45. Words

Meditations in Ecclesiastes : 45 :  Wisdom with Words

Eccles 5:2,3 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words.

If anyone has the temerity to say the Bible isn’t practical, they have obviously never read large parts of it. Solomon has just counselled listening in the presence of God and now, before he actually comes to the subject of vows that he has in his mind, he gives a general warning about the way we speak in God’s presence. It is very much a continuation from verse 1 where he counselled listening. If you listen you don’t speak!

Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. An aspect or expression of sin, I believe, is stupidity, and a part of stupidity is thoughtlessness and therefore sometimes our rash statements before God as simply thoughtless and comes from remnants of the stupidity of sin left over in our lives from the past.  Probably the greatest example of a big mouth in the Bible is the apostle Peter. For example, remember the time when Jesus is explaining he will have to die, Peter launches out, “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” (Mt 16:22) Or there was the time at the Last Supper when Jesus wanted to wash the feet of the disciples: “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.” (Jn 13:8) You don’t say no to Jesus! He has a reason.

How easy it is to make surface or shallow commitments. It is one of the reasons that I am wary about commitment times at the end of a sermon. It is important to bring people to a place of decision but I wonder how often those decisions are shallow and the seed has fallen on ground that will not be long-term fruitful (See Mt 13:18 onwards).

Now having said this and having used Peter as an example, there is one instance where Peter’s rashness led him out into an experience no other human has ever had. It was in the midst of the wind on the lake and Jesus walked to them across the water and spoke to them. Observe Peter: “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.” (Mt 14:28) Do you ever have those times when God turns up and you find yourself saying crazy things? Sometimes it enables us to step out in faith like Peter did but sometimes it is something we later rue and don’t follow through on. Solomon’s warnings hold true.

Solomon obviously had this sort of thing in mind when he was writing his proverbs: “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.” (Prov 10:19). The more we speak the more likely we are to get it wrong!  But Solomon now gives another reason: “God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.” What does he mean? God is not human like us; His home is in heaven because He is the Lord and from there (implied) He sees all things and therefore He knows all things. So, you’d better be careful what you say because God sees and knows and knows the truth. To be on the safe side you’d do better to keep your words few (just like he says in Proverbs).

To conclude these particular thoughts, Solomon uses a comparison: “As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words.” First the comparison: dreams. Dreams, he says, naturally flow when we are worried. Similarly words naturally flow from a fool. Remember in this sort of writing, a fool is someone who is morally limited, and who lacks wisdom. Sit on a bus and listen to chattering conversations, go on Facebook and note the shallow chattering there, and go on chat rooms and see the multitude of words poured out there. I have given up writing in such places because I am aware that it is so easy to just pour out shallow words that really don’t touch the truth which is often far more complex than chat rooms allow. I used to write a weekly blog commenting upon the affairs of the world. I gave it up for two reasons. First, because it is so depressing commenting on the many negative things in the world and, second, because I came to realise that to make any meaningful comment that really touched on the truth meant that you had to cover so many points that you couldn’t do that with a limited length blog.

So Solomon’s warning comes to us: check out your speech – especially before God. Be careful not to just pour out meaningless words, words which we sometimes utter because we feel we will achieve something by them. Yet the truth is that they need to come out of the heart and need to be truthful, for that is what the Lord looks for.

43. What you say

Meditations in James: 43 : Beware what you say about others

Jas 4:11,12     Brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you–who are you to judge your neighbor?

A passage like today’s two verses is simple and straight forward, but we might wonder, why is James going off on another tangent?  Well he isn’t, but again we have to look at what has gone before in this chapter to catch the flow. Remember at the beginning of the chapter James was facing us with the inner turmoil that goes on within us because of not having surrendered everything to God (v.1-3). Then he implied that all these desires that had not been submitted to God were the same sort of thing that the rest of the world wrestled with in their unregenerate state, and he called us to side with God against the ungodliness and unrighteous attitudes of the world (v.4).  He then pointed out that God is jealous for a relationship with us (v.5) and longs to give us the grace we need for living, but can only give it to those who humbly seek him (v.6). Out of that came a call to come to God in submission, resisting the tactics of the enemy who would seek to draw us away (v.7), come with a right perspective (v.8-10) and God will lift us up. This has all been a natural progressive flow in his appeal and it is important that we see how one thing flows on from another.

