We all want to be used by God, but before He can use us, He has to prepare us. In that preparation, there may past hurts, problems, fears that we have run away from, but now God needs us to confront them. Joyce shares with us Moses’ story of facing his own past in order to be used by God and encourages how we can face our challenges today.
you know i have found
in studying the word of god and over 45
years of experience with god
in allowing him to deal with me and
being set free from so many problems
that i had
i have found
that
whatever we run away from
god always ends us
ends up taking us back to that thing
or to something like it
and we have to face that and learn how
to deal with things because as long as
we’re running from our enemies they will
always be chasing us
i really feel like there’s some people
who need to get that as long as you keep
running from your enemies and your enemy
can be anger it can be fear it can be
impatience it it can be a lot of
different things
well
in acts 7 34
moses who had
ran from egypt you see he felt
a call in his life
to
help his brethren who were slaves in
egypt
he actually had been
as a baby
they were killing all the young babies
and so moses’s mother put him in a
basket and he was rescued
by pharaoh’s
daughter and
he was raised in the palace
as one of pharaoh’s sons
but he knew he was an israelite and when
he got to be a certain age
he felt the call of god on his life to
bring deliverance to
his brethren
however he got out a little bit ahead of
god and
long story short
he ended up
thinking i’m going to get in trouble for
doing this i’m going to have problems
pharaoh’s going to find out and the
bible says that he fled or he ran to
the wilderness
well you know god never told moses to
run it was his plan
he ran well now in acts 7 34
god speaking to moses 40 years have gone
by
he had a lot of spiritual growth out
there in that wilderness and if you’re
wondering why you’re in a wilderness
time in your life maybe it’s because you
needed some spiritual growth that you
couldn’t get anywhere else
you know we don’t tend to grow
spiritually when all of our
circumstances and situations are great
because in those times we may feel like
we don’t need god
but when things are tough
when they’re hard
when we’re dealing with things that we
don’t know how to deal with
we have a tendency to really seek god
and to dig in it’s amazing how we can
find time to spend with god when we’re
desperate
well i found out quite a while ago that
i just need to pretend like i’m
desperate all the time whether i am or
not and make sure that i spend that time
seeking god on a regular basis and then
maybe i won’t get have as many desperate
times as i would if i didn’t
so moses has been out in the wilderness
for 40 years he’s married he’s got
children by now and he’s forgotten all
about this call
on his life he’s going in another whole
direction
and so
he comes up to a burning bush a bush
that’s burning
and
it was kind of like on fire by itself
and it was a curious sight so he stopped
to see what it was
and god begins to speak to him out of
this burning bush well i guess that
would get your attention wouldn’t it
and he and god says i have indeed seen
the oppression
of my people in egypt
those people were still praying for a
deliverer
i have heard their groaning
and i have come down to set them free
you know i noticed the other day when i
was reading that
god comes down i’m glad that
it’s amazing
god doesn’t make us try to get to him
he comes down he comes down to us
he came down
through his son jesus
he came down through the power of the
holy spirit
and god will meet you where you’re at if
you will cry out to him and say i want
to be set free i’m ready to deal with
whatever i need to deal with
i don’t want to stay in this bondage any
longer
i have heard the groaning and i have
come to set the people free now listen
to this
now come and i will send you back to
egypt
now where did moses run from he ran from
egypt
and now god after 40 years is telling
him i’m going to send you back there
well i doubt that he was really too
thrilled about that why did he run to
start with well for one thing
he was being misunderstood
he thought that his brethren
would understand that he had been sent
to deliver them but the bible says they
did not understand you know why because
moses was out of god’s timing
he had a right heart
but his timing was all wrong
moses had to learn some things before
god could actually really use him and
maybe you have a call on your life maybe
you’ve sensed a call on your life you
believe that there’s
some way particular that god wants to
use you or you’re supposed to be in
ministry or you’re called to the mission
field or whatever it is and
all these years have passed by and you
haven’t understood why what you’ve
sensed hasn’t come to pass well maybe
there’s some work that god needed to do
in you first
i always say that god prepares something
for us
and he often shows it to us
but then he has to prepare us for what
he’s got prepared for us
i know that was the case with me
god told me i was going to teach the
word
all over the world
and have a large ministry helping other
people and i thought well it would just
happen the next day
well you know we’re 45 years down the
road and now i’m
doing what i saw 45 years ago and it
happened a little bit at a time a little
bit at a time but it was very slow i
mean for five years i just taught a home
bible study in my home five years not
five days or five weeks
and then i worked in somebody else’s
ministry for another five years
and then we started our ministry and it
was very small and everything i did was
very small but i had a big vision and
all that time god was working in me and
he was making changes in me let god do
the work in you that he needs to do
don’t be so caught up in getting what
you want
that you keep ignoring the work that god
wants to do in you
you may want god to do something through
you but he may have to do something in
you before he can do something
through you
you know god never told moses to leave
egypt
that was his idea moses ran
moses had to learn some things before
god could use him
surely moses had to return in faith
from the place he ran from in fear
well i’ve gone through that there’s
things that god’s told me that i had to
go back and face
for example god spoke to me at one point
that i needed to go and confront my
father
well all i’d ever
did was
avoid my dad and not want to be around
him and
never wanted to talk to him about what
he did to me when i was a child i never
we we just all ignored the big elephant
in the room
and god told me that i was going to have
to go back and confront him the time
would come when i needed to confront him
and that doesn’t mean that would be the
case with you if you were sexually
abused but that’s what god wanted
me to do well i ran in fear but it took
a lot of faith for me to go back
there may be something in your life that
you have ran from in fear but you can go
back
in faith
well what was he running from i already
said from being misunderstood from being
rejected by the people he wanted to help
fear of confrontation with pharaoh and
the egyptian authority
we often want to fulfill the call of god
on our life but we don’t want to
confront the people that we knew are the
life that we had in egypt let me say
that again we often want to fulfill the
call of god on our life but yet we don’t
want to deal with the things
that we left behind now maybe there’s
nothing for you to deal with but if
there is
then you have to deal with it
maybe there’s people from back there you
need to forgive that was one of the
things i had to do i had to forgive my
mom and my dad
not only forgive them god asked me to
help them
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