Most of us are familiar with the events of Numbers 20 at Kadesh. The Israelites were whining and murmuring (once again) because there was no water.

We can see here that Moses started out well…He and Aaron headed straight to the tent of meeting and fell on their faces before the LORD in prayer. The glory of the LORD appeared. The LORD gave them clear directions. But then what happened?

Hmm…Moses didn’t finish so well there, did he?

I can see myself in that. I start off well and for various reasons don’t always end up finishing well. My flesh takes over…

I also know I’ve had times I’ve been tempted at times to hit the rock, when I was only to speak to it.
I must say I have spoken to the rock when I’ve only been supposed to speak to it.
I lost patience and did not trust God to work in His way and in His time.
I reaped what I’ve sown.

I know I’ve been tempted in recent days to hit the rock, when I’m only supposed to speak to it.
I know how easy it would be to hit the rock. Too easy.
I’ve been close to hitting it…very close…too close.
I’m in danger of losing patience and not trusting God to work in His way and in His time.
LORD God, guard my mouth, hold my hand back. Help me to trust You to work in Your way and Your time.
Help me to be obedient to Your commandments.

(That’s not my main emphasis today here, yet these are things I’ve been struggling with once again, so I’m including them here…)

We know the rest of Moses’ story. Because Moses struck the rock twice instead of speaking to it, God spoke these words to Moses:

Any time we don’t do things in God’s prescribed way, the LORD is not hallowed and there will be consequences for that…Yes, God is gracious to us, and He uses all things (even our sins) for our good and His glory, yet it is true that we will reap what we sow, and, as a result, there may very well be dire consequences (e.g.- consider David’s sin with Bathsheba and the ensuing cover-up).

If we stopped right there and focused on the fact that Moses wasn’t able to lead Israel into the promised land, not even to put a foot there, this would be a very depressing story…(Yes, I know Moses ended up there at the Transfiguration…)

I know if I were Moses I would be tempted to say, “Ok, LORD, that’s enough. If I can’t get into the promised land, why bother?” (self-centered much?)

I will confess to you that my promised land is revival coming to the Church. And I can too easily make that an idol.

If I knew I would never see revival come in my lifetime, I know I would be tempted to say, “Ok, LORD, that’s enough. If I’m not going to see revival, why bother? Why bother if I won’t get to cross over Jordan?”

(Yes, I know Moses did pray to the Lord about his not being able to go into the promised land in Deut. 3, see more below.)

However, that’s not the attitude we see in Moses after Kadesh. After his disobedience in hitting the rock, in spite of the LORD’s clear proclamation that Moses would not be going into the promised land, we find Moses picking up in obedience to the LORD’s commands.

Here are a few instances. (You can go and read the surrounding context of each.)

(I’d just like to note that this pattern of obedience is only a continuation of Moses’ previous obedience to the LORD prior to hitting the rock at Kadesh. From the day at the burning bush (yes, granted, there were some questions then, I know…), to speaking to Aaron, to the encounters with Pharaoh, to the preparations for the Passover, to the Exodus from Egypt, to the Red Sea, to Marah, to Massah and Meribah, to Mt. Sinai, to the golden calf, to the tabernacle preparations, to the priestly garments, to disciplining the rebellious…which really hit close to home, his own sister Miriam, brother Aaron and nephews Nadab and Abihu, and so on…)

As we look at those verses above, we can see that Moses’ obedience doesn’t just involve Moses, but also involves other people and very often the whole nation of Israel. What would have happened if Moses just decided to chuck it?

Though our obedience always has implications, let’s consider what would have happened to those countless other souls if Moses hadn’t obeyed as God commanded. We certainly must be humbled and sobered when we consider the wide-reaching and long-term implications of our disobedience (and obedience).

Among God’s commands after Moses’ disobedience at Kadesh, there are a couple I find really challenging.

