Have you ever been impatient with God? I mean, you’re ready to get on with it. You’re ready to go and do what God made you to do, and yet He for some unknown reason doesn’t appear to be in any hurry. It’s enough to drive you crazy.

A Heart to Serve

I think anyone who’s ever lived life, anyone who has ever wanted to get out there and do something, achieve something, fulfil their destiny, knows the frustration of meeting stubborn resistance and delays. I think in particular, when we’re young and idealistic and ready to take on the world, the fact that the rest of the world doesn’t seem to want to revolve around our plans and our hopes and our dreams is incredibly frustrating, and as we get older the realisation that perhaps things aren’t quite going to pan out the way we’d envisaged, at some point for many, leads to the classic midlife crisis. The whole thing between our expectations of life and the reality, the mismatch, the yawning gap between the two is a bigger deal than we might realise. Many people are living lives of frustration and disappointment because things aren’t panning out the way they’d hoped: Their careers, their finances, their dreams for marriage and family and where they’d live, and what impact they were going to have in this world, and so what many end up doing is settling for second-best; always dissatisfied, quietly, with their lot in life.

I wonder if any of that sounds just a little bit too familiar. I wonder if you’re sitting there thinking: ‘That’s just a bit close to the bone’. Well today, we’re kicking off a new series of messages called ‘Becoming an Overnight Success’, to see what God has to say into this whole situation, and I’m believing that just a few people are going to have one or two of those aha moments as you discover what God’s really up to in your life.

Overnight success seems to have such a great ring to it. The whole get rich quick and then retire in luxury is a secret, seductive thought that many of us harbour. The truth is that really, there’s no such thing as an overnight success, or at the very least, they’re very rare. Yeah, there seem to be these Internet sensations that rocket to stardom seemingly overnight. I remember when this guy called PSY first burst on the scene with his Gangnam-style dance and music video. Remember that? This slightly chubby Korean guy in a white suit, dancing round the stage in that old, somehow intoxicating Gangnam style, and for some reason, that just took off. In fact, he became the very first YouTube video in all of history to reach a billion views. Imagine something as crazy as that! That doesn’t happen very often, and even when it does, the overnight thing is usually an illusion. I have no doubt that even PSY put in an enormous amount of work and effort to do what he did, and yet so many people harbour this secret dream of overnight success.

The problem begins in our hearts because invariably, God has made us to be a certain person; to do certain things, and naturally we have a heart to be that person; to do those things, and to become who God made us to be. The problem is, we approach this central issue of life with a McDonald’s super all-you-can-eat special (sauce, burgers, cheese, pickles, onions in a sesame seed bun) kind of mentality – a fast-food mentality; instant success when in reality, often our first few attempts at becoming the person God made us to be can end up being something of a disaster. In truth, this series of messages is really about learning to play the long game because life is a marathon, not a sprint, and I don’t know anyone who is better-equipped to teach us about the long game than Moses in the Old Testament. Now the reason that I choose Moses is that after Jesus, he is the next-most talked-about character in the Bible. Certainly, he’s the most talked-about Old Testament character in the New Testament, and when you read some of the pithy summaries of his life and successes in the New Testament, you could get the impression that Moses was somehow an overnight success. That’s always the way. The further we are from the reality of someone’s life, the more it seems to us that their success happened overnight somehow, but it just wasn’t like that.

Moses lived for a hundred and twenty years. Now that’s a very long game, and he had three very distinct phases in his life. We’re going to look at each one of those in this series to see what we can learn for our own lives – our own long game, kicking off with his first phase, living effectively as Pharaoh’s son in Egypt, so here’s how it happened. The Israelites had been exiled as slaves in Egypt for over four hundred years. Pharaoh makes a decree about when Moses is born that all Israelite male children are to be killed, but Moses’ parents in faith instead put him in a floating basket on the Nile, and Pharaoh’s daughter finds him. As a result, Moses ends up growing up as the prince of Egypt in Pharaoh’s house, always knowing though that he was a Hebrew. He lives this life of amazing power and privilege and luxury, but here’s the problem. It’s a problem, if I can call it that, that each one of us faces at some point. God had put something in Moses’ heart: Call it a dream; call it a deep motivation; perhaps it was a calling. Whatever it was, Moses was given a heart for his people (the Hebrews), and just as well because God’s plan (unbeknown to anyone at that point) was that Moses would become the man who would lead God’s chosen people out of Egypt, out of slavery to freedom, and towards the land and the life that God has promised their ancestor Abraham all those centuries before.

As Moses grew up, more and more, he saw the oppression and the brutality that Pharaoh inflicted over his people; his kinsmen; the Israelites, until one day it boiled over. Things came to a head. Exodus 2:11-15:

“One day after Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and saw their forced labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsfolk. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

“When he went out the next day, he saw two Hebrews fighting, and he said to the one who was in the wrong, ‘Why do you strike your fellow-Hebrew?’

 “He answered, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’

“Then Moses was afraid and thought, ‘Surely the thing is known!’

“When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses.”

So the heart that God had put into Moses, a heart for God’s chosen people, ends up completely disrupting the life of privilege that Moses had lived for the first forty years. The heart that God had put in him ended up turning everything on its head.

After the break, we’ll see how Moses ended up out in the wilderness tending sheep. What a spectacular disruption! But right now, can I say this is exactly what I see happening in people’s lives over and over again, and they don’t realise it. God’s given them a heart, a dream, a motivation, a calling to become who He’s made them to be and to do what He’s set out for them to do, and when you don’t quite know yet what that is, that heart that God’s put inside you disrupts your life.

I wish that God would set it out nice and neatly in front of us, so that we can see the bigger picture, so that we can see where our lives are headed, so that we know what’s coming next and why and what it all means and where it’s headed. Wouldn’t that be nice? Sure, but that’s not how God works because He wants you and me living by faith, not by sight. He wants you and me trusting in Him.

We expect to live lives that are always on the up: Onwards; upwards; every post a winner, but sometimes, life is one step forward and three steps back, as it was here for Moses, who was ultimately seen as one of the most successful leaders of all-time, but when you’re down in the trenches, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, so my point is this: Sometimes who you are, how God made you, what He made you to do, is going to seem to work against you and bring failure on your head, but don’t lose heart; God has a plan. It’s just that His plan rarely involves overnight success.

The Long Exile

The idea of becoming an overnight success is incredibly alluring. It’s seductive. As an American colleague of mine once said, it has cerebral kerb appeal. You just want to pull up next to it and stay there for a while. In this success-driven, success-focused success-oriented world in which we live, man, it would be so nice to dispense with all the hard work of getting there and just get there! Arrive! Success! Woohoo! If only.