So he has come to a point of appealing that we submit to God, and so what follows? It is important to see this! When our relationship with the Lord is established or re-established, it always has practical outworkings in respect of how we relate to other people. The vertical relationship with God ALWAYS results in changes to the horizontal relationships with people. You cannot have a real relationship with the Lord and it not have impact on the way you relate to people.  In passing we might consider how we relate to other people because, as the other side of the same coin so to speak, it is an indicator of the level of relationship we have with the Lord!

James, as a good pastor, knows this, that the Lord wants the expression of our relationship with Him to have an impact on the way we relate to people, and James has it in the back of his mind that he has already written to us about the use of the tongue as being the first outward indicator of how we are on the inside. Right, he says now, if you have submitted yourself to God, check now what is coming out of your mouth in respect of people, because your words now need to reflect your newly re-established relationship with the Lord.

This is a terribly important issue in Christian circles. See what he says: Brothers, do not slander one another. Brothers indicates that he is speaking to Christians, and his simple injunction is don’t say wrong things about other Christians. Now I’ve just suggested that this is a terribly important issue in Christian circles.  Listen to the chatter that goes on in church. Listen to the chatter that goes on between little groups of Christians. Here is the challenge from James. If you refer to your minister or leaders, or to anyone else in the church for that matter, are you careful not to offend on this point? ‘Gossip’ in the church is wrong chattering that pulls down people. Gossip does not look for the well-being and uplifting of people. Gossip is so often slanderous; it does not wholly speak the truth. Slander is speaking wrongly about others. If we give an opinion about our leaders or about others with whom we perhaps disagree, is it an opinion that puts down or does it uplift? What you speak is a reflection of what goes on inside you, and if you speak untruth, it is an indication of a weak relationship with the Lord, and you need to go back over the previous verses in this chapter because they obviously apply to you. But see what else James says about this.

He says, “Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges him speaks against the law and judges it.” What does he mean? Well today, as Christians, we are under one Law, the Law of love: “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Mt 22:37-40). If we slander other people, we are rejecting that Law, and putting ourselves above it. It’s like we make a judgment, “I don’t need to be bound by that,” and we put ourselves on the level of the Lawmaker, God! You’re not keeping the royal law of love, says James, if you speak badly of other people, you are judging it. God is the only one who can put aside the Law. An expression of our real relationship with the Lord is that we keep this law and love others, and if we love them we will not speak badly of them. It is that simple!

After all that we have said about the previous verses and how James calls us into relationship with the Lord, the way we speak about others will be the measuring stick for how real our responses to all of that have been. If we find ourselves speaking wrongly of others, we need to pull ourselves up, go back to God, submit ourselves humbly to Him and ask for His forgiveness. A relationship with God is a very practical thing in the Bible. Ensure it is also in your life.

32. Forked Tongue

Meditations in James: 32 : Forked Tongue

Jas 3:9-12      With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

We don’t seem to have many Western films these days, especially those showing American Indians, now referred to as native Americans, but when I was young it was the day of the Western and the ‘Indians’ were both warlike and noble. Thus they had codes of honour and truth was one of them.  When they encountered a white man who they believed was lying to them, they spoke the immortal phrase, “White man speak with forked tongue.”  The picture of a tongue that speaks two different things is a good picture and it’s one that James now picks up on in his teaching about the use of the tongue.

