Are You a Warrior or a Whiner?

Imagine being brought up in a world where you could not do what you wanted to do, or go where you wanted to go. You lived in constant fear of being killed, or your children being taken away from you. You worked your fingers to the bone, all for someone else’s gain. This is what the Israelites lived under in Egypt for 430 years. 

Sometimes we stay stuck in the comfortable, we don’t want to move forward into all that God has for us. We have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

The Israelites had cried out for God’s deliverance for generations. They had been in slavery for 430 years, (and we get anxious and frustrated when we have to wait for a few months for God to answer our prayers). 

After 430 years in captivity, it must have felt like God had abandoned them, but He was about to answer! God heard their cry. There were several generations who had been crying out for deliverance, and even though they didn’t get to physically be a part of seeing it, their cry was heard. 

God Hears Your Cry

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 with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

Sometimes it can feel like God does not hear, because we don’t get to see the answers to our prayers the way we think they should be answered. We don’t always have the answers, but God does hear. We just have to look forward to His plan, and trust that He does hear our cry. 

Don’t Bite the Hand of Your God-given Guide

When Moses came back to Egypt to deliver the Israelites, he went to Pharaoh and told them the message from God, to let his people go.

But Pharaoh answered by increasing their labor, and took away their supplies to do it. They would have to go and find their own supplies to get the job done, but he would not increase the time they had to do it. After this, the Israelites grumbled against Moses: 

Exodus 5:21

and they said, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”

Moses was just doing what God had asked him to do, and he got the brunt of the Israelites' anger. In Exodus 6:6-9, Moses gave his people a promise from God—that He would deliver them. But they refused to listen because of their harsh labor. 

The Israelites allowed their bitterness and disappointment to keep them from listening to the one God had sent to deliver them. It would be very easy for us to look at them from our vantage in time and say, “How silly! Why wouldn’t they listen?” But when we go through difficult and disappointing times, do we stop listening to the people God has put in our lives to help us? Do we stop listening to the promises to God? 

God had to get them to let go of their lives in Egypt. They were so used to living in a slave mentality and conditions. Sometimes He has to break us out of our comfortable little molds so that He can move us into our Promised Land!

Staying Comfortable Does Not Give You New Life

After getting out of Egypt, the Israelites were backed up against the Red Sea. Pharoah changed his mind (again) and decided to go after them and bring them back. Take a look at what the Israelites said: 

Exodus 14:10-12

As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”

Let God make you uncomfortable. Through all of this, the miracles and trials they saw, God was trying to teach them to trust in Him. He is the One who provides. He had to get them to stop striving, as they had done for generations, and lean on Him. 

Life is not going to be comfortable…ever. The more you seek your own comfort, the less you will find it. But the more you seek Him, the more you will find peace that passes all understanding—even in the midst of trials. 

Be Careful What You Ask For

There were several moments that the Israelites accused Moses of bringing them out to the desert to die. They longed to go back to Egypt, where they had “pots of meat and all they could eat”, but they were in bondage. They longed to go back to what was comfortable, even though their labor had been harsh and bitter. (Exodus 15:24; Exodus 16:3; Matthew 6:28-34; Exodus 16;19-20; Exodus 17:2-3; Exodus 32:1-6; Numbers 14:20-35).  

Eventually, God gave them up to what they had accused Moses of. God said that the first generation of Israelites that had come out of Egypt would wander and eventually die in the wilderness. Because of their hard hearts, they would not get to enter His rest in the Promised Land. Their children, who they said would be left to die in the wilderness, would enter the Promised Land. He handed that first generation over to their own grumbling. 

It can be easy to read these kinds of passages and think that God is being unfair. Why did He let His wrath pour out on His people? Well, it says in Exodus that the Israelites had grumbled against him 10 times, even making a golden calf to replace Him! He was very patient with them. Eventually, He had to hand them over to their own fleshly, complaining, and evil desires. 

God's wrath is aimed at a specific target: at sin and everything that comes with it. So don’t stand in front of the target! 

Seek Him first. Are you seeking what He wants or what you want first? God is going to provide your needs. Are you okay with the discomfort that comes with that or will you continue to have a grumbling, ungrateful spirit?

Often the overflow of the heart indicates its condition. Let’s determine to be the kind of Children of God that walk with the heart of a warrior - and let’s leave the whining in our past!