I’m now on the other side of fifty, well and truly, and whilst yes I’ve had some successes in my life (nothing spectacular, mind you; just the odd success here and there), I have never, not once had an overnight success. They’ve always involved twists and turns and surprises and setbacks and hard work and sheer grind over the long haul. Now, that can mean one of two things: Either I’m not very smart, or overnight successes are as rare as hens’ teeth. I’m going to go out on a limb here and go for the second of those two options, hopefully.

I’m not a gambling man, but lots of people put money on Lotto or the pools or they buy a lottery ticket or worse still they go to a casino, all with a dream of winning the big one; striking the mother lode. How many of them ever do? Answer … almost none. As a percentage, the big winners are close to zero percent of all the players. After all, they don’t build casinos on winners, do they?

But as we journey through life with a dream or a calling or whatever it is in our hearts, sometimes instead of getting closer to that success we’re hoping for, things go (as I said at the top of the programme) from bad to worse, and that’s what I want to look at right now – from bad to worse on your rope, chasing after your dream, following your calling, ‘cos it happens. It happens way more often than we’d like to think, and if we don’t know what’s going on, if we don’t realise what God’s up to here, it’s actually rather devastating.

Moses was a man who had a dream – a calling – to help his fellow-Hebrews, even though through God’s mighty hand he ended up not as a slave (like all his fellow-Israelites) but as an adopted son of Pharaoh, living in privilege and comfort, with wealth and power. Deep in his heart, he ached to see how his people were being mistreated and abused until one day, he comes across an Egyptian guard beating one of the slaves, so he rises up and kills the guard. Whoops. Bad move. Now the heart that he’d had for his people completely disrupts his life. His first forty years he spends in privilege, and then this one event means that the next forty years, he’s going to spend in poverty. Let’s pick up the story. Exodus 2:15-3:1:

When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh. He settled in the land of Midian and sat down by a well. The priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock, but some shepherds came and drove them away. Moses got up and came to their defence and watered their flock. When they returned to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come back so soon today?”

They said, “An Egyptian helped us against the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.” He said to his daughters, “Where is he? Why did you leave the man? Invite him here to break bread.” Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage. She bore a son and he named him Gershom, for he said, “I have been an alien residing in a foreign land.”

After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Out of the slavery, their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites and God took notice of them.

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

Now, I want to stop there and think about this. Put yourself in Moses’ shoes for a minute. For the first forty years of your life, you live in a palace, as Pharaoh’s adopted son. Pharaoh in Egypt has all wealth and all power and all privilege and all comfort. Life just doesn’t get any better than this, but God puts this heart in you – a heart for your own people; a heart for God’s chosen people, and through this one act of taking out a guard who was beating a defenceless slave, now you’re not only booted out of home, you have to flee for your life and go and live in the wilderness. In fact, we’re told in the last verse there (Exodus 3:1) that when God finally came to find Moses (another forty years later), He found him out beyond the wilderness; out the back of nowhere.

The contrast between the first forty years and the next forty years couldn’t be more stark: From privilege to poverty; from significance to insignificance. We’re told not a lot about his forty years in the wilderness, but you can imagine what Moses was thinking. Right? Can you imagine how he felt? Can you just imagine?

So by age eighty, Moses is a burnt-out old wreck; a has-been; a nobody, out in the back of the wilderness, tending sheep. Dream over, right? Regret filling your heart. He would have been through all the stages: Denial, anger, fear, regret, bitterness, finally just giving up and tending these wretched sheep, and then, then God comes to him with a crazy plan. We’ll talk about that another time, but for forty years in the wilderness, beyond the wilderness, he had no idea that God even had a plan; that God even cared about him; that God even remembered him.

I’m guessing you’ve been in that place too. Dream over. Calling dead. Can’t possibly resurrect this mess from the ashes, right? Yet mark this: God had Moses cooling his heels for forty years, in the very same wilderness through which he would later lead the nation of Israel on the exodus, so by the time God comes back to him in the burning bush, Moses knows this land like the back of his hand! And what was he doing? Shepherding a flock of sheep, so in fact, God was getting Moses ready in this forty years of lonely wilderness experience to take on the mantle of leadership of Israel, and guide them for another forty years (a million or so people); shepherd them through the very same wilderness that he already knew.

Now listen. When setbacks come in your life, in my life, that’s exactly what God’s doing for us – getting us ready; preparing us; teaching us; moulding us; shaping our characters for the next thing that He already has planned, already has prepared for us to do.

I remember the exact moment, on the exact day, when God called me to preach the gospel to the nations. It was so clear, even a dummy like me couldn’t miss it. I’d been a Christian for … ooh, I don’t know … five minutes? But I was raring to go! Problem was that first, God had an eight-year wilderness experience for me to travel through. He needed to prepare me, to shape my character, to get me ready. The call came in 1996, but God didn’t release me until 2004 to do what I’m doing right now.

Fortunately, right at the beginning, a guy called Mark Brent (I’ll never forget this; it was during a worship-time at a theological college where I was studying) … Mark slides up to me after one song in the worship-time, and he says, “Berni, look. I don’t know if this means anything to you, but I think God wants you to know that He’s not in a hurry”. You know, that word from God gave me the patience to wait on God in the wilderness, while He did the things that He needed to do.

And can I give you that same word today? If you’re in a wilderness, if you’re wondering where the dream went, wondering what happened to the calling, wondering where the passion in your heart’s disappeared to, don’t worry. God is still in control. He hasn’t forgotten about you. He hasn’t lost sight of His plans; He’s just getting you ready for the next thing.

The Next Step

I remember when I first received the call to proclaim the good news of Jesus from God. It was as clear as a bell, and then (as I’ve already mentioned this series) God let me stew in my juices, a bit like Moses, but thankfully only for eight years (not for forty). I wanted to go; I wanted to follow the call from day one, but when eight years later God was ready, I got scared. I had a great, well-paying career as an IT consultant. I worked hard, but it was a comfortable life, and then God called me into this ministry that was all but dead. It had been going, ChristianityWorks, for over half a century, but had been so run down into the ground, it almost had no supporters; wasn’t producing any radio-messages (which was and remains our core business), and it was at the point of the-last-one-out-turn-out-the-lights that God clearly called me to leave my IT consulting career and its income behind, and step into this leaky boat that was steadily sinking.

See, that step is never easy. It wasn’t for Moses and it certainly wasn’t for me, and if you’ve been in that place, I know it wasn’t for you either, but I also know that there are some people tuned in today who are at that very point in their lives. It’s that big decision to step out of our comfort-zones, because God’s purposes for you always lie outside your comfort-zone, and get on with it.

So I’ll ask you again: Are you ready to go when God calls? Are you ready to step out of your comfort-zone? Are you ready to place your life and your future completely in God’s hands? Well? Are you? Because so often the call on our lives, the passion to fulfil God’s plans and purposes that He wove into our DNA before time began, God’s good plans for us are subverted by our own selfish dreams: Dreams of wealth and comfort and success and recognition, or dreams just to blend in and not make one iota of difference in this world.

