I just want...

A friend of mine said to me, "I just want my house to sale."

Another, "I just want my debt to go away."

Another, "I just want someone to date, someone to love me."

"I don't want to hurt anymore."

"My want is healing..."

"I want out of this prison I'm in."

"I need help. I just want....."

"I want...."

"I just want....."

Don't we all think that about something  some time or another? We just want....... And most of the time, isn't our wait for our want a whole lot longer than we think it ought to be? Even when (especially when), we know that our want isn't only ours, but it's also His. We know that surely God's want is the same want as our want....! We're not wanting a bad thing. Our want is sincere. Our want is legit. Our want is right. Our want is good. Our want, we know, is absolutely His will.

One thing that I'm encouraged by during my prayers of intense pleading is found in Exodus chapters 2 and 3.

Watch it here with me:

Scene One: Exodus 2:23-25, "During that LONG PERIOD the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and He remembered His covenant... So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them."

God has seen and heard the oppression and groaning from His people. And as He looks, as He watches, as He focuses, as He listens, He's not only "concerned" for them, but He decides to do something about it!

Camera pulls off from Scene One and re-focuses in on Scene Two: Exodus 3:1-11.

Zoom into: God finding Moses with his flock in a desert in Midian. He lights a fire in a bush without burning it to get Moses's attention. Then God tells Moses what He's come for and why. Because, He says, "I have indeed, SEEN THE MISERY of My people in Egypt. I have HEARD THEM CRYING OUT because of their slave drivers, and I AM CONCERNED ABOUT THEIR SUFFERING. SO I have come down to rescue them... and to bring them out of that land into a good and spacious land.... The cry of the Israelites has reached Me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go, I am sending You to Pharaoh to bring My people out..."

Then...

God spends the next however long trying to convince Moses that, indeed, yes, he really is the man that He wants to use to do what He wants done!

I always wonder how long Moses was the hang up???

Now, when I am crying out for this or for that, groaning in my oppression, in misery because of the "slavery" I'm in, pleading for God to hear and to heed and to help me... I remember the Israelites, and God's concern, and Moses out in his desert with sheep, and God's stubborn determination to convince His insecure servant to do what He's asking him to in order to help the one's in their need, the one's that are crying..... which at this particular moment happens to be me.

Honestly, that scene does it for me! I understand that sometimes in my delivery of something, that God is having to rearrange another servant to do as He commands in order to free me. AND sadly, sometimes, when I feel convicted of doing a thing, but I am wrestling with God because of my lack of wanting to (Job) or my insecurity (Moses, Gideon), I wonder if I am not playing the Moses role, while the Israelites are left groaning in their misery until I heed to His call? When thinking of it that way, when God sends, I surely want to respond and move faster.

May God move the mountains when we need for Him to. AND may He move the Moses' when they are the obstacles slowing the things that He wants to do! Especially when His "Moses" is me! Perhaps therein lies the lesson I need? :)