Not now!?

I was listening to some teaching and reading the story of Moses when he took the people of Israel out of slavery and off towards the promised land. 

To give a bit of background, the Jews are enslaved by Pharaoh and the Egyptians.  They are building stuff for the Egyptians when God calls Moses to go and lead the Israelites out of slavery and into the land he has promised them.   Moses is to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let God's people go!    If Pharaoh refuses, then plagues will come upon the Egyptians.  Pharaoh doesn't let them go and so those plagues come.

First, they had the Nile turn to blood and then, the second plague; frogs, frogs and more frogs everywhere!!  In the oven, in the bed - EVERYWHERE.  Now I don't mind frogs, but in my bed or cereal box?  No thanks!

Frogs were worshipped in Egypt - you weren't supposed to kill them because they worship various deities that took on frog heads or bodies.  Heqet was their goddess of fertility and life for example.   I am sure God was saying "I am the only giver of life round here!"  Anyway...God sends these frogs, and the Egyptian magicians mimic the plague, bringing forth more frogs (not sure what they were thinking) but they could only add more frogs i.e. they could only make the problem worse! (Sound familiar?)

In the end, Pharaoh says to Moses, ok pray to your God and get rid of the frogs...

As I was considering this, a particular phrase jumped out at me:

Exodus 8:9-10 (GNT) Moses replied, “I will be glad to pray for you. Just set the time when I am to pray for you, your officers, and your people. Then you will be rid of the frogs, and there will be none left except in the Nile.” The king answered, “Pray for me tomorrow.”

Tomorrow!?  Why wait?  Why not now?  In effect, he's saying "We can put up with this for 24 hours more." yet, he had freedom to ask for whatever time frame he wanted.  I would have been like "get down on your knees and sort it now!"

These things are a shadow of the Gospel message.   God sent Jesus to deliver us, his people,  from slavery to the devil, but how many times do we put off deliverance from the things Jesus came to free us from?

I remember a young lady I met who was suffering terribly from hay fever.  I asked if she wanted me to pray for her healing and her reply "No thank you there are people who need your prayers more than me!"
That may be a true sentiment, but that's like saying 'I don't have as many frogs as so and so."  

Jesus has come to set us all completely free (the bible says it was for freedom Christ has set us free) from the things that hold us in bondage - sin, sickness, fear, anxiety, poverty!  Don't wait until tomorrow to begin the process of becoming free from those things.  You get to chose if you put up with them for one day more or not. 

Anything God promises in his word is available right here, right now!  So, don't tolerate the stuff that Jesus came to free you from, and don't rely on the wisdom of this world - it can only make things worse!  Instead tell those things they are done!  TODAY is the day of salvation! (2 Corinthians 6:2) It's for now.   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teabags and Popcorn!

Image
So, I was eating popcorn yesterday and drinking a fruit tea and I started wondering what makes a popcorn pop! (As you do). With a little help from Google, I found out that inside the kernel, the hard shell, there is a little bit of moisture and when it heats up inside, it turns to steam and as you keep heating it up, the pressure from the steam builds and builds until it cracks open the hard exterior and makes a yummy snack. And then I thought about my teabag (I do promise there will be a spiritual application to this, not just information on my food and drink habits).  The label had come off the teabag, so I didn't know exactly what flavour it was, until I poured on the boiling water and tasted it! As promised... the spiritual bit!  We are like teabags and popcorn!  This is a deep spiritual truth!  Really it is!  Read on and I'll explain why! Firstly we are like popcorn because when heated up, whatever we stir up inside us will burst out.  We're also like teabags too.  We
Read more

Take it!

Image
This week I have been thinking about the 10 spies that they sent out to view the promised land.  You probably don't remember the names of 8 of them!   The other two were of course Joshua and Caleb.    In the book of Numbers we see that Moses sent out these 10 men off to spy out the land that God had promised them.  They were to check it out and see what kind of place it was, what kind of people lived there and bring back some produce from the land. Well, if you know the story they brought back some figs, pomegranates and a bunch of grapes so big it had to be carried between two men!   It was a good land (no surprise there, seeing as God had told them it was good).  But when they got back 8 of the spies told the people "Well, it's a good land, but the people that live there included giants and all sorts of people that are really strong' I can imagine that all Israel gasped in horror or shock. Each person murmuring to his neighbour about how awful the situation was. In t
Read more

Looking back

Image
This week I was listening to a message and I was reading the verse in Luke 17:32 which simply says " Remember Lot's wife ."   This is a really interesting statement. When Jesus tells us to consider something or remember something we should pay attention. So what do we know about Lot's wife?  Not a lot really.  But what we do know is that an angel of the Lord took her by the hand to lead her out of the city before God destroyed it.  She was told to run for her life and not look back.  According to Genesis 19, she ran but she turned and look back and as a result, turned to a pillar of salt.  This short verse really spoke to me for a number of reasons.    The Apostle Paul tells us " I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead. "  (Phil 3:13 TPT) Since 2020, it's like we have a new category in history BC now stands for BEFORE COVID! People a
Read more