So what does that mean for you and me as we set aside our dreams of ‘Becoming an Overnight Success’, and step out, and start to follow God? What does that actually mean? Well, simply this: Our part, the part that God has given us to play, is going to be challenging. It’s going to have setbacks. There will be times when we have failures. There will be times when we experience trials. We’ll see more about that over the coming weeks on the programme, but no matter how well-suited you are to the part that God has given you to play, the point is that we’re big players, you and I, with our bit to play and that’s it. And when you think about it, that’s exciting. The ripple effect of what Moses did … well, it’s reaching several thousand years down through history and across the globe, into your life and my life. It’s that ripple effect. That’s the exciting bit.

I had someone ask me once: “How do you know what impact your radio-programmes are having? What quantitative measure do you have to tell me that what you’re doing is worthwhile?” And the answer is, there’s no quantitative measure. Do I know that millions of people are listening to this programme this week? Yes I do, and I hear the odd story: The terrorist who stopped killing people; the woman who was pulled back from the brink of suicide; the eleven-year-old boy whose parents were going through a painful divorce and who met Jesus through these programmes, and I thank God for giving me some small part to play in people’s lives, and I pray for the ripple effect through them in the lives of others. I pray that, that former terrorist will lead many more people to Christ; that, that woman pulled back from suicide will bless her daughter with her love, and that, that young boy will be given a powerful part to play in God’s plan. The ripple effect.

God is playing the long game, and if you’re on team Jesus then the joy, the delight, is to play your part in the long game for His glory. Amen.

It’s one thing to have a dream in our hearts. It’s one thing to have a sense of God’s calling on our lives. But if we truly believe that God is calling us to something, then at some point, we need to stop dreaming and start doing. And that, let me tell you, is one of the most difficult times of all.

The Big Decision

In my experience, having a dream to do something, to get out there and be who God made you to be, and do what God made you to do – that dreaming bit is the easy bit. It’s easy to sit on the sofa and dream. But dreams don’t come to fruition, until you go and do something about them.

There is a powerful spiritual principle that you discover in the book of Acts chapter 12 where an angel comes to release the Apostle Peter from prison. Have a listen to this, Acts chapter 12, verses 7 to 9:

Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him up, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his wrists. The angel said to him, “Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.” He did so. Then he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” Peter went out and followed him.

The spiritual principle is this: God expects us to do the things that we can do, and He expects to do the things that we can’t do.

There are two parts to that principle, get either part wrong and things just don’t happen. If you expect God to do the things that you’re capable of doing, hey, nothing’s going to happen. If you think that you’re going to do the things that only God is capable of doing, still nothing is going to happen.

The angel told Peter to get up quickly and then God caused the chains to fall off his wrists. The angel told Peter to get dressed and follow him, and then God ended up doing the rest by causing the prison gates to swing open. The problem often is that when God taps us on the shoulder and says, “it’s time to go” we just don’t want to get up that quickly. And that’s exactly the problem Moses had.

You’ll remember if you were able to join me on the program last week, that we’ve been looking at the life and the times of Moses, possibly after Jesus, the most prominent and successful character in the Bible. And when you read some of the pithy accounts of Moses in the New Testament – he is, after all, the most spoken about Old Testament character in the New Testament, you can easily get the idea that he was an overnight success. But that’s not true. After 40 years of living in privilege as Pharaoh’s adopted son, he kills an Egyptian guard who was abusing one of his fellow Hebrews, and as a result has to flee into the wilderness, where he lives for the next 40 years. A place and a time, as we saw where God was getting him ready to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt towards the Promised Land.

We’re going to pick up the story of Moses’ ‘overnight success’ at this moment of transition, after forty years as a burnt out old wreck in the wilderness, when God finally comes to him to call him to get up and go and do what God had always made him to do – to lead God’s people out of Egypt. Now you might think at this point that Moses would get up, dust himself off, and say, “Well you know, it’s about time God! Do you realise I’ve been rotting out here in the wilderness, forgotten by you, after all those years of privilege in Pharaoh’s house?!” But that wasn’t exactly how Moses responded to God, Exodus chapter 3, verses 1 to 12:

Moses was out there keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” And God said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”

Now the last thing that Moses wanted to do was to go and confront Pharaoh, in fact he had another four excuses on top of that one, and eventually God gets so angry with him and shows him a couple of miracles to get him going.

We all want overnight success, but after 40 years of rotting in the wilderness, after 40 years of self–pity, after 40 years of being the victim, well you know, you can get comfortable with being a victim. Get up and go? Are you serious God?! Do you see the paradox? What I love about God’s Word is that it’s as fresh and alive and relevant today as it was thousands of years ago when it was written. And I know that there are just a few people today who need to hear this. God’s call on your life has seriously disrupted your status quo. You’ve experienced some time cooling your heels in the wilderness, you’ve got used to it and all of a sudden God comes along and says, quickly, get up, let’s go!

If Moses hadn’t gone, Israel would have perished in slavery. If Peter the apostle, thousands of years later hadn’t gone, he’d have died in prison. What about you? Are you ready to go when God calls you? Well, are you?

The Difficult Job

Dreams, ideas, hopes, plans, they are all wonderful things. The thing that makes them so exciting, is that they don’t have a downside. I can sit on a sofa all day, day after day, dreaming about the great things I’m going to do, the great things that God could do through me, and you know the best thing about those dreams? They never face any opposition. There are no obstacles when you are dreaming because your dreams can go wherever you want them to go.

Although, I know that when I was dreaming about doing what I’m doing now, those dreams were a bit scary, because they were so ridiculously big. I mean if I’d told anybody what I felt that God was calling me to share this good news of Jesus with millions of people, given who I was then and the mess my life was in back then, they’d all have thought I was delusional.

Once you actually step out of the dream and you start living the dream or calling or motivation – whatever label you’d like to put on it – the first thing that happens is that you run into opposition. And opposition it seems, comes at you from every direction, all at once, the moment you step over the starting line.

We all want to become an overnight success, we do. It’s always part of the dream to fly first class from A to B by the most direct, quickest possible route, without any turbulence along the way. But God isn’t so much into overnight success. God wants to grow your faith, my faith, by teaching us to play the long game, by taking us on a circuitous wilderness journey along the way. That’s how He grows our character. That’s how He knocks the rough edges off. That’s how He breathes humility and gentleness into our heart. That’s how He builds courage into our DNA, as we experience firsthand God’s faithfulness, day after day after day.

As we joined Moses on the journey last week, we saw how God gave him a heart for the misery of his fellow Hebrews, how that heart disrupted his life and popped him alone in a wilderness for forty years and how difficult it was for him finally, after all that time, to follow God’s call to confront Pharaoh and lead the chosen people out of Egypt back to the Promised Land.

