You Can Come Along God, if you want

If we were all real honest, we would all admit that we move on without God at times. We decide our way, and if he would like to come along, he surely can. It is in this mindset that we get to a place where we are out there and we think he has led us, and truthfully, he has not. A couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of something that happened in the life of Moses that we can learn from. Look at his conversation with God below about never moving on without God...

12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” 14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” 15 And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. 16 For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”

Moses confesses to God that he did not want to do anything if God was not going to be a part of it. Moses knew that walking to a place without God would not hold the life and the purpose God wants for us. Where do we really arrive at if God has not led you where you arrive? Do we really want to be at that place? Moses in his mind walks down the road of what arriving somewhere without God would be like and he wanted no part of it.

Q: Does a fear of this grip those in ministry today? Do we want God to lead so much that we will wait until he does lead? or Does our pride or pressure from the church get us to move to fast? Why do we plan more based on our creativity and very little through fasting and prayer? Why do we read the latest book first of the latest new speaker instead of getting in a closet with the Bible, pen, and notebook?

You see, Moses knew that God must be present and leading us or we will fail? Our mode of operation today is that huge numbers constitute success. Moses could have taken large numbers into the promised land, but without God. He wanted no part of it. Large numbers do not mean God has lead. So, what is it going to be for us? Do we want God's leading or what we can come up with?