First is the command of the Lord to Moses to strip his deceased brother Aaron of his garments and put them on Aaron’s son Eleazar. Miriam had died not long before the incident at Kadesh and now Aaron dies. How devastating would that be?

Yet what was Moses’ response?

Second is the command to Moses to commission his successor, Joshua:

Moses’ response?

Moses did as the LORD commanded.

Um, yeah, I admit I’d have a tough time with that one. Well, I don’t think it wouldn’t be that bad if I knew I was going to enter into the promised land…But Moses wasn’t going, the LORD had made that clear – yet we see no hint of resentment or jealousy in Moses.

The LORD said it and Moses did it.

Will I? Will it be said of me:

I confess I still don’t have that kind of heart, or the heart of John the Baptist (well, really the heart of Jesus…Philippians 2…):

But am I, a servant of the LORD, to dictate to the LORD the terms of my service to Him?

I am praying God might circumcise my heart to do as He commands. May He give me sufficient grace when He places me in such situations. I am praying His Spirit might work in me so I might not be jealous but rather joyful, that I might be rejoicing rather than resenting…and I might willingly submit myself to serve the LORD however and wherever the He commands. I am praying my joy might be complete as I see others increase as I decrease.

As I was in my car today, I drove near the workplace of a friend who works because she has to; she would relish to be in my position. I don’t have to work outside the home; my husband has been so gracious and generous to me, and our God has been so gracious and generous to us in providing for all our needs and far beyond that. So as I considered that, God hit me with His divine 2 x 4, and I began to come to my senses and cry out (once again):

So what else would I rather be doing with my time than studying and teaching and blogging the Word of God and praying for revival?
What else is more wonderful?
Who else is more wonderful than You, Lord?
Don’t let me squander this opportunity You’ve given me!
Don’t let me waste my life!
Help me to finish well like Moses did!

These things have been weighing on my mind because of an account I recently read of Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ (ML-J) last days. This is in part what led to write the following in my last update:

I also have some things I’ve been contemplating about ministry which at first I found daunting, but God has allowed me to settle in and trust Him in those and ponder them in my heart for the time being and trust Him to show me what I need to know when I need to know it and to know that He never gives us more than He equips us to do.

Here’s Iain Murray writing of a conversation he had with ML-J less than a month before his death (“The Fight of Faith,” 773):

I scarcely ever recall ML-J drawing any parallel between his own ministry and that of any Christian figure of a past age. But one parallel which he did draw in conversation on February 5, 1981 is a striking illustration of what was uppermost in his heart. ‘I feel in many way,’ he said, ‘like Griffith Jones of  Llanddowror.’ The man to whom he hoped to possess a resemblance was a little-remembered figure, born in Carmarthenshire in 1683 and significant not so much for what he achieved as for what he did in preparing the way for others. Griffith Jones was ‘the morning star’ of the great awakening of the eighteenth century in Wales, the forerunner of the better-known men who were to follow. The comparison tells us a great deal. Dr Lloyd-Jones had yearned for something in his own day which, when he spoke these words, he knew he was not going to be permitted to see. But his mind was not on the question of how posterity would remember him, it was on the success of the gospel. I responded, ‘As you have often said, God’s calendar is not ours’, but, only half-hearing me, he went on: ‘I never thought it was going to take so long. I thought I was going to see great revival but I am not complaining. It wasn’t God’s time and this preparatory work had to be done.’ If he could die believing that he had been permitted to do something to prepare the way for better men and greater days, that was enough.

I read these words and started to weep. I’ve only had a burden for revival for just over a year and I’m already impatient…yet the Doctor had such a burden for years. As I read and listen to his sermons on revival, I sometimes cry; he’d even seen some revival in his first pastorate in Wales during the early 1930′s, but then nothing after that on any large scale, but he longed for more since he’d experienced first-hand in that congregation and in his own life. He was so burdened to see revival come to the Church because he saw the ruins. God has opened my eyes to those ruins and I am now burdened to see revival come in much the same way.