None of those stages is easy. Following God’s call on our lives, living out the dreams that He’s placed on our hearts – those things are never easy. But once you get going, once you’re on the road, surely you know, things must get easier, right? Well, not for Moses. Let’s pick up the story. He’s been to Pharaoh, and he’s given him God’s message – let my people go. Nine times Pharaoh said no, and nine times God sent plagues upon Egypt until finally after God struck down the firstborn of all in Egypt, Pharaoh relented and the Israelites fled. But no sooner were they on the road, than Pharaoh decided to chase them and destroy them. Perfect! Just perfect God! Exodus chapter 14, verses 10 to 12:

As Pharaoh drew nearer, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, ‘Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, “Leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Remember I said to you that the opposition seems to come from all directions. Poor old Moses, eighty years old, now he has Pharaoh’s great army pursuing him from behind and in front of him, he has a grumbling, complaining rabble. Some call from God. Some road to success. Excuse me God, but could we just call it all off at this point? Pleeeeaaaaase! That’s what most of us end up saying to God isn’t it? And yet God stepped in, because Moses had done what he could do, so God now did what only He could do. Exodus chapter 14, verses 19 and 20:

The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near to the other all night.

See there it is, that spiritual principle again: God expects us to do the things that we can do, and He expects us to leave to Him the things that only He can do. That’s exactly what happened here in the wilderness, at the beginning of the Exodus. God showed up; God was faithful; God guided them; God intervened; and then God put Himself between Israel and her enemies.

And listen, that’s always what God does. He takes us to the edge, He puts us, deliberately, between a rock and a hard place so that unless He shows up we will fail. And then … He shows up. It has happened so many times in my life … and you see it so many times over the next forty years as Moses leads this grumbling, complaining, faithless nation of Israel through the wilderness towards the Promised Land. God always shows up to deliver. God always shows up to guide, to feed, to protect and to deal with the grumblers and complainers.

The one thing you and I do not want to be on our Exodus is a faithless grumbler and complainer. Remember, it was only an eleven day journey from Egypt to the outskirts of the Promised Land, but because of their lack of faith and their complaining it took them forty years! And then because of their lack of faith all but two of the million or so Israelites who originally left Egypt under the staff of Moses, perished in the wilderness. Only two of the originals – Joshua and Caleb – as well as the next generation ended up crossing over into the Promised Land.

There’s a lesson in that I have to tell you. As you read the rest of the book of Exodus you see how many times the Israelites turned their backs on God, worshipping idols, not believing God’s promises, turning on Moses – in fact so much so that God was going to wipe them all out, until Moses fell on his face and intervened for them.

Do you really want to follow God’s call on your life? Do you really want to live the dream that He wove into your DNA before time began? Then forget the idea of overnight success and get ready for your Exodus. It wasn’t easy. It was a long, long, long road for Moses. And yet God worked mightily in him and through him to achieve His purposes; God’s purposes, not Moses’ purposes. Do you think that Moses would have planned it this way? No way! Forty years, another forty years in the wilderness, this time with a grumbling, complaining, ungrateful people under his charge. Overnight success? Forget it.

It’s hard work. It’s about difficult times in the wilderness. It’s about opposition from all directions – from inside your own camp, and from the enemy outside the camp. It’s always how God works. He achieves His perfect will through imperfect people in imperfect places.

The Final Hurdle

If we approach life on the basis that it’s all about us, that we are at the centre of the universe and that everything else has to revolve around us, then it’s a disappointing notion to think that we may not get to see all that God has planned to do and to achieve through us. And there are plenty of people who have that perspective – the world is full of ‘I’m at the centre of the universe’ kind of people. Sadly, churches are also full of those sorts of people.

I’m on Facebook as you may know – and I saw something the other day that really, really annoyed me. A prominent Christian posted a graphic that said this: Lord I thank you in advance for my financial overflow! Really? So I posted this as a response: Lord I thank you that you died for me even without the clothes on your back. And Lord I thank you in advance that you have called me to take up my cross and follow you, no matter where you should lead or how much it may cost me, even if it should cost me my all.

Two entirely different perspectives on our faith, one says that it’s all about me, the other says that it’s all about Jesus. Now, I am not here to tell you that I live my perspective out perfectly every day. I, like you, am a sinner and I, like you, make plenty of mistakes. But the question is, what’s you’re fundamental perspective – how do you look at this world – with you at the centre, or with Jesus at the centre? Because if it’s you at the centre, you are going to be horrified to find out that you won’t get to see all the plans that God has purposed to work out involving you. But if you see your world with Christ at the centre, then the fact that you won’t get to see it all, be involved in it all, get the kudos for it all, will be an absolute delight.

Overnight success. As we’ve seen in this series so far through the story of Moses, there’s pretty much no such thing. Moses spent 40 years in privilege in Pharaoh’s house; 40 years alone in the wilderness tending sheep; and then another 40 years leading God’s grumbling, complaining, faithless people through the wilderness. And if you read the pithy account recorded many years later in the book of Hebrews, you could easily … easily come to the conclusion that Moses was an overnight success, a bit like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. Let’s have a look, Hebrews chapter 11, verses 24 to 29:

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king’s anger; for he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. And by faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so, they were drowned.

Not half bad, and when you stand back at a distance like that, it seems that Moses was a great success and yet, Moses failed God and so he never did get to enter the Promised Land. He didn’t get to complete the mission and lead the people across the Jordan into the Promised Land. He didn’t get to see the promise of God fulfilled in his life. Have a listen, Numbers chapter 20, verses 1 to 13:

The Israelites, the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh. Miriam died there, and was buried there. Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and against Aaron. The people quarrelled with Moses and said, “Would that we had died when our kindred died before the Lord! Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die here? Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to bring us to this wretched place? It is no place for grain, or figs, or vines, or pomegranates; and there is no water to drink.”

Then Moses and Aaron went away from the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting; they fell on their faces, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and command the rock before their eyes to yield its water. Thus shall you bring water out of the rock for them; thus shall you provide drink for the congregation and their livestock.

So Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he had commanded him to do. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarrelled with the Lord, and by which he showed his holiness.

That’s pretty harsh! I mean, you read the account in the book of Hebrews and Moses was this amazing man of faith really, yet because of this one small failure, a lapse in his faith, God kills him off before entering the Promised Land. But listen up, it wasn’t about Moses, it was about God. Imagine if Moses had been the one to both lead Israel out of Egypt, and then forty years later lead them into the Promised Land. The people, God’s people would have ended up worshipping Moses instead of God, and God doesn’t share His glory with any man.

