issues, Spiritual

PRAYER. PROCESS… PRODUCT

alone-sad-feelings-awesome

There is a strong longing for success in every heart. it’s a given. By “succeed” I mean a desire to be accomplished in life so that others might reckon with us. You hear from men how they hope not to die a commoner but to leave their marks in the history of humanity, and claim fame for their legacies. This leads to all manner of pursuit. We set targets for ourselves, compete with our imagination of others, and are pushed constantly by the vagaries of the world systems.

These false projections in the world are further complicated by our perception of time and its effect on our desires. Many feel a sense of urgency as age furthers so as to avoid a loss of motivation and energy to chase their dreams later. To be 40 years without owning a home, a car, stable income, proper savings, or a family is generally seen as unacceptable in society.

All of these seething within a person’s mind and baked by the environment of extreme materialism, is a soul-numbing combination that really hinders the true development of sound character required for a qualitative life.

This is the context of the heart with which many come to Father God. Actually, many find Father in the spaces between need and wants, where what dominates the heart is the desire for things – healing, work, family, food, house, prosperity, education, etc. While the love of the Father will almost always take care of such desires with time, He certainly moves past the things that we want to challenge our notion of where the true value of life lies.

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issues

THE ROD FOR SHEEP, SNAKES, AND THE SEA

Moses

There are probably some three kinds of challenges you will face as you journey through your life; the challenges that prove your abilities, those that come to swallow you up, and those that come to oppose you from moving forward. I have always tried to see how I could group the nature of my tribulations so that I can easily identify as I meet them. It was until of late when I decided to study the book of Exodus that I entered into some understanding of how I could assess the character and peculiarity of the situations which we like face all the time. These are the situations I refer to as Sheep, Snakes, and the Sea; the three great S which some of us will have to confront at one time or the other.

Before I attempt at breaking these down, it would be proper to evoke the context of the story that equips my muse on this issue. Exodus introduces the man Moses to us all, and tells us of his rather strange upbringing and how he was like nothing short of a drama from beginning to the end. But from the whole, nothing struck me as much as the opening chapters of Exodus which tells of his unfortunate attempt at leadership, which led to his ultimate escape from the palace into the wilderness. He became a Shepherd, then a deliverer sent by God, then a way maker. Through this process, one thing was central in the scheme of things, and that was the Rod in his hands. Herein lays the convergence of three separate issues: Sheep, Snakes, and the Sea. With that Rod, he tended to the Sheep, swallowed up Snakes, and parted the Sea.

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