by Lupe’ King
Wilderness-an uninhabited place, desolate, deserted, lonely.
Sometimes as Creator God’s sons and daughters we come to places in our lives where situations and circumstances compel us to seek His face.
At times we seek His face in His Word and often times we seek it in the hardest books of the Bible.
My personal wilderness experience led me to the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. Why? Because I needed to know that God understood my pain and these books were the ones that helped me to hear God’s response to my pain.
Today I’ve been led to the Book of Exodus and the man Moses who was as insecure about the things Creator was requiring of him as you and I are when Father requires us to do certain things we feel we are inadequate to do.
Yet Father chose him to be His voice to His also children, Israel. He was chosen to lead them out of the bondage of slavery.
The Book of Exodus is a book that right from the get-go is about up-rooting from the places of pain and discomfort that we’ve become so used to that we consider them as the way life, “just is,” any other way, especially freedom and change scares the living daylights out of us! It is mainly because we have learned to live in the tyranny of the familiar and it could well be because it is all we have ever known.
We as human beings and Children of God are not unlike the Israelites, wanting desperately a better life-yet digging our heels in the ground and refusing to budge.
The Israelites were exhausted from their predicament, sometimes we are in such places of pain that we run out of words and can no longer utter our prayers to God. They had been through so much and for so long that all that was left in them to do was to sigh, moan, and groan their cries to God, and He heard them.
Exodus 2:23-25
Amplified Bible (AMP)
23 However, after a long time [nearly forty years] the king of Egypt died; and the Israelites were sighing and groaning because of the bondage. They kept crying, and their cry because of slavery ascended to God.
24 And God heard their sighing and groaning and [earnestly] remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
25 God saw the Israelites and took knowledge of them and concerned Himself about them [knowing all, understanding, remembering all].
Take notice of the words, earnestly, and concerned, in the above scripture via the Amplified Version.
Earnest/ly–serious, sincere, with determination and diligence
Diligent/ce= to make haste
Concerned=involved; interested
In other words, God knowing their predicament was interested to the point of becoming involved and moved quickly with serious and sincere determination on their behalves.
WOW! Our God is serious about coming to our aid when we seek Him earnestly!
Psalm 56:8, speaks of how Father views our sufferings even when we bring it about ourselves;
You number and record my wanderings; put my tears into Your bottle-are they not in Your book?
And how about Psalm 139:1-18;
1 O Lord, you have searched me [thoroughly] and have known me.
2 You know my downsitting and my uprising; You understand my thought afar off.
3 You sift and search out my path and my lying down, and You are acquainted with all my ways.
4 For there is not a word in my tongue [still unuttered], but, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
5 You have beset me and shut me in—behind and before, and You have laid Your hand upon me.
6 Your [infinite] knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high above me, I cannot reach it.
7 Where could I go from Your Spirit? Or where could I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend up into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol (the place of the dead), behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me and the night shall be [the only] light about me,
12 Even the darkness hides nothing from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You.
13 For You did form my inward parts; You did knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I will confess and praise You for You are fearful and wonderful and for the awful wonder of my birth! Wonderful are Your works, and that my inner self knows right well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You when I was being formed in secret [and] intricately and curiously wrought [as if embroidered with various colors] in the depths of the earth [a region of darkness and mystery].
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book all the days [of my life] were written before ever they took shape, when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious and weighty also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awoke, [could I count to the end] I would still be with You.
I challenge us all to read the Book of the Exodus and own it, Let us see ourselves as the Israelites and hear Moses as God’s voice both to ourselves and every impediment in our lives.
Hear and listen to Creator God’s voice as He confronts the Pharaohs’ in our lives, “LET MY PEOPLE GO!!!” Hear Him declare, proclaim and decree, again and again, “FREEDOM!!!”