Moses, as great a leader as He was, as much faith and courage as He had, it wasn’t about Moses, it was always about God’s plan which went way beyond the wilderness, way beyond the Promised Land, through the Cross of Christ, down to you and me. Moses, like everyone else, just had a small part to play in a much bigger plan.

God is playing the long game. Get it?

“That’s it, I’ve had it. I only ever try to do the right thing, and each and every time, God puts obstacles in my road”. Have you ever thought that? Sure you have. So have I. That’s why today, we’re going to look at those God-ordained setbacks and delays.

Setbacks and Delays

There’s something about kicking off a new week. It’s a small version of kicking off a new year, I guess, that sense of anticipation; the idea that, “Well, maybe this week, things will be different”, and yet for many it’s the same-old, same-old: The same old drudgery; the same old difficult people and difficult circumstances, seemingly going nowhere. It’s not that life’s all that bad. It’s just that you had these plans of doing this or achieving that or being there or whatever it is, and none of those things seem to be happening.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve had plans to do this good thing for God or that good thing for God, only to have those plans thwarted, and you know, the really amazing thing? People often say to me, “Wow, Berni, your ministry’s so successful”, as though somehow success is a relevant measure of what God’s doing, and these days when that happens, I stop, and I don’t know what to say. Well, I do know what to say, but I think to myself, “What’s the point?”

What I really want to say to this person who looks at this ministry of ChristianityWorks (that produces these radio-messages) and thinks of it as some overnight success: “Where were you when the ministry almost folded at least a dozen times? Where were you when nobody could be paid a salary because there was no income coming in? Where were you during those incredibly difficult times when we kept slogging away and slogging away, and we just weren’t moving forward?

Oh, and by the way, let me tell you about the challenges and the trials that we’re facing right now. Hello? It seems the further we are away from the reality of something, the more that we’re on the outside rather than on the inside of something, the more likely we are to look at the good bits (yeah, we’ll take the good bits any day) while completely ignoring the challenges and the problems, and the delays and the setbacks, and the more often we do that, the more likely we are to develop this completely unrealistic expectation that whatever we set our hand to should be an overnight success. You’re getting the point, right?

As I sit here now chatting with you, I can tell you that there are challenges that I’m facing: Challenges so big that unless God shows up, we’re going to fail. That’s often the reality, and yet we behave as though that’s something abnormal because we’ve been conditioned to believe in this crazy notion of overnight success. Last week, if you were able to join me, we spent some time on the road with Moses over his rather long, one hundred and twenty-year life: Forty years living as Pharaoh’s son, effectively, in wealth and luxury in Egypt; then, because he had to flee for his life, another forty years tending a flock of sheep way out beyond the wilderness, so that takes him to age eighty when God finally called Moses to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt, and then after a pretty spectacular departure through the Red Sea, another forty years leading a grumbling, complaining people through that very same wilderness only to die just before being able to lead them into the promised land. Have a listen to what Moses had to say to God about the whole affair of leading the people of Israel through the wilderness through these forty years. Numbers 11:10-15:

Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, all at the entrances of their tents. Then the LORD became very angry, and Moses was displeased, so Moses said to the LORD: ‘Why have You treated Your servant so badly? Why had I not found favour in Your sight, that you laid the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive this people? Did I give birth to them, that You should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a suckling child” to the land that You promised on oath to their ancestors? Where am I going to get meat to give to these people, for they came weeping to me and they say, “Give us meat to eat?” I’m not able to carry all this people alone, for they’re too heavy for me. If this is the way You’re going to treat me, put me to death at once, if I have found favour in Your sight, and do not let me see my misery.

Yeah. Obviously, Moses was having a whole lot of fun along the journey, right? Not so much, and yet when someone mentions the name of Moses these days, we think of this great leader – one of the ablest characters of the Bible, without ever giving much thought to the cold-faced realities of the setbacks and the delays and the challenges and the frustrations that Moses faced, lots of them for very long periods of time. So when these setbacks, delays, difficulties, trials hit us, we act all surprised, as though something’s wrong, as though if we were truly in God’s will, it’d all be plain-sailing; a smooth ride; no bumps or twists or turns, but that is quite simply not how God operates, so just in case you’re going through one of those difficult times and just in case you’re acting all surprised, have a listen to this word from God to you today. 1 Peter 4:12-13:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you, to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice, in so far as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when His glory is revealed.

Think about it. God didn’t even spare His own Son from fiery trials; from being misunderstood; from being rejected by the religious establishment; from the crowds that had followed Him, amazed at the power of His words and all His miracles, from those crowds turning on Him and in the end shouting, “Crucify Him!”

Setbacks, delays, trials, temptations, inexplicable as they may be at the time, are a normal part of following Jesus. They just are, and the sooner we get that, the better things are going to be.

Learning Patience the Hard Way

To be honest with you, patience is perhaps the hardest lesson that I have had to learn since giving my life to Jesus a good many years ago now: The hardest lesson! I’m just not a patient kind of guy. I think quickly; I act quickly; I even walk quickly … Yeah, I’m one of those people. Of course, there’s an upside to having that sort of personality-type. The upside is that I get a lot done. The upside is that if you need someone to crash through some brick walls, then I’m your man, and yes, we need some people in the mix who are like that, but the downside is that I can be very impatient: Impatient with circumstances, with people and with God, and when God gets someone like me to deal with, then you can bet your bottom dollar that He is going to give me some extra tuition in this whole area of patience. Hallelujah! Thank You, Jesus!

You see, I don’t get why the guy driving in the car in front of me (sensing that the light is going to change in just a few seconds) doesn’t put his foot down just that little bit, so that he and I can both cross over the white line before the light turns orange. Now I’m not asking him to speed; I just want him to think about my time that he’s wasting, and just nudge the accelerator pedal just that little bit! And when he doesn’t do that, I simply don’t get that, and what I really, really, really want to do is to express my displeasure by slamming down on the horn, long and loud.

And there are many times, irrespective of the makeup of our personality, when we don’t get why God has to delay things, or if it’s not Him delaying them, why He just doesn’t crash through it for us and make it happen, whatever it happens to be, and can I tell you? The most difficult time to be patient is when you’re hurting, when you’re experiencing pain. I mean, even I had to learn to be patient when I’m not in pain. All I had to do is to give up the plans I had for the time that from my perspective is now going to waste because of whatever delay I happen to be facing, and that’s not easy. It still isn’t that easy, but I can learn that. What’s really hard though is to be patient when you’re suffering: In a difficult relationship perhaps, or under a difficult boss at work, or through ill health. I mean, ill health is really tough because when you’re in real physical pain compounded by a mental anguish, patience … well, it ain’t that easy to come by.

So let me ask you: Exactly what is patience? Well, my dictionary tells me that it’s the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious. That’s a pretty good definition, don’t you think? Patience is the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.

