“Then Moses returned to the LORD and said, “O Lord, why have You brought harm to this people ? Why did You ever send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people, and You have not delivered Your people at all.”
Moses was really giving YAWEH a piece of his mind in this passage. God had spoken to him and told him to go and speak to the Egyptian Pharoah and that God would cause him to set the enslaved Hebrews free. Instead, when Moses met with the Pharaoh, the king kicked Moses out of the palace and ordered that the Hebrew slaves’ workload be increased. Instead of things getting better for the Hebrews, they got substantially worse.
Has that ever happened to you?
You make that decision to focus on paying off your credit card debt and then get hit with a major car repair bill.
You make that decision to focus on working through some issues in your marriage and then you and your spouse have a huge argument.
You commit to spending more time with your family but then your boss tells you that you are going to need to start traveling more.
You start taking concrete steps to launch your business and the bottom falls out of the economy.
Resistance is a powerful force. The next chapter of Exodus, though, has YAWEH repeating His instructions to Moses. God did not scrap His plan because things did not work out the first time. Moses was told to keep working. Resistance is overcome by movement. If you and I want to overcome the resistance that comes against our progress, the key is to not stop moving. Once we stop moving, we lose whatever momentum we have built up.
Steven Pressfield’s must-read book, The War of Art tackles this problem of resistance. Resistance raises its ugly head in many ways. One of the biggest problems with resistance, however, is its result. It can stop us in our tracks and produce fear to trying again.
Listen to Pressfield’s response to that: “Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
Understandably, Moses was scared to go back to the Pharaoh and repeat God’s demands. “My own people won’t listen to me anymore. How can I expect the Pharaoh to listen?” Moses pushed through his fears, though, and eventually led his people to freedom. Moses did not give up and a million people were set free.
How do you react when you meet resistance?
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