“Truly my soul silently waits for
God; from Him comes my salvation.”—Psalm 62:1
In our culture, one of the least
pleasurable things we like to do is to wait in line. We arrive at a doctor’s appointment on time
or a little early only to sit-and-sit-and sit in the waiting room. We go to the grocery store for just a few
things and get stuck in an endless checkout line. And there is the delay in the drive-through
lane at the bank or the fast-food restaurant.
It seems as though nobody in our culture likes to wait.
When we take our petitions to the
Lord in prayer, often, we bring our
human impatience with us. We frequently
make a request and expect an answer as soon as we say amen. If God does not immediately spring into
action, many people begin to think something like this, Well, I tried praying, but the Lord just did not do anything. Prayer does not really work. And then there are those who think that they
did not receive an answer to their prayer because the out-come was not what
they imagined it should be. So, they
begin to think that prayer does not work. I have always been fascinated with the
account in Scripture about the birth of Moses and how his mother went against
the king’s order to kill her male child at birth. Her
grace to wait is an encouragement to our faith.
And a man of the house of Levi went and took as wife a daughter of Levi. So the woman conceived
and bore a son. And when she saw that he was
a beautiful child, she hid him
three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she
took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch, put the
child in it, and laid it in the
reeds by the river’s bank. And his sister stood afar off, to know what
would be done to him. Then the
daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river. And her maidens walked
along the riverside; and when she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her
maid to get it. And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept. So she had
compassion on him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter,
“Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse
the child for you?” And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” So the
maiden went and called the child’s mother. Then
Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and
I will give you your wages.” So
the woman took the child and nursed him. And the
child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son.
So she called his name Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.”—Exodus
2:1-10
Even when it
seemed impossible to keep her child, Moses’ mother trusted in the Lord’s grace to keep him. When she no longer could keep the child
on her own, again she trusted in the Lord’s grace to keep him. She did
her part—she built an ark which is a symbol of God’s safe keeping and
protection. Then she put Moses in the
ark, and again she trusted in the Lord’s grace
to keep him. I think that in response to Moses’ mother’s
faith—God grace flowed prophetically back to her: Moses was returned back to his mother until
God’s appointed time came for Moses to fulfill his God appointed destiny, although
Moses’ mother may have wanted a different out-come for her son, she trusted in
God’s keeping grace when she gave
him back to Pharaoh’s daughter.
The
spiritual application that we can glean is: (1) We must trust in the Lord’s
grace to keep our prayer request even when we are impatient. (2) Realize that His grace is sufficient to
keep us and carry us through even when we want something different.
Prayer—Father I repent for being impatient for answers
and giving up when I pray and I ask You to forgive me. Lord,
cleanse me from all unrighteousness and restore unto me the joy of my
salvation. I purpose in my heart to
trust in Your grace at work in the petitions that I bring before You, in Jesus
Name. Amen.
