For many of us, life feels like one problem after another, and one obstacle after another. And we all go through challenging times.
So, my big question today is, how should we respond to the challenges of life? Our Bible story today teaches us two things. First we need to mind our stress level, and second, we need to mind the big picture.
Our Bible story comes from The Book of Numbers, Chapter 20. It’s about a time when Moses faced one of the most difficult personal challenges of his life.
We all have role models that we want to be like. But as Christians our greatest role model is God himself. And the whole Bible teaches us be like Jesus. But what does that mean do we try to walk on water and heal people. We won’t be able to do that. So what does it mean?
Can we boil down the essence of what made Jesus so great and emulate that? Thankfully, today’s Bible story is about God explaining to Moses what the very essence of his greatness is. And the story helps us to know God better but it also helps us to know what God wants us to be.
Most of us will go through seasons of overwhelming busyness. Some of us are on a trajectory to burnout and you don’t even know it. The Bible gives us guidance for stressful seasons.
Our Bible story today is about a time when Moses had such an overwhelming amount of responsibility, that he was failing everyone too! God gave him a way out of that kind of trouble, and God wants to help us in a way that’s not too different.
Think about the ideas that we buy into; not just believe but actually live by:
“Retail therapy” “If it feels good, it can’t be wrong.” “Prove them wrong with your success” “Work smarter, not harder as an excuse to never work hard.”
Victim mindsets and blame shifting. There’s something attractive about these things. They are ways of maximizing pleasure and comfort and minimizing pain and discomfort. While these ideas don’t seem harmful at first… They slowly make Christians ineffective and eventually useless for God’s kingdom.
The late philosopher Dallas Willard once observed, “The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples – students, apprentices, practitioners – of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.” The quote is saying that, a lot of people call themselves Christians, but a lot of those people do not follow Jesus and live by his way. If they did, the impact on the world and its issues would be revolutionary. Heaven on earth.
So today, we are going to explore what’s making so many Christians ineffective for God’s mission and his kingdom.
We live in a world in which many people are rewarded for being unkind and unfair. This is called injustice. Injustice is all over the place – in governments, schools, workplaces and homes.
It is everywhere, where many people are using their power to exploit other people to gain an unfair advantage. So, my big question today is how do we respond to injustice? Do we just whine about it? Do we give up? Do we respond with violence?
Our Bible story passage today, shows us the best way to thrive amid an unjust environment. Today we’re starting a new series in the life of Moses. We find that his story starts with his mom and his sister who found a way to deal with injustice.