Like ML-J I am yearning for something because I’ve had a taste of it in my own life and have seen that in the lives of a few others. I don’t yet know if I’ll see wide scale revival in my lifetime. I’m over fifty now; I don’t know how many years I have left here, I don’t know when or if the Lord might choose to come down from on high with power to revive the Church. I don’t know when He might return to take us home. But I do know (and I’ve already known this deep down for a while now) that part of my ministry is a preparation ministry. When I read those words, they were hard for me to swallow because that was a reminder to me that I must have the grace to step aside and commission the Joshuas who are younger to take up the work, and I may very well not be allowed to cross over Jordan.

We see the account of Moses’ conversation with the LORD in Deuteronomy 3:23-36…Moses knew God was great and mighty, so he prayed he might be able to cross over Jordan.

26  But the LORD was angry with me because of you and would not listen to me. And the LORD said to me, ‘Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again. 27  Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and look at it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan. 28  But charge Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he shall go over at the head of this people, and he shall put them in possession of the land that you shall see.’

That’s serious stuff. The LORD was clear there.

I can’t ever demand I get to cross over Jordan, but only trust God’s goodness to me and to know He will not withhold from me anything good. If it is good for me to cross over Jordan, to see revival in my lifetime, I will see it.

My first concern must be with the glory of God and the success of the Gospel.

I will say that I know there are some Joshuas out there, and I get teary-eyed now as I think of them and mention that now. I am praying for many young people who don’t even know I’m praying for them. I don’t know what will come out of that, but as God directs me, I’m continuing to pray for them. I thank God for those young men and women, and I pray God give me the grace to minister with perseverance until my final breath, knowing full well I am doing preparatory work for the Lord to come. May God give me the grace to persevere, to plant and water the seeds God gives me, even though I may not see much of the harvest in this lifetime. Yes, I confess that I would love to see wide-spread revival, I would love to go over the Jordan into the promised land, but if that is not the Lord’s will for me, may I persevere in obedience until the very end, like Moses. So long as the LORD gives me breath may I cry out:

Isaiah 40
3  …“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4  Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5  And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

May it be said of me:
 

Karen did as the LORD commanded.

May it be said of all of us:

We did as the LORD commanded.

If I can die believing that I have been permitted to do something to prepare the way for better men and greater days, may that be enough for me!

 
In my last post I updated you and shared some of my prayer requests and how I was feeling pretty weary. Here’s a little excerpt from that:

With the driving time to get there, plus the time away from home, I had more time to read and had less time online. I finally finished “The Fight of Faith,” the second (and final) volume in Iain Murray’s biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. I hadn’t remembered that I actually began reading the book before Christmas, so I have slowly made my way through it; it’s around 800 pages, much of it packed with names, places, details, etc., all of which I have difficulty reading and processing.

God led me to a wonderful passage in the book (705-706) which was a confirmation of what I already knew regarding calling. (I will add here that Dr. Lloyd-Jones was speaking here to men in the ministry or in Christian leadership, and that he did not endorse women in pastoral ministry. By using his words here I don’t mean to imply that he did. I am not a pastor of a church, and I do not have a calling to pastor per se, but I wanted to make that disclaimer. Many people will take the Doctor’s words and use them out of context. I am using his words here as a general guideline to all of us, since we are all called to minister for God to the Body of Christ, we are all called to walk in good works, and we can all be discouraged in that. But I do want to make clear that along with ML-J, I agree that the call to the pastoral ministry is unique and distinct.)

I was already aware of these things through my own time in the Word and prayer and I have already read them elsewhere in ML-J’s other books and other places, and I’ve even written about them myself, but I really needed this timely reminder.

I hope and pray the Doctor’s words here might be a help to you today, or if not today, then some time down the line when you are depressed and doubting your calling. These words come from one of the Westminster Fellowship meetings held in 1977. (The Westminster Fellowship began in 1941 at Westminster Chapel and the meetings were held quarterly for the encouragement of pastors and other men in Christian leadership.)