He has spoken of the tongue being the thing that directs our path through life, a thing that though small has the potential to wreak havoc, and yet a thing that is impossible to tame, and now he focuses on the ability we seem to have of being able to speak good and bad from the same mouth.  He starts off pointing out that Christians have this awful ability to praise God one minute and curse people, who are part of God’s design, the next.  Here we have our Christian on a Sunday morning, singing for all their worth, joining in the worship whole-heartedly and, in some circles, raising holy hands and perhaps even dancing.  When you look at them you think what a spiritual person they must be.  But follow them home, follow them into the school, college or workplace the next day, follow them through the week and watch what they do and watch what they say. Here they are in a discussion at home about the neighbours who they are roundly condemning for a variety of reasons. True, these may not be Christians they are talking about, but they are still part of God’s creation, and the sadness it that they haven’t come to know Jesus as their Saviour yet, but we don’t see it like that and so we demean them in our conversation.  It’s tantamount to cursing them.

Then there’s the conversation in the classroom or office about someone senior in the place.  We don’t like them, or they’re not very good at their job, and in our talk we pull them down.  We don’t feel sorry for them and we haven’t prayed for them, we just pull them down in our talking, and it’s tantamount to cursing them.

This, says James should not happen, and to put weight to that declaration he illustrates it.  Stop and think about it, is what he is implying.  If you have a spring of water, can pure water and salt water come out of the same spring? No, of course not!  And if we still haven’t got the message, he adds in a further illustration. Can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? No of course not.  These things go against nature.  They are not designed that way, and so it should be with the mouth. We should not be saying good things one minute and bad the next.

Solomon gave us an interesting proverb: “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” (Prov 18:21).  First of all he notes the power of the tongue.  With your tongue you can bring either ‘life’ or ‘death’.  You bring life by leading someone to the Lord, or by sharing His love with them.  That person is blessed by what has happened to them because of what you have said.  But you can say wrong things and lead people into low places of depression, anxiety, fear or even temptation.  You can lead them into a place of spiritual or even literal death, by the use of your tongue. But implies Solomon, depending on the direction of your heart, you will love that use of your tongue and as a result of using it in that way you will reap the fruits of that – either life or death.  If you joy in bringing blessing to other people by the use of your tongue, you will be blessed. If you enjoy using your tongue to pull down others, you will be cursed and will pull yourself down. But Solomon saw it as one or the other.  You cannot joy in both things, and in that he is saying the same as James.

Perhaps there is one further facet of this we should consider to ensure we are wise in our understanding.  Equated with this are truth and lies. For instance Solomon said, “He who rebukes a man will in the end gain more favor than he who has a flattering tongue.” (Prov 28:23). He saw that sometimes rebuking a person is a good thing. Telling someone off or pulling them up, for having done something wrong, is a good thing. We shouldn’t see the good use of the tongue as being only saying nice, comfortable words, because sometimes those words are not appropriate. If you flatter someone and in fact they have been doing wrong, then your words were not appropriate. Truth is a key element to be considered with our words. We should not be speaking truth one minute and untruth the next. Somehow we are to speak truth all the time. Perhaps that is why Paul refers to “speaking the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). Perhaps there are times when we need to seek the Lord for His wisdom (Jas 1:5) to know how we are to say corrective things that build up rather than pull down.

These are just a variety of ways that we can let ourselves down and fail the Lord. These are things He wants us to think through and work on. The tongue, as we have been seeing, has the potential to guide us, or bring destruction. It is only changed when our heart of changed and it should not be bringing good one minute and bad the next. Our tongue has the capability of speaking truth with love and bringing the wonderful love of God, and therefore His blessing in to many people’s lives. “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.” (Prov 10:11). May it be like that with us all the time! Ask the Lord to help you be that each day.

31. Tamed Tongue

Meditations in James: 31 : Inability to Tame the Tongue

Jas 3:7,8   All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

There is often perceived in men or women a pride that says, “We are the peak of evolution and we can do anything. We can harness energy, use technology, bring health and longer life. We can manipulate atoms and genes and even create life. We are the lords of the universe.”  They may not say it in so many words, but those are the sentiments that the pride of man brings out.  In daily life, especially when we are young, we wake up in the morning feeling good, the sun is shining and everything is going well, and we feel invincible. And then we speak unwisely and harshly, and the world turns grey as the ugly truth is revealed: I can’t even control my tongue!

