I am reading through the entire Bible this year. (I'm using J. Ellsworth Kalas's wonderful book The Grand Sweep as a guide. It's my second time using this resource, and I highly recommend it. It's like having a friend by your side to chat with you about the Bible!)
What amazes me about the Bible is how you can read these familiar stories over and over again and get something new out of it each time. When I get to Exodus, I know Moses is going to have an argument with God. God wants him to go back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh, and Moses tries to worm his way out of the gig. Moses seems afraid. But as I read it this time, I had a thought: Maybe Moses's enemy wasn't fear but discouragement.
God had heard the cry of his people. Pharoah was brutalizing the Israelites, and the time had come to set them free. But Moses had also heard this cry decades before. In Exodus 2, Moses witnesses an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. This made Moses furious. And so "after looking in all directions to make sure no one was watching, Moses killed the Egyptian and hid the body in the sand" (v. 12).
Moses wanted to free his people and took action. But this action had disastrous consequences. He was forced to flee from Egypt and become a fugitive. He settled down in Midian and became a shepherd. As the years went by, Egypt must have felt like a dream to him.
Then one day, God appears to Moses and tells him to go back to Egypt and free his people. And this man who once had the fire in him to kill a man was now weak and timid. "Who am I to appear before Pharaoh?" he argues. "Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?"
I think Moses had let years of discouragement and guilt beat him down. He had already tried to help his people. Why should he try again?
Discouragement can feel like a 1,000-pound weight around our neck. We carry around our failures with us. It can be especially crushing when we were genuinely trying to do something good, but it blew up in our face. We acted without thinking and ended up hurting people. When Moses killed the Egyptian guard, he was called out by one of his fellow Hebrews. His bad decision left him isolated from his Egyptian family and Hebrew family. It makes sense why he wouldn't want to go back to Egypt.
But there is a crucial difference this time. All those years ago, Moses tried to act alone. He had a passion for seeing his people set free, but his quick-tempered decision made things worse. I'm sure he was haunted by the memory every day of his life. Now God was calling him to go back to where the failure first happened. God wanted to harness Moses's passion, but it would need to be done in God's way. It wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't be quick.
Discouragement has a way of zapping your energy. When I feel discouraged, I don't want to do anything. Taking the next step seems impossible.
Discouragement can also take hope out of our sails. When Moses returns to Egypt, he tells the Israelites everything God planned to do. But they wouldn't listen because "they had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery" (6:7). Moses' words of hope were like salt in their wounds. They couldn't bear to hope because they had been disappointed too many times.
What are you discouraged about? What have you failed at that you don't want to try again because the disappointment was too crushing?
Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying every failure is a result of us acting rashly as Moses did. Sometimes we do everything we can to follow God and still "fail." I'm using quotes because we probably view success and failure differently than God. Our failures might be considered successes if they help us learn more about God and ourselves.
But what I am saying is, like Moses, God may call us to do something that we already made a mess of the first time around. It doesn't make sense why he would ask us to do it now.
But time gives us a new perspective. God was working on Moses all those years in Midian before ever appearing to him in the burning bush. When he was younger, Moses had the strength to kill a man. But he didn't have the strength to lead his people to freedom. Now that he was older and weaker, God was ready to use him.
Is God asking you to do something, but you already feel like you've "been there, done that"?
It could be trying to reconcile a relationship that always seems to end with conflict.
It could be giving volunteering at church a second try even though the first time didn't end so well.
It could be quitting a habit you've tried to quit a thousand times before. Or making a second appointment with the counselor even though the first session was painful.
Discouragement can be debilitating. I know it is for me. It may take some coaxing from God to get us to see past it. That's okay. God is patient. He even gave Moses a sidekick with Aaron to help him through it!
We never know what God might be planning to do through us until we give it a shot.
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P.S. If you’d like to support my writing, you can buy me a sweet tea to keep me caffeinated and it would be much appreciated.