You see, this quality of patience, this issue of depth of character, is not something we seem to place all that much value on in a world that expects overnight success and instant gratification, but you and I know that it’s really, really important because when the chips are down, when things are stacked against us, when our plans are thwarted, when we’re suffering pain or loss, unless we have the capacity to tolerate those without becoming annoyed or anxious, then we’re going to become … well, annoyed or anxious, or even worse. We start behaving badly; we start doing stupid things; we start hurting other people, damaging relationships and pretty much ruining our lives. You’ve been there. You’ve been there, I’ve been there, so how do we get patience? How do we learn patience when we’re in that caldron of delay and suffering?

I want to share with you today a Scripture that is jam-packed full of incredible wisdom. These three verses punch way above their weight. Are you ready? Psalm 37:7-9:

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices. Refrain from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret; it leads only to evil, for the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land.

Do you want to know how to get patience? Well, there it is. First, be still. Stop flapping around, like a chicken with its head cut off. Stop complaining. Stop sobbing. Stop carrying on. Just shut up for a minute, and be still and wait patiently for God. The original Hebrew word for waiting used there literally talks of a woman in labour, suffering the pain, but waiting, pushing, believing that the child is about to be born. It’s a great picture, isn’t it, for what we’re going through when we’re suffering?

So, stop screaming; stop yelling; wait without fretting; stop looking at all those evil people over there, who seem to be prospering, and forget your anger and your desire to take vengeance ‘cos if you spend your time thinking about revenge, if you keep fretting over your dilemma, it’s going to only lead you to evil. You’re going to do something bad or stupid, because here’s the promise: Those who wait, a different word now used here for wait in verse 9; it means to wait expectantly on the LORD – to expect Him to do something good … The promise is that those who wait expectantly on God, expecting Him to act, will, will inherit the land; the promised land; the promises of God.

I tell you, these few verses punch way above their weight. Grab a Bible, and spend some time in them. Think about them. Pray about them, and then start living them: Psalm 37:7-9. When we’re suffering, when we’re delayed, when things have gone awry, thrashing around, complaining, behaving badly, exacting revenge, none of those things are going to do you any good. They’re only going to lead you to evil, and God cuts the wicked off, but choosing in that difficult place instead to wait expectantly on God, to put your trust in Him even though you’re going through great pains, that is the one thing that will help you lay hold of God’s promises, and let me tell you: God is going to keep you there, and God is going to bring you back to that place again and again and again, until you learn that lesson, ‘cos He wants you to trust Him through every difficult circumstance.

Character Building Exercises

You know something? If I never hear the term character building again, it’ll be too soon. Let me tell you why. When I was a young man between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, I spent four years training to be an officer in the Australian army at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. It’s the Australian version of America’s West Point and Britain’s Sandhurst. Now it sounds just a tad glamorous, doesn’t it? And certainly, that’s how the recruiting brochures portrayed it.

Those four years though were without a doubt the four toughest years of my life. Over seven-and-a-half thousand young men applied, a hundred and forty-seven were accepted, and only sixty-one of us graduated. That’s a pretty severe attrition rate, and the reason was that it was brutally difficult. We all studied a university degree while undertaking military training. It was a punishing, seven-day-a-week schedule: Intellectually, physically and emotionally punishing, and each time we were going through the next incredibly difficult thing, the next nine-mile run in full pack with rifle, the next survival exercise climbing over steep mountains without any food, the next drill sergeant screaming in our face, someone would mutter under their breath, ‘Character building’. Everyone else would just snigger grimly.

My point is, character building is always painful and difficult. As I said before the break, you don’t have your character developed while you’re sitting on the beach on a nice holiday, sipping a Pina Colada. Your character is only ever tested and refined and developed through the difficult times, and thinking back to those brutal four years at Duntroon, everything we went through was about developing our character so that if we were ever called upon, we would have the capacity to lead soldiers into war – into battle with bullets flying and bombs going off. Each one of those exercises were truly character building exercises, to weed out those who couldn’t make it and to develop those who could. And that’s the business that God is in: Developing our character, yours and mine, through deliberately planned trials. Some people find that a tad confronting, but that’s exactly what the Bible teaches us. Romans 5:1-5:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we now stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, we also boast in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope never disappoints us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Now that’s a very interesting passage. It starts off by declaring the good news of Jesus: That we’re saved by faith, that in Jesus we’ve obtained the grace that brings us peace with God, and we’re right to boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God! Man, that’s really good news! And then comes the segway from God’s grace to our suffering:

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings. (Romans 5:3)

Can I ask you something? How often have you boasted in your suffering? When was the last time you boasted to your family or to your friends about the suffering that you were going through right at that minute? It’s almost as though the apostle Paul who’s writing this letter to the church in Rome is truly boasting in his suffering, which actually he does over and over again in the various letters that he wrote that are now part of the New Testament; the Bible; God’s very own Word. So why does he boast in his suffering? Well, to him it’s absolutely obvious. It’s because he knows that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and that hope doesn’t disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that’s been given to us. Paul knew that through his suffering, God was developing his character, and when God develops your character, it invariably hurts, especially in the beginning.

I can’t tell you the pain that I remember from those days at Duntroon. They say you can’t remember pain; well, perhaps they have never been through military training. Every muscle in my body ached. I was so tired I wanted to drop, and then we’d march another fifty miles through the mountains without food or sleep. I tell you, I wouldn’t do it again for ten million dollars. That’s how hard it was.

It’s interesting every now and then. A few of us old classmates get together and we have dinner and we remember the good old days and just generally have a good time, and in each of those guys (older and greyer and many of them somewhat pudgier than they were back as young men), I see men of character: A depth of character, I can see in each one of them. You can’t put a price on that.

See, God is interested in your heart. He’s interested in building your character, and that’s a really blessed thing. Character building exercises, each one planned specifically for you. Each one designed, handcrafted to develop you into the person that God made you to be.

When Samuel was sent to choose the next king of Israel, who turned out to be King David, but who back then was just a teenager, God said to Samuel (1 Samuel 16:7):

Do not look on his outward appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him, for the LORD sees not as a man sees. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.

And in each fiery trial, each character building exercise that you go through, that’s what God’s interested in. God’s interested in your heart.

So there’s the theory lesson if you will, but now it’s time to apply it to your life. What character building exercise does God have you in the middle of just at the moment? Is it a temptation that’s testing you? Is it a relationship that’s causing you pain? Is it something you’ve been longing for and God seems to be delaying His answer? What is it in your life at the moment – the one thing that’s causing you grief, pain, and distress?

