Doing It Mans Way: Failure

3/3/2008 8:21 AM

SPIRITUAL DIARY

My Worship Time              Focus:  Doing it man’s way:  Failure

Bible Reading & Meditation               Reference:  Exodus 2:11-14

          Message of the verses:  “11 ¶  Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren.

12  So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.  13  He went out the next day, and behold, two Hebrews were fighting with each other; and he said to the offender, "Why are you striking your companion?"  14  But he said, "Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid and said, "Surely the matter has become known.’”

          The first forty years of Moses’ life are pretty much unknown, as far as what he did as there are only a few things mentioned about those early years.  Moses did get an excellent education in Egypt and it was possible that he could have become the next Pharaoh.  He had many pleasurable things to do, but the writer to the Hebrews wrote that he turned them all down and was looking for a city whose designer and builder was God.  Moses knew that he was a Hebrew, and he must have sensed that God would use him to deliver his people, but Moses seemed to go about it in his own strength and not in the power of God.  Moses may have thought that since he killed the Egyptian that the children of Israel would figure it out that he was the deliverer, but that was not the case and when he realized that there were people who knew that he killed the Egyptian he fled for his life.  I heard from a preacher one time that killing the Egyptian was not what got him in trouble, but burying him in the sand was the offense that was unforgivable to the Egyptians as it had something to do with their false religion. 

          Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I will probably never deliver a nation from slavery, however I have led people to a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, which is freedom from the slavery of sin.  The point I am making here is that whenever God has something for me to do He desires that I do it in His way, in His power and strength, and in His time, and there are times when I do not follow that process and it gets me into trouble. 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Not to get ahead of God or to try and do the things He has for me to do in my power.

Memory verses for the week:  2Cor. 12:9-10

9  And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

10  Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

Review memory verses:  Philippians 1:9-11

9.   And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment,

10.                          so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ;

11.  having been filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.