During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested.” (Exodus 12:31, NIV)
If you have played golf for more than a little while, you have experienced what we all have, and probably more than once. You have stood on a tee or in a fairway staring at the group ahead of you and wondered, What are they doing? You have thought it would be nice, even right, to shout from your safe distance: “MOVE!”
Slow play is an irritant whether we are enduring it on the course right in front of us or watching it on TV, when professionals take four and five hours to complete their rounds as twosomes and threesomes. The internet’s discussion arenas teem with suggestions for curing the latter problem. Fines. Penalties. Shame in the press. Apparently, the answers to getting golfers to get a move on aren’t so easy to come by.
I have to admit, though, that I have wondered whether God doesn’t think the same of us, the men and women he created living out our days on earth. What does he have to do to move us? The apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians that God is rich in mercy, and this may be no more evident than in the fact that he doesn’t daily apply his deific boot to our stubborn backsides. I am sure there are faithful Christians who are at risk of growing weary in doing good, but the more common problem among us is that we are painfully slow in doing good at all.
It’s God’s world, so who knows which of its devices he’ll use to get our attention?Here’s a root problem that many a frustrated preacher has identified over the decades of my life: We are waiting for the audible voice of God—or at least an unmistakable sign from him—before we get off our spiritual duff. And even then, we are often much like Moses, who, right there in front of the burning bush (talk about a sign!), told God, “I’m not feeling up to the task, honestly. Can’t you get someone else?”
But let’s look further down the line in the Moses story. After the great prophet and his brother Aaron breached the court of Pharaoh time after time, and God unleashed plague upon plague in a tenfold attempt to move the king of Egypt, it was Pharaoh who delivered the marching orders of God to the Israelites: “Up! Leave us! Go…!”
Life is rarely as mystical as we make it. God will use your wife, your children, your pastor, the others in your Links Fellowship—even an enemy or unwanted critic like Pharaoh—to initiate action in you. Will you hear them? Will you move?
I’ll never dismiss the possibility that God can give you direct orders. Indeed, that’s the purpose of the Scriptures he has given us. They are his words for our common direction. And you may too hear God’s voice in your ears or in your spirit for individual guidance. But God will use whatever means necessary to push us down the path we need to walk. With Balaam, it took a donkey; with Jonah, God used a storm and a big fish; with Peter, it was a rooster. It’s God’s world, so who knows which of its devices he’ll use to get our attention? But once he has it, we must do this: MOVE!
—
Jeff Hopper
February 9, 2021
Copyright 2021 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
Photo by Pixabay from Pexels