Because it’s that one thing that I believe God wants you to apply His Word to today; to take that Scripture from Romans chapter 5 verses 1 to 5 and apply it to your trial. I’m going to read it again in a minute, and as I do, let the words sink into your trial; your pain; your distress; your longing; your disappointment, because as you do, God is going to breathe His Holy Spirit into you. As you do, God is going to strengthen your weak knees. He’s going to put resolve in your heart. He’s going to breathe meaning into your suffering, and in doing all of that, I believe He is going to develop your character and move you closer to being all that He created you to be. Are you ready? Here it is, God speaking directly into your suffering through His Word. Romans 5:1-5:

Since you have been justified by faith, you now have peace with God through Jesus Christ, through whom you have obtained access to this grace in which you now stand, and you can boast in your hope of sharing the glory of God. But not only that, you should also boast in your sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And that hope is never going to disappoint you, because God’s love has been poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to you.

May the Word of God transform you today, and may you be filled with the resolve to honour God through your trials, and to serve others with His love, until Jesus comes again.

When you think about it, pride and impatience are two sides of the one coin. Maybe that’s why so many people are in such a hurry to become an overnight success. Problem is though, that our plan isn’t always God’s plan, and impatience leads to an enormous amount of frustration.

Developing a Humble Heart

If you’ve been able to join me over the last couple of weeks, you’ll know that we are talking about this crazy notion that we can become an overnight success.

Success is a seductive concept and time and time again we are told in the media, by the advertising industry, even in the sitcoms that we watch that you can be whatever you want to be and you can do whatever you want to do. And in a world where things have become oh so instant … somebody has dropped this notion on our heads that we can have success and we can have it now.

Just think about how the world has changed. I remember when I was a boy, we didn’t have a phone in our house, we just didn’t. If my parents wanted to make a phone call, they had to wander down the street to use the public phone. But then again, most of their friends didn’t have any phones in their houses either! So what was the point?

Just think about the implications of that. How do you arrange to go out with your friends? Well, you did it weeks in advance and it was something special that you planned and you didn’t go very often. It also meant, by default, that your friends mostly consisted of people with whom you had regular contact – your neighbours, the parents of the children that your kids went to school with perhaps, or a few work colleagues. But now, communication is instant. Most people have a mobile phone in their pocket or in their handbag; SMS – instant; phone call – instant; email – instant. In fact, many a day before 7am, I’ve been on Skype to one of my colleagues in Africa or America. Space and time are no longer boundaries. Pretty much any piece of information you need is in the palm of your hand. If I need a statistic or a fact for one of these messages, I just ‘Google’ it and BINGO … there it is … in a fraction of a second!

You can see then how over the last few decades our mentality has shifted from having to wait for things back then, to having them instantly today. Combine that with this idea that you can be anyone you want to be and do anything you want to do, and can you see then how easy it is for you and for me to imagine that somehow we truly are at the centre of the universe.

That’s a notion that breeds pride, unhealthy pride. And that unhealthy pride demands to be satisfied instantly. Like I said, pride and impatience are two sides of the one coin. And that’s why I believe so many people are so frustrated with their lives today – because when all is said and done, the world doesn’t think of us as the centre of the universe, the world doesn’t dance to our tune.

The theory, the view that we have of ourselves is a false one, it’s out of touch with reality and so our expectations of how things should be, are completely out of sync with how things really are. I want to be an overnight success but it’s just not working out for me! I think there is many a person who understands that level of constant frustration in their lives. Is that a frustration that you would like to be set free from perhaps?

Is that something that has been grinding away at you, this constant sense that things aren’t moving quickly enough for you, in your direction, according to your plans to make you feel good? Well God has a solution for you – and that solution has a name – it’s called HUMILITY. Let’s head to the dictionary and try first to understand what humility really is. I quote: the quality of having a modest or low view of one’s own self-importance. And then the example that my dictionary gives me is this: He needs humility to accept there may be a better way.

Pretty good definition, and you can see how completely opposed the quality of humility is to the world view that so many people have developed with themselves on top, with themselves at the centre, with the rest of world, God included, dancing to their tune. 1 Peter chapter 5, verse 5:

In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for ‘God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.’

The idea of younger people accepting authority from their elders these days in many cultures and communities has gone whoosh straight out the window. And those where traditional family values still dominate are seeing them being eroded as affluence and western culture starts to bite. I love how the apostle Peter puts it there – you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another – can I tell you, the people I really, really like being around are the humble ones.

Just recently I caught up for lunch with one of my heroes, Phil Little-John. Phil was the pastor of the first church I ever attended after becoming a Christian. I remember him saying once in one of his sermons years ago that humility is strength under control. It’s not about being a door-mat or having low self-esteem or being a weakling. No, humility is simply ditching this notion that I am the centre of the universe; that I am on the top of the heap. And when you meet people who have humility, you want to be around them, don’t you? I know so many smart, confident, strong people, who yet, are humble – and Phil is one of those. Listen to what Jesus had to say on the subject. Matthew chapter 18, verses 1 to 5:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”  He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

In fact, Jesus the Son of God, the Creator of the Universe said this for himself on the subject of humility. Matthew chapter 11, verse 28 to 30:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Jesus said it himself that He is humble of heart. How do we know that? Not just be what He said, but by what He did. Philippians chapter 2, verses 4 to 11:

 Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus humbled himself by dying on a cross for you and me; and what God is calling us to do, is to be like Him. To let the same mind be in us that was in Jesus; to look first to the interests of others; to like Jesus, come to serve, not to be served. And when we do that, God will exult us, for He opposes the proud, but He exalts the humble. That right there is one of the most powerful, spiritual principles that you will ever encounter.

So, if you are frustrated, if the world isn’t dancing to your tune, if the success you are after isn’t quite as instant and as over-night as you’d want it to be, then here’s the answer: humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, resign as the centre of the universe, serve, care about others before yourself. And God will exalt you, God will promote you in due time.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Jesus Christ.

Living in Hope

Maybe that’s what having a mid-life crisis is all about – coming to the realisation that you are not going to have the over-night success that you’ve been chasing all your life.

At some point, maybe it’s in your forties or your fifties, you realise that you are not the ‘bee’s-knees’, you are not going to set the world on fire. And for some it happens earlier, for some it happens later, but that youthful exuberance that we once had, that idealism that sprang forth so naturally, that flame that burned inside us to change the world, it’s quenched, it’s snuffed out.

It’s a terrible realisation, because for many, it’s the death of hope. For many, when once there was meaning, now there is only meaninglessness. King Solomon was one of the richest and wisest men who ever lived. Towards the end of his life he said this, Ecclesiastes chapter 1, verses 2 to 11:

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! Everything is vanity.  What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?  A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises again. The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; and round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run into the sea, but the sea is never full; to the place where streams flow, where they continue to flow.

All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is never satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing.  What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it can be said, “See, this is new?” It has already been, in the ages before us. The people of long ago are not remembered, nor will there be any remembrance of people yet to come by those who come after them.

