that would bring him to what He wanted him to be.
Remember in Acts 7:22 that he was educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians, was good in speech, was good in action? But we find him in the next chapter, Moses begins to say, “I can’t speak.” He begins to use all of these excuses on what he can’t do. But God says, “I can”. Every excuse that Moses had God said, “I’ll take care of it”. You Know what? No matter what we’ve done in our lives or in the past, God can still work out those matters out for good. Even though I tried the hardest I could try, the greatest effort I ever put forward, so to go into ministry, it all failed. But God put me in the ministry. God can do it. No matter what I’ve done in my life, God can make it good. Because you see, His son, Jesus, came to die upon the cross to bring us to a relationship with God. It’s almost as if when Jesus stretched out His hand, he took God by one hand and man by the other and brought them together. We need God. The lesson that Moses had to learn was to rely on Him, to give his trust to Him.
So what about us? Where are we in regard to our relationship with God? Have we given ourselves to Him? Have we really trusted our life, our eternal life, to Him? Maybe you’ve come to the point where “I’m a good person. And I do things better than any church member I’ve ever saw. I’m just pretty good.” Well, you see, there was a really good guy in Acts chapter 10. His name was Cornelius. He prayed to God, did all kinds of good things, gave of his means. He was a good man but there was still something that was missing that he couldn’t do in his life. That was to save himself. So God put together Peter and Cornelius. Peter shared the message with him about Jesus Christ and how He came and He died for him. In all of that, Cornelius, still a good man but not saved for all eternity gave into God’s Word. He relied upon Him. He, and his entire household, was immersed into Christ. We can be pretty good people, but we can’t save ourselves. It takes the power of God to do that. Through His Son and through His blood we can be saved.
Maybe you’re where Moses was. There are just so many things that you want to happen in your life. Maybe you’ve even tried some things but it didn’t work. Maybe you’re still trying to make certain things happen but it’s not turning out the way you thought it would. Give in to God’s will and not your way.
