Knowing God Involves Waiting
I just love how God knows us so well, that He gives us advice even before we start complaining, but He knows that the thoughts of doubt and unfaithfulness is already manifesting in our minds.
Exodus 14:14
The Lord will fight for you and you have only to be SILENT.
Exodus 15:26
IF YOU will diligently LISTEN to the voice of the Lord your God and DO that which is right in His eyes and give EAR to His commandments and KEEP all His statutes, I WILL put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I AM the Lord your HEALER.
In the Exodus 14, Moses and Israel are in front of the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army is behind them. Israel starts complaining, and Moses cries to God.
What God says to them is, if you just WAIT and remember everything I just did to get you here. Stop complaining and know that I am fighting for you and WAIT for just another moment, I will show you something else. You’re not going to believe your eyes what I’m going to do next. Oh, and, by the way, those pesky Egyptians are going to die today!
What God is trying to teach us through this lesson is to remember all the things He has done to deliver you from your troubles and problems. And, to stop complaining about the situation you’re in, wait and believe what God is going to do in your life. And then you are going to be so incredibly thankful that God came to your rescue, and heard your cries that you too will sing praises to God, just as Moses and all of Israel did in Exodus 15.
Moses was so overcome with thankfulness for what God had done, he actually wrote and sang an entirely new song for God. That was incredible especially since Moses had complained earlier to God how he was “slow of speech”. Now here he is writing and singing a song!
This is significant because we need to remember that when you see God act in your life for you, He puts a new song or new purpose in our hearts that we will just be bursting to give back to Him in gladness and joy in the form of praise and worship.
Go teaches us something else in Exodus 15. God shows His care for Israel in sweetening an otherwise bitter water supply. Showing Israel that God would be providing for them from now on with “sweetness” and no more “bitterness”. However, Israel needed to be given a test. God wanted to get them to the point of always believing and obeying Him. All they needed to do was LISTEN to God, DO what is right, HEAR His commands, KEEP the statutes, then God would heal them and not put diseases on them like He did to the Egyptians.
The lesson here is to stop following the worldliness of the Egyptians. You followed them and all it got you into was slavery. The same is for you and I. When we follow our sinful desires, we fall into being enslaved by those sins.
All we need to do is what God told Moses to do. Listen, Do, Hear and Keep. We can put those commands into our lives today like this.
Listen to God through reading His word, meditating on those words and praying to God. Since God has given us Jesus Christ as our savior of our sins and given us His Holy Spirit, we can have an intimate relationship with God. Israel could not even approach God ever except through animal sacrifices, and still God spoke only through prophets and priests. You and I have such a great advantage that we can just pray whenever and wherever we are and talk directly to our creator! Incredible!
Do what is right. If you and I are reading His word, spending time in pray and listening to God, then we are learning to do what is right. God will even speak to us to do what is right. We are built for doing good works, so it will eventually become natural to help others, bring justice and fight for what is right.
Hear and Keep His commands and statutes. As you and I go through life with an intimate relationship with God, we learn and understand what His commands and statutes are, and let them indwell our lives. We then become obedient to God and all He has for us.
As a result, he provides the “healing”. Healing from past sins, guilt, shame, anger, and unforgiveness. He then changes you into His new creation. A creation full of His joy, grace, mercy and love.
I know waiting for God to act and listening for Him is not something we are likely to do. After all we live in a give-it-to-me-now generation and we are not used to waiting. But, when we wait on God, He makes the time so worth it. Because waiting produces perseverance. Waiting draws us into a closer relationship with Him through constant prayer and reading His word. Waiting develops a deeper trust and faith that He will do what He has promised and that He is a good God. Waiting gives a greater reliance on God and a loosening of that controlling grip that we are trying to keep on that situation.
Letting go and going to God for everything, including praising when (not if) he answers your prayers gives us a freedom like nothing else. Seeing God answer your prayers especially when you don’t expect it, is His specialty. But, you should also pray and ask with the expectation that He will answer. What kind of faith is it if you don’t believe He will do it? Not a very good faith is it.
I encourage you to begin to wait on God and while you are waiting, get to know Him more through prayer and reading His word. Let Him get to know you with your cries for help and praise for what God will do in your life.
He loves you and wants you to know Him!
Wait on Him now, He’s waiting for you!
