Learning The Hard Way

God is watching over you. What you can’t always see is that he is always at work. What may look like a mistake, a deal breaker, and major disaster, God is managing for his purposes in your life. God is leveraging you—your circumstances, your mistakes, your life—to fulfill his plan for the ages. You will have to learn some lessons the hard way, but keep your heart right with God, and you will graduate your school of hardship to the life of influence and impact that God has destined you for.

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The Journey// Focus: Exodus 2:12,-14-16

After looking in all directions to make sure no one was watching, Moses killed the Egyptian and hid the body in the sand. …Then Moses was afraid, thinking, “Everyone knows what I did.” And sure enough, Pharaoh heard what had happened, and he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian.

Arguably, Moses was the greatest leader the world has ever known. Think of the accomplishments of his term of service as deliverer, visionary, lawgiver and guide over Israel during their forty-year exodus from Egypt to their unprecedented resettlement in Canaan. His résumé included unmatched feats such as:

• Facing down the world’s most powerful leader, Pharaoh, and convincing him to let a two million strong labor force of Israelites leave the land—and leave Egypt’s economy in shambles
• Leading two million plus unorganized, strong-willed, grumbling Hebrews for forty years through the Sinai desert
• Parting the Red Sea so that Israel could escape from Egypt, then un-parting that same Red Sea to wipe out the world’s most advanced fighting force when they gave chase
• Calling forth water from the rock in the desert, then feeding the hungry masses every day for four decades
• Organizing the Hebrews into a nation that endures still to this day
• Rallying the people around the law of God and instituting their system of worship
• And among other things, speaking face-to-face with Almighty God on behalf of the people

Some great leaders may think of themselves as God’s special gift to the world—a few of the swollen egos that have occupied our White House very likely would make that argument of themselves—but no one has ever come close to pulling off what Moses did. Yet Moses didn’t walk into his success without some leadership bruises along the way. He had to learn how to lead the hard way—starting with the catastrophe of killing an Egyptian overlord.

The fact that Moses was a prince of Egypt didn’t give him the authority to, on a whim, slay the abusive foreman. The fact that he first looked this way, then that way, suggests that Moses’ conscience was at work, telling him not to do it. But perhaps his anger, or his privileged upbringing, overruled his knowledge of right from wrong, and he murdered the man. Then, realizing that his dirty deed was known, and sensing that even those he did it for were not too appreciative of his help, as he expected, Moses came to grips with the fact that he had made a fatal error—one that would land him in prison or send him to the gallows—so he fled.

Moses learned the hard way. Through failure, then being a fugitive, and finally by living as a foreigner for the next forty years, God taught Moses how to manage his instincts—instincts that without an internal governor, led to disaster, but brought under control, would lead him to unparalleled accomplishment. What Moses didn’t know at the time was that God had given him enough rope to hang himself, but by that same rope God would throw him a line for a second chance. God was training Moses in the curriculum of hardship; Moses was being forced to learn, albeit the hard way!

So far, throughout the story of how God was developing a people for himself through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and now Moses, we have seen how time and again God has overruled human error in order to bring about his eternal plan. These human mistakes had dire consequences; they sidetracked God’s plans for a season—Moses’ mistakes cost him forty years of remedial education; Israel’s rebellion in the desert cost them forty years of wilderness wandering—yet God was always at work, sovereignly, managing his people and moving his plan along the timeline of divine purpose.

The point being, God does that with you, too. He is watching over you. What you can’t always see is that he is always at work. What may look like a mistake, a deal breaker, and major disaster, God is managing for his purposes in your life. God is leveraging you—your circumstances, your mistakes, your life—to fulfill his plan for the ages.

You will have to learn some lessons the hard way, but keep your heart right with God, and you will graduate your school of hardship to the life of influence and impact that God has destined you for.