Take a Minute -- Wednesday, 4/28/10 -- NO MATTER WHAT - Exodus 4:20

[J.R. & Bonnie Ricks]

 

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NO MATTER WHAT - Exodus 4:20 NIV

 

So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.

 

His arguments exhausted, Moses finally did what God had told him to do.  He packed up his family and headed for Egypt.  In spite of his fear… in spite of his feelings of inadequacy… in spite of his stubbornness… in spite of his wife's objections… he stepped out on faith and did what God told him to do.  We all know the outcome... the Hebrew people were freed.  And we also know that Moses, along with the people, continued to resist what God told them to do... each time meeting with disaster.  But, in the alternative, each time Moses and the Israelites did what God said, no matter what, they were blessed.

 

What about your life?  Has God given you something to do that you're resisting?  Maybe it's something as simple as regular church attendance.  Do you have trouble making it every Sunday? After all, that's the only day you can sleep late, the only day you can catch up on your housework, or your yard work, or your hobbies. 

 

Maybe you’re single… a status with which you are not at all happy.  You're tired of being alone, and if you don't go out on Saturday night, how are you ever going to meet someone? And you're too tired to come to church after staying out so late.  You've been going out every weekend, hoping to meet that special someone, but it just hasn't happened.  But you know it will. Now, think about this.  What if God has someone in mind for you that He sends to your church... on the very Sunday you decided to sleep late?  Granted, that's not the reason you should be going to church, but wouldn’t you have more faith in the kind of person you’re meeting if you met them in church rather than in a bar? 

 

Or let’s say your marriage isn’t all roses and sunshine.  In fact, it’s rotten.  You are a born again believer, having met Jesus one-on-one a couple of years ago, but your husband did not follow suit.  So now you are “unequally yoked” – the very thing that Paul warns against in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18:

 

     Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”  “Therefore come out from them
      and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing,
      and I will receive you.”  “I will be a Father to you,
      and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” 

 

You didn’t start out being unequally yoked, but now you are.  You become absolutely convinced that the only way your marriage can survive is if YOU get your husband to convert – if YOU lead him to Jesus.  Surely, that is what God would want you to do, right?  So, every time your husband does or says something that goes against what Jesus would have him do, you make sure that he knows it, and you insist upon showing it to him in the Bible.  In fact, every time you get two minutes to talk to him, all you talk about is Jesus.  But instead of convicting him and bringing him to his knees before the Lord, your husband is growing farther and farther away from you, to the point that now he actually becomes angry every time you mention Jesus’ name.  But you won’t be swayed.  You HAVE TO save your husband!  Then one day, you run across 1 Peter 3:1-6 (NIV):

 

   Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.

 

Oops!  You’ve been doing the exact opposite of what God would have you do!  But this doesn’t make any sense!  Surely YOU should be the one verbally witnessing to your husband every single day, right?  Nope.  Not according to this passage.  This passage says that they will be “won over without words”.  So you have a decision to make… are you going to continue on with what your “logic” says you should do, or are you going to follow God’s way? 

 

Remember... when we do what God tells us to do, no matter what, He blesses us.  And think about this... Jesus suffered and died for you.  How much are you willing to do for Him?

 

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."  Matthew 16:24 NIV

 

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