Hah! It’s a pretty sad conclusion for a rich, wealthy, powerful, wise man to come to. After all I’ve done, after all I’ve had, none of it means ANYTHING!

That’s the stuff of mid-life crisis, that’s the stuff that drives people over the edge. All those years we’ve been sacrificing our lives for what? An ideal, an idea, an image of success that turned out to be as elusive as a mirage in the desert? What am I living for? What am I working so hard for? They are the questions we end up asking ourselves when we’ve wasted half our lives, perhaps more, on the altar of success.

It was that stuff, as a very successful man in my mid-thirties, it was precisely this, that drove me to the brink of suicide. Not everyone, thankfully, gets to that point, but you’d be amazed at how many people actually think about it. Why? Because they’ve lost hope; because the world’s promise of over-night success turned out to be a rotten, stinking lie.

We talked before the break about humility – the transformative power of having a humble heart. Well right now, I’d like to chat with you briefly about another word that begins with ‘H’ – HOPE. The sort of hope that you need in your heart when things quite haven’t worked out the way you planned them to. When hope is lost, when the future seems to have gone AWOL, it’s in that very place that God has something for you that goes beyond, way beyond anything that you and I could have imagined.

Hope, real, certain, rock-solid hope writes the apostle Paul to the church in Rome – Romans chapter 15, verse 13:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Paul had, by this time, been through many trials in his life, in his ministry for Jesus across the known world. He’d suffered a lot, things hadn’t gone the way he’d expected them to. He wrote this letter to the Romans in Corinth while he was on his third missionary journey.

By this time, he’s been on the road proclaiming Jesus for a good many years, he’s been beaten, locked up, threatened with death, he’s had people riot against him, drive him out of town, plot his assassination. He wanted to go here and there, but his plans were blocked, sometimes by God, sometimes by the devil, and sometimes by people. Things hadn’t always gone the way he’d planned, and he knew he was probably going to be locked up when he headed down to Jerusalem.

And yet Paul talks here in Romans chapter 15, verse 13 about the God of hope. A God who will fill you with all joy and all peace. Not just a bit of joy now and then, not just the occasional fleeting moment of peace, but all joy and all peace. The sort of joy and the sort of peace that Paul exhibited during his times of trial. The sort of joy and the sort of peace that came to him by the power of the Holy Spirit. And his prayer for the Romans is that they would abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Do you notice this abundance language here, abound in hope, overflow with hope? And all this comes through believing. Let’s read it again so that it all comes together. Romans chapter 15, verse 13:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and all peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In believing … in believing in what exactly? He’s talking about believing in Jesus.

For so much of my life, I hoped for success and I hoped for wealth, and all that stuff – that’s what led me to the brink. And it was in that place that Jesus met me, it was in that place that I discovered this God who loved me so much that He sent His Son to die for me, to pay the price of my sin, of my rebellion, so that I … I could live for eternity with Him. Can you or I see eternity yet? No, we can’t. Romans chapter 8, verses 24 and 25:

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what is not seen, we wait for it in patience.

And now that my hope is in Jesus, God’s given me the patience to wait for His promise … His promise of eternal life … His promise of sharing in His glory for ever and ever. And when Paul, from amidst his trials, writes about being filled with all joy and all peace and abounding in hope in believing – that is something that I totally get, because that is exactly how it is.

All those years I was chasing the shiny promises of the world that led me, in the end, towards death, when all along the real answer was Jesus! The real answer is Jesus! The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah wrote this – Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 7:

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.

Who or what have you placed your trust in? Who or what do you hope in? In success? Then you are going to be disappointed. In Jesus? Then you’ll be filled with the hope that abounds in you, that overflows out of you. That in believing, brings you all joy and all peace. I’m so conscience that so many people are listening today around the world, who haven’t yet placed their hope in Jesus. So, if you want to do that, then please pray this prayer with me right now, don’t leave it one more minute.

Father God, today I’ve heard about Jesus, about the one who loved me so much that He came and died and paid the price of my rebellion against You. The one who rose again, to give me a life … an eternal life with You. And today, I want to put all my trust and all my hope in Jesus, in Him alone. Please forgive me for all my sins, please take me just as I am, please fill me with your Holy Spirit so that by His power I might be filled with all joy and all peace and abound in the certain hope of your blessings, here in this world and eternity with You. In Jesus name I pray.

On A Personal Note

It doesn’t matter how much the plans and dreams that you’ve had for your life seem to have gone awry, how much they’ve been delayed, how disillusioned you may be. I know that God is on your case and I know that He is up to some mighty good things in your life.

From when I received a clear, distinctive call from God – one afternoon when I was ironing of all things – to go out and tell people about Jesus, like I am now, until I finally started doing what I’m doing now – was eight years. Eight years! That’s a long time when you’re raring and ready to go.

And along the way, as God has called us here at Christianityworks to minister into this country and into that country, and we’ve stepped out, not knowing how we were going to resource that, can I tell you, each and every time we’ve stepped out into new continents and new countries – there have been setbacks and delays. Opposition, things not going the way we’d hoped, things happening much more slowly than we’d hoped.

And yet, one by one, things have all fallen into place – because God is faithful. He’s there, in fact He went ahead of us, just like He went ahead of Moses, just like He went ahead of Abraham, and Joseph and any other Bible character you would care to name – it’s just that worldly success was never part of His plan. Look at the Apostle Paul who faced so many trials and setbacks and delays and beatings and shipwrecks and … on and on it goes. This is what he says about all of those things, 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 16 to 18:

So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

And that … is exactly the sort of attitude, the sort of faith, the sort of perseverance, the sort of victory that God is wanting to build in you and me, as He sets up for us His pre–ordained, His anointed setbacks and delays for you and me to walk into. I’ve never heard someone come back from a three-week, luxury holiday and say, “Man, God really grew my character, God really developed my stamina and my endurance, over that holiday.”

Well maybe God gave you a much needed rest and a much needed refreshment over the holiday, but your character is only ever developed in the heat of battle. Your character is only ever refined and made pure and strong, in the furnace of life’s suffering. And God isn’t doing this in order to be sadistic. Your pains and your hurts hurt Him as much as they hurt you. Because He loves you, He feels your pain more acutely than you’d ever imagine. No, He’s doing it for a purpose. He’s wanting to give you something so precious, that He’s prepared to let you suffer for it. Here it is, Hebrews chapter 12, verses 11 and 12:

Look, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight the paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

The peaceful fruit of righteousness. Because when we start living in the righteousness – the goodness, the right way of living rather than the wrong way of living – when we learn these hard lessons and start living in the wisdom that we discovered in those fiery trials, we develop this peaceful fruit in our lives – the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Think about it, when we’ve developed the capacity to accept or tolerate delay and problems and suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious, what we’ll have in those tough times … is peace. That’s what God wants you to have – peace.