Here’s the Doctor:

Aren’t these wonderful words?

Men in the ministry are sensitive men. I have met few others.

I’ve had many, many times when I have asked God, no cried out to God with great exasperation, “Why have you made me so sensitive?” By the grace of God, I’ve done that less and less, however, though I still find myself doing it every so often. How brutish I am. *sigh*

The Doctor’s words were (and are) a real encouragement to me. God knows exactly what He is doing with us. He has shaped us in our mother’s wombs. He has a purpose and plan for us and our temperaments can never limit His sovereign plan for us and He uses our temperaments to bring Him glory (as He uses all things!).

Start with the question, what is your calling? Why are you in the ministry?

Yes, exactly! We need to go back to the first things.

What is the object of the ministry? Is the church mine?

Woo! Stab! Pierce!

Why am I troubled? Am I concerned about my reputation? Why am I hurt? Our reactions are too often due to a wrong view of our calling.

Grrr! Those why questions get us right to the thoughts and intents of the heart, don’t they? Otherwise we remain off track and unable to put our finger on the real issue. We keep jumping around and we remain blinded to the real issue. And when we don’t see the underlying sin and selfishness there, then we can’t ever begin to mortify it or put it off, can we?

Paul’s concept of the ministry lay in his calling to be faithful. We should not make it a personal issue.

Oh, I know I too often make it a personal issue! O, that I would see the main thing is to be faithful, faithful to the One who is ever faithful and true!

Isolate, then, the fact of your calling.

Amen. That’s the beauty of having a calling. You can go back and look at that time, those verses, that whisper, whatever it was, and then stand with confidence in that calling in spite of your current feelings and circumstances. Isolate, then, the fact of your calling.  The fact. A calling is a fact. It’s not fiction. it’s rooted in the God who spoke that calling into your heart and soul.

We can go and look back at those Ebenezers, to those piles of stones we’ve set up. This is one reason I love journaling and blogging. It helps me to do that. I’ve also found that even looking through my iPhoto at the pictures of the places where God has met me has been very, very helpful in that.

I will add here that we need to go beyond isolating the fact of our calling to ministry, we need to go back to our calling to Christ in the first place. How He led us to Himself.

And for those of us who are married, we need to go back to our calling to our spouses. I can’t imagine being married if I did not have a clear calling to be married.

We also need to go back to those special times when God has met us in His Word or through others to encourage and strengthen us. I will reread notes, messages and e-mails at times, even blog comments.

We need to go back to God’s calling to us in our current churches (something I still want to write about, how God clearly led me to the place I am at now).

We need to go back and remember those times He has rejoiced our souls even in the darkness, and then to remember that even in all the hurts, to recall how His good hand has continued to be upon us and He has not allowed anyone to harm us (Genesis 31:7b). How He has done great things for us and has never left us or forsaken us even in the night seasons.

We need to have ways to go back and remember.

I will write dates by some of those special Scriptures in my Bibles. And in the past year or so, I’ve begun writing some special passages from Scripture or the saints or some assurances, encouragements or directives God has given in the front and back covers of my spiral notebooks, so they are easier for me to find. (Yes, spiral notebooks work. You don’t need any fancy journals.)

It is not your church or my church. It is the chosen people of God we serve.

Ouch! Oh, yes, this is too easy to forget. If we look at the people of God as God’s flock, as His people, isn’t that freeing for us as we minister? We know that the Lord God, the Redeemer, has a vested interest in the welfare of His people because His glory is all bound up with the Church herself.

We have got to see it all in the right perspective. Let us remember who we are. We haven’t entered a profession. We are servants of the living God!

Yes! The right perspective! We are servants of the living God! And living souls are at stake. If we could keep that straight it would do us well to keep us well grounded and rooted and keep us from getting off-track in so many ways. Not to serve ourselves, or even to serve others, but first and foremost to serve Him…as our Lord did.