So far we have observed James’ descriptions of the tongue as he shows us that although it is small it can determine our path. He’s also pointed out that although it is small it has the power to wreak havoc and destruction. The warnings are clear: if only we would learn to harness our tongue we could use it to bless and build, encourage and energise, congratulate and create. But there is the problem and it is that which James focuses upon now; we can’t control it!  He will go on to suggest what needs to happen but for now he focuses on this terrible truth.

People use their minds to train themselves to be able to do great things. They discipline and stretch their physical abilities to be healthy and strong, but when it comes to focusing on harnessing something as small as the tongue, we find it is a different thing.  Singers can control their vocal cords. Ventriloquists can produce words without apparently moving the mouth, but when it comes to the words themselves and the emotions that are behind them, we seem so often completely unable to be in control. Words come out we wish we’d never said, feelings were expressed that cause hurt and upset, and once out cannot be put back in the box.  James makes us think about the natural world.  We can capture and train wild animals that seem so large and aggressive, but when it comes to something as small as the tongue, we are helpless it seems.  The tongue seems to have a life of its own at times and it seems impossible to tame it.

There are so many self-help books on the shelves of bookshops today, even books on how to say things nicely, but however many books we read, on a bad day we realise we are still not in control of this small part of our body which, as James says, seems so full of restless evil.  We can start the day out, full of good intentions.  We can make New Year resolutions, but it doesn’t take very long for a situation to arise where we find our mouth speaking out strongly and hurtfully.  If we had a hidden TV camera team filming us all day and every day for a month, how many of the words that were recorded would we be happy to be seen on the small screen?  In seeing it being replayed, how many times would we regret the words and wish either that we had said nothing or had said it differently?  Perhaps it takes a wider judging audience to face the truth about ourselves. That is what James is trying to do, to get us to think about our speech and face the truth about ourselves, because until we do that we will not see the need and if we don’t see the need we will not turn to the Lord for His help.

That’s what Scripture does so often: show us our need, show us our potential in God, so that we go to Him for His life changing power.  That is James’  aim, and that is why we continue to consider these things.  But focussing on two verses gives us a limited view. Yes, it helps us see our need but it doesn’t explain WHY and it doesn’t give us answers. For the ‘why’ of our tongues actions we have to go back again to what Jesus said about our mouths: “For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Mt 12:34).  Yes, this is the truth.  The mouth reflects what is in the heart, what is there deep inside us. The heart is our state of mind and will. It is the innermost reach of our personality, the cause of what we think and feel. It is in many ways a mystery. Why do we have these inner inclinations, which sometimes conflict with what outwardly we’d like to be? Yes, when we think about it, we’d like to be cool, calm and collected, able to answer every unkind word from others with graciousness, able to respond to every hostile question with wisdom.  Yet, we find, so often it isn’t like that.  Why is that?  It is because our heart has not been changed.

At the centre of the New Testament teaching is the recognition that to be Christians we have to die to ourselves, we have to die to self.  The call is to put God first, then others next and ourselves last.  It sounds a good theory and when it works we find we are most blessed, but so often self pushes to the front.  The difficult truth is that the heart is only changed by difficulties. ‘Character’ is another expression of what the Bible refers to as the heart, the way we truly are.  Paul said, “we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character;” (Rom 5:3,4).  Our character is formed as we learn to endure in difficulties.  You’ll know how much the Lord has formed your character, how much He has moulded your heart, by the words that come out of your mouth when the circumstances are difficult and people are not being nice. At that point, your mouth will reveal what God has been able to do in you. Now there is a strange thing. It is only as He is able to do things in you, and that is determined by your willingness to let Him do it, and that is a matter of will. Don’t focus on the tongue. See it as a revealer of what you’re like inside, but having done that, ask the Lord to transform you on the inside. That’s what this is really all about.

