How
we interact with God can be a good indicator of the quality of our relationship
with Him. If we tend to chat with Him at
the surface level only, it might suggest that our fellowship with Him isn’t as
close-knit as it could or should be. At
the same time, being flippant in our communication could demonstrate that we
don’t sufficiently acknowledge His preeminence over all creation. Speaking in overly formal terms, replete with
an assortment of “thee’s” and “thou’s” could signify that we don’t recognize
enough the personal / interpersonal relationship He longs to have with us as
our Father and Friend.
I
realize these are incredibly fine lines, and there’s no hard-and-fast
categorization of the way we converse with our Lord. But it’s not wholly invalid, either.
Case
in point …
My
reading this week took me through Exodus 5 – 11, Psalms 55 – 61, and 1 Samuel 6
– 12. Even though I highlighted a
passage in Exodus 5 that moved me at the time, it wasn’t until just yesterday
that I caught a second glance at this passage and it really spoke to me.
As
Moses and Aaron go through their first interaction with pharaoh trying to
convince him to let the captive Israelites go free, he instead tightens the
grip around the Israelites’ necks by ordering them to produce bricks without
the straw being provided, and with no requisite reduction in their quota. Note this was after God had to
virtually coax Moses into being the leader who would free God’s chosen
people. So after being rejected out of
hand by pharaoh, Moses was beside himself, no doubt altogether frustrated and
guilty at the result of his going before pharaoh when he didn’t want to and
didn’t feel equipped to, especially after having to muster the courage so much. Basically, he now made the Israelites’ plight
astronomically worse.
Moses
goes back to talk with God about the outcome.
Well, sort of “talk” … more like “holler.”
Then Moses went back to the
Lord and protested, “Why have you brought all this trouble on your own people,
Lord? Why did you send me? Ever
since I came to Pharaoh as your spokesman, he has been even more brutal to your
people. And you have done nothing to rescue them!”
Wow. Look at how Moses is confronting God! No holds barred! How could he talk to God that way? Surely God must have just wiped Moses off the
face of the earth … called down fire from heaven and fried him where he stood …
let a nice clean bolt of lightning zap him … or just made him have a nice,
healthy heart attack right there and then.
No doubt God would have said, “I’ll show YOU Who’s boss!”
Uh,
not exactly. Instead, God gets back on
course and reminds Moses that He is going to deliver His promise to His people
… reminding them that pharaoh is going to relent, in time.
Why
didn’t God punish Moses? Doesn’t Moses
realize who this is? I mean, he seemed
to understand it when God was represented in the burning bush.
I
would submit it’s precisely because
Moses realized who God was that he pushed back so hard on God. How can that be? Let me explain.
God
wants us to be real with him. He wants
us to open up … to bear our hearts to Him … even when it means expressing our
perplexity and frustration when His plan doesn’t go according to our
expectations. First of all, God knows
how we feel, so sharing that with Him is in a way honoring Him for who He is …
our all-knowing, all-loving Father.
Secondly, it also is a way of our pouring ourselves out to Him … giving
ourselves openly to Him without reservation.
Finally, it’s a measure of extending our love to Him. By going back to God and showing his
disappointment and aggravation, Moses is demonstrating His respect for and love
of God.
When
we open up to others, in a caring but candid way, we inherently demonstrate our
love and respect for them. Similarly,
when we allow them to open up to us in a respectful and yet unfettered way, we
are acting in love and respect for them.
In the same way, as business leaders, it’s contingent upon us to be open
and candid, and yet caring in sharing feedback, goals or direction, thereby
deepening the relationship and paving the way for greater trust and
accomplishment. When we make it easy for
others to express their heartfelt feelings to us, we increase trust, aid in
their growth, and in the process learn something for ourselves that can only
enhance our success.
In
our marriages, we have to express our hearts … in a loving way, of course … and
allow our spouses to do likewise. As
guys, we struggle with this. Either we
“swallow” our real feelings, or we let our wives spill their guts, only to be
half-listening or to have us overly focused on “fixing” things. Fortunately, our God and Savior only desires
that we bring our whole heart to Him, so that He may listen intently, seeking
only to comfort us by reminding us that His plan remains intact and that His
love remains undaunted. He tells us
(Matthew 11:28 – 30),
“Come to me, all of you who
are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you,
because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy to bear, and
the burden I give you is light.”
God
is longing for us to invest openly enough into our relationship with Him to
give it to Him straight. To let Him know
how we really feel … not because He doesn’t already know … but because He wants
us to be REAL with Him. He wants us to
give Him all of
ourselves. He is waiting to listen, to
hear, to give, to love, to comfort, to carry out His blessed plan for us.
In
the end, Moses and Aaron served God enough that – through them – God was able
to carryout the freeing of the Israelites.
Through Moses’s indignation in that moment, God showed His great love
for Moses and for His people. He can do
the same with us. He desires to do the
same with us. He wants us to pour out
our hearts, and that needs to start with giving Him our heart.
This
week, let’s prayerfully ask God to put a microscope upon our hearts, to help us
to open up to Him more, to be REAL with our relationship with Him and to care
enough to express ourselves with a holy, but reckless, abandon.
In
the strong love of Jesus Christ,
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