Shaping...

The thing I love about preaching is that it forces you to wrestle with the text of Scripture. You can't (or maybe I should say you shouldn't) just look for a message to share. The goal is to see what truth is there and try it on for size. I'm currently working on a sermon series that shows the parallels between the Jews journey out of slavery in Egypt to the "Promised Land" and our own spiritual journey from slavery to sin to freedom in Christ. I've always loved the metaphor of the wilderness journey as one that speaks to where we live right now. Our lives are often filled with struggle and pain, just as the Jews struggled wandering through the desert. We feel like God is hiding sometimes. They felt it too. But perhaps the most powerful idea that I've seen lately is that God uses all the circumstances of the wilderness to make the Jews the people that he wants them to be. He painfully strips away the parts of them that are not dependent on Him and helps them to see that He is their God. Here's what He says to Moses in Ex. 9:16 -

“But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

God uses our experiences, both wonderful and painful, to show us who He is, to show the world who He is, and to make us into the people we need to be. We miss this shaping process too often in our own lives. Our experiences are not just experiences, they are one of the ways that God shapes who we are. They are difficulties that drive us into His arms and remind us of our own powerlessness. They make us followers. It would be nice if life were easy. But easy lives make for weak people. Easy lives make for people who think they could probably handle this thing all on their own. In the wilderness, however, we realize the truth. We learn that if it wasn't for Jesus we would be hopelessly lost. He shapes us through the difficulty.

As in most things we really are like little children. We don't actually know what it is that we need. And God says, "Trust me. I love you. I would never put you through pain if it wasn't something that would help you to grow."

He's making us into a people who look like Jesus. At times that can be very painful. But the process is one that makes us whole.