Forewarned

“And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.” (Ex 3:8 AV)

 

These words were spoken by God to Moses at the time of his calling into leadership.  As we know, when Israel was delivered from the Egyptians and was asked to trust God by faith, they refused to enter the land spoken of above because they didn’t think God could give them victory.  What struck me was they knew this was coming.  God did not ask them to do something which they lacked the time or experience in which to be prepared.  Note also the promise of blessing came before the reality of what it would take to realize those blessings.  God does not send us in blind.  When we accept Christ as our Savior, there is no rose garden waiting on the other side.  That is, in this life.  There is utter perfection and blessings untold when we graduate into glory.  Until then, there are battles to fight for the blessings we can have on this side of glory.  The big lesson here is, God does not ask us to go into something without enough faith to conquer it and with enough information to know what we might be getting ourselves into.

We see what we want to see and we turn a blind eye to what we do not want to deal with.  Then, when the obvious occurs, we are shocked and dismayed.  This is not God’s doing.  My father, and two brothers, served our country in the Army.  My father was a staff mathematician for a project at Aberdeen Proving Grounds during the Korean conflict.  My older brother was an MP oversees and my younger brother was an officer in charge of logistics.  My father didn’t speak much of his service.  Mainly because he felt somewhat guilty his assignment was not high risk like many of his peers.  I do remember a few tales of Chris’ service as an MP.  He tells the story of the bus arriving at boot camp.  When they arrived, the drill sergeant barked his directions and ended with, “You have exactly one minute to get off this bus and in formation and I have just used thirty seconds of it.”  The funny thing is, from my father to my younger brother, I cannot remember ever hearing of a letter written back home complaining about the difficulties of military life.  Mind you, they didn’t praise it per se, but they didn’t complain about it either.  Why?  There were several reasons.  But I think the biggest reason was when they went in, they were not disillusioned with what Military life was not.  They were well aware of what awaited them.  Perhaps not every detail, but they knew basic training was not going to be fun.  They knew ahead of time what might be asked of them.  They went in as well informed as they could be.  The Army did not deliberately hide everything from them.  They had heard the horror stories of others who went before them.  Therefore, when their time came, they could endure the hardship because, to some degree, they were forewarned.

Life is hard.  No matter if someone knows Christ or not, life will come with times less enjoyable than others.  Life is not, nor will it ever be, an experience of untold bliss.  There are always troubles and trials which will come our way.  When it comes to walking with God, God does not purposely hide all things from us.  He may delay some revelation because we are not mature enough to handle it.  He may wait until we are prepared to handle what might come.  But God does not keep us in complete darkness.  If it took us by surprise, it might just be that we closed our eyes to what could be because we did not want to think of it as a possibility.  God give a heads up.  The entire Bible has wisdom of what could be.  It warns of consequences from choices.  The word of God tells us God’s objective for our lives is to transform us into the image of Christ.  This comes at a cost.  The Bible also tells us that without faith, it is impossible to please Him.  Therefore, there will be situations in life that require us to trust.  We should not be shocked at anything God sends our way.  Not that we cannot be affected by it, or that we would never be challenged by it.  Job certainly never entertained the possibility his life would take the turn it did. He took it for granted that his godly lifestyle guaranteed a blessed and trouble-free life.  He was naïve.  He didn’t think of the possibilities and therefore, was not emotionally prepared.  Battles are coming.  There is nothing we can do about it.  What we can do is learn to walk with God so that when they come, we are prepared to trust.  That is all God asks.