30. Tongue Burnt

Meditations in James: 30 : Burnt by the Tongue

Jas 3:5,6 Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

There are two sorts of TV programme that don’t excite me. One is the morning TV where there is a studio full of people talking about a contentious part of life.  The other is so-called soap operas.  Imagine both of them without any sound.  First of all imagine the contentious couples debate if they, and the other participants, were dumb.  Nobody would watch it, would they, because it is the angry words spoken that stir people’s interests.  Imagine soap operas as real life dramas and imagine again the people being dumb.  Most of the ‘difficult situations’, that go to make up the interest of these ongoing television fillers, are what they are because of what the various people say.

Oh yes, the tongue is the instrument that has this devastating potential for causing upset and upheaval. Having just written about how the tongue guides our life, James now goes on to warn us of the tremendous power of the tongue.  Solomon was aware of this when he wrote Proverbs: “With his mouth the godless destroys his neighbor” (Prov 11:9) and “Through the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is destroyed.” (Prov 11:11) and “A fool’s lips bring him strife, and his mouth invites a beating.” (Prov 18:6) and “A lying tongue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin.” (Prov 26:28).  Note the things in that short list that the tongue is capable of doing: destroying a neighbour (presumably by slander), destroying a city (presumably by lies, deceit, and generally leading into unrighteous business deals), personal strife (probably by rudeness and verbal attack which invites retribution), and general hurt and ruin by harshness and flattery which deceives.

If you are a watcher of these “sort out the problems” morning TV programmes or of soap operas, next time think about what all the people are saying.  Observe where there are words that are attacking, words that are demeaning, words that are violent, and think how different the situation would be if the exact opposite sort of words were spoken instead.  James says, Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark and so watch and see how a few words can ignite a situation and cause hostility and upset and division and hurt and anger and….. the list goes on!  In families there are words that should never be spoken: “I hate you!” or “I wish I’d never been born!” or “You’re ugly” or “You’re stupid!”  Each one of these is a small spark that has devastating effects.  Once said they cannot be withdrawn and they set a fire of passion blazing which is not easily put out.

But James pushes it further.  He says, The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. That sounds awful!  Why is he using the analogy of a fire?  Because a fire is something out of control and capable of spreading destruction.  But why does he say that this fire is a world of evil among the parts of the body? Well we sometimes speak about how we ‘compartmentalise’ our lives, and he’s saying imagine our bodies like different compartments.  If you imagine the tongue as one ‘department’ in the running of your life, it seems that in so many people it is a department that is evil.  It may be the expression of the heart, but it is the visible, or rather audible expression of evil.  The mouth is the propaganda machine of the human body, that is able to reach out and influence or harm others by the words that come out.  It is seen in many people as evil, speaking out hurtful, harmful words.

But he goes on, It corrupts the whole person. If you corrupt something you spoil or mar it, you taint it or pollute it.   Speaking out words is very influential, and tragically most of us don’t realise this, so that when we put something into words it’s like it strengthens something in us.  While it only remains a thought, it is fairly powerless, but once we speak it out, it seems like it has the effect of spreading that negative right through us, so it is something that becomes more established in us.  If our lives were like a glass of clear water, when we speak negative, unkind, hostile, impure, unrighteous words, it is like black ink is being dripped into that clear water and it is polluted and no longer clear.  The words have the ability to change the life.  The heart was wrong, but the words established that wrong in a deeper, firmer way.

But James then piles on further pictures: It …sets the whole course of his life on fire. If the tongue is a fire, then the words are like flaming pieces that soar up into the air and where they land they spread the fire. As we’ve just suggested, when the words are spoken they affect the rest of the life. We used the analogy of clear water; James uses the analogy of fire.

Then he finishes with a strange expression: and is itself set on fire by hell. Can I use an analogy that I use often, that of anger? A person may use anger to get their own way, but that is unrighteous. Now if a person uses unrighteous anger regularly, then they open themselves up to Satan’s influence and he can press in on that person so that their anger flares up and is completely uncontrollable. Now the same thing is true of the tongue. Some people use the tongue to put down others, as a means of having influence over them, but this is unrighteous.  So what happens is that when they do this they make themselves vulnerable to Satan (and hell is just shorthand for ‘the powers of darkness and all that they bring’) and so Satan takes the fire (emotional words) that they have used, and blows on it so they become completely out of control.  What this person finds is that no longer can they control what they say; they are motivated or driven by these emotions which are beyond their control, and the fire burns and burns and burns until the person is destroyed. Did you realise the terrible power that is there in the use of the tongue and the forces of destruction that can be released by it?  Well think about these things.

