The Difficult Job // Becoming an Overnight Success, Part 4

The thing about the dreams that God puts on our hearts is that their execution is much, much, much more difficult than their conception. It’s easy to sit on the sofa and dream about something great that God is going to do through us, but getting out there and actually living the dream, well, that’s another thing altogether.

Dreams, ideas, hopes, plans, they're all wonderful things. The thing that makes them so exciting is that they don't have a downside. I can sit on a sofa all day, day after day, dreaming about the great things I'm going to do, the great things that God could do through me and you know the best thing about those dreams, they never face any opposition.

There are no obstacles when you're dreaming because your dreams can go wherever you want them to go although I know that when I was dreaming about doing what I'm doing now, those dreams were a bit scary because they were so ridiculously big. I mean if I told anybody what I felt God was calling me to, to share this good news of Jesus with millions of people, given who I was then and the mess my life was in back then they'd all of thought I was delusional.

Once you actually step out of the dream and you start living the dream or calling or motivation or whatever label you'd like to put on it, the first thing that happens is that you run into opposition and opposition it seems comes at you from every direction, all at once, the moment you step over the starting line.

We all want to become an overnight success, we do, it's always part of the dream to fly first class from A to B by the most direct quickest possible route without any turbulence along the way. Hmm, but God isn't so much into overnight success, God wants to grow your faith, my faith by teaching us to play the long game by taking us on a circuitous wilderness journey along the way.

That's how He grows our character, that's how He knocks the rough edges off, that's how He breathes humility and gentleness into our heart, that's how He builds courage into our DNA as we experience first-hand God's faithfulness day after day after day.

As we've joined Moses on this journey this past week we've seen how God gave him a heart for the misery of his fellow Hebrews, how that heart disrupted his life and popped him alone in the wilderness for forty years and how difficult it was for him finally, after all that time, to follow God's call to confront Pharaoh and lead the chosen people out of Egypt back to the Promised Land.

None of those stages is easy. Following God's call on our lives, living out the dreams that He's placed on our hearts, those things are never easy but once you get going, once you're on the road surely though things must get easier right? Well, not for Moses, let's pick up the story, he's been to Pharaoh and he's given him God's message "let my people go".

Nine times Pharaoh said no and nine times God sent plagues upon Egypt until finally after God struck down the firstborn of all in Egypt Pharaoh relented and the Israelites fled. But no sooner were they on the road than Pharaoh decided to chase them and destroy them – perfect, just perfect God! Exodus chapter 14 verses 10 to 12:

And as Pharaoh drew nearer the Israelites looked back and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord, they said to Moses 'was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptian's for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.

Remember I said to you that the opposition seems to come from all directions, poor old Moses, eighty years old. Now he has Pharaoh's great army pursuing him from behind and in front of him he has a grumbling, complaining rabble. Some call from God, some road to success. Excuse me God but could we just call it all off at this point, please?

That's what most of us end up saying to God isn't it? And yet God stepped in because Moses had done what he could do so God now did what only He could do, Exodus chapter 14 verses 19 and 20:

The angel of God who is going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It became between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel and so the cloud was there with the darkness and it lit up the night. One did not come near to the other all night.

See there it is, that spiritual principle again, God expects us to do the things we can do and He expects us to leave to Him the things that only He can do. That's exactly what happened here in the wilderness at the beginning of the Exodus. God showed up, God was faithful, God guided them, God intervened and then God put Himself between Israel and her enemies.

And listen, that's always what God does. He takes us to the edge, He puts us deliberately between a rock and a hard place so that unless He shows up we'll fail and then He shows up. It's happened so many times in my life and you see it so many times over the next forty years as Moses leads this grumbling, complaining, faithless nation of Israel through the wilderness towards the Promised Land.

God always shows up to deliver, God always shows up to guide, to feed, to protect and to deal with the grumblers and complainers. The one thing you and I do not want to be on our exodus is a faithless grumbler and complainer, remember it was only an eleven day journey from Egypt to the outskirts of the Promised Land but because of their lack of faith and their complaining it took them forty years and then because of their lack of faith all but two of the million or so Israelites who originally left Egypt under the staff of Moses, perished in the wilderness. Only two of the originals, Joshua and Caleb as well as the next generation ended up crossing over into the Promised Land.

There's a lesson in that I have to tell you, as you read the rest of the Book of Exodus you see how many times the Israelites turned their backs on God, worshipping idols, not believing Gods promises, turning on Moses, in fact so much so that God was going to wipe them all out until Moses fell on his face and intervened for them.

Do you really want to follow God's call on your life? Do you really want to live the dream that He wove into your DNA before time began? Then forget the idea of overnight success and get ready for your exodus. It wasn't easy, it was a long, long, long road for Moses and yet God worked mightily in him and through him to achieve His purposes, God’s purposes, not Moses’ purposes.

Do you think that Moses would have planned it this way? No way. Forty years? Another forty years in the wilderness this time with a grumbling, complaining, ungrateful people under his charge. Overnight success? Forget it, it's hard work, it's about difficult times in the wilderness, it's about opposition from all directions, from inside your own camp and from the enemy outside your camp, it's always how God works, He achieves His perfect will through imperfect people in imperfect places.