10. God of Enabling

Lessons from Israel: No.10 : God of Enabling

Ex 4:11,12 The LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

So the Lord has shared with Moses His general plan – for Moses to go to Pharaoh and demand that he lets the people go to worship the Lord, but Pharaoh will refuse and then God will do signs and wonders so that Pharaoh will have to let them go. That’s the basic strategy. When Moses then started worrying about not being believed, the Lord gave him a series of miraculous demonstrations to perform – we only looked at the first one in the previous meditation. But Moses hasn’t finished with his ‘escape pleas’; we find, “Moses said to the LORD, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” (3:10) This always makes me laugh, it seems such a clear bit of communication which denies what he is saying.

Now, as we come to today’s verses, note again that the Lord doesn’t chide him. He knows this man and He knows that Moses really does need encouragement, which is why the Lord patiently explains some basics to Moses: I am God and I give people their abilities so don’t worry, I’ll help you speak. Jesus instructed his disciples similarly: “But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” (Mt 10:19,20) i.e. my Holy Spirit will give you the words when you need them.

I believe there is a very real lesson here for Christians who say, “I don’t know what to say” when it comes to giving a testimony or sharing the Gospel with others. The first thing to say in reply is, think about it and learn what you could say. It’s not an option to be silent. The church is called to be a witnessing community. Think about it, work on it, learn what to say. That bit you can do, but when it actually comes to it and you have an opportunity to speak, quickly pray and ask the Lord for help and then trust Him to give you words.  Remind Him – Lord you said you’d give me words to speak by your Spirit. Please do it now.

But the story doesn’t end there. Moses may have run out of excuses but he still doesn’t want to go: “But Moses said, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.” At this point we might legitimately wonder why the Lord bothered to call him, when the Lord knows that He was going to get all these excuses and refusals. But therein is the truth: the Lord does know Moses and does know that he can do the job like no one else. Even more He knows the sort of man Moses is going to become. This man is going to become one of the most famous men in history in what he achieves. Oh yes, the Lord knows!

So we find, “Then the LORD’s anger burned against Moses.” (3:14) Now I think most people don’t understand what is happening here. Can I give a personal illustration? We have several young grandchildren and I love them all very much. One of them we have once a week, while her mum does some coaching. This little girl who is about two and a half has a mind of her own. As much as possible we say ‘Yes’ to her but there are times when ‘No!’ has to be said. The other day when she was with us, my wife was having to stop her doing something and she resisted and was just about to throw a tantrum. Sitting along the table from her, I just cleared my throat loudly. Instantly the possible tantrum was gone and she complied. What had just happened? Her granddad, who always appears loving and gentle to her, suddenly appeared angry and fearsome. Was I? No, I am still the same loving grandparent but anger appeared the name of the game.

So now Moses gets the same treatment but see what the Lord actually says: “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and his heart will be glad when he sees you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him.” (3:14-16) How might we summarise that? OK Moses, if you don’t want to speak we’ll get your brother to do the speaking but you’ll still be the one who directs him! Isn’t that amazing! We might have given up on Moses but the Lord knows Moses’ potential and He doesn’t give up on him. He accommodates him!

There’s a big lesson here. We see it elsewhere in Scripture as well, in the story of Deborah and Barak (Judges 4, esp. v.8,9), where second best is accepted. The Lord will provide for us if we will go in faith, He is the Lord who will enable, but if we keep on opting out, He’ll take another course which still involves us, but isn’t as good as the original option. Please, let’s learn the lesson. God WILL enable you. If He puts something before you, He WILL enable you to do it: “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” (Phil 4:13). Amen!