Word2U: Comfortable to Bondage?

23 September 2007

And the foremen said to them, “Let the Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.”

Ex 5:21

It is possible for people to become so accustomed to their bondage that they resist efforts to free them. The Hebrews had been slaves in Egypt for four hundred years. Slavery meant that they were not free to do God's will or to go where they wanted. Moses had come to tell the Israelites how they could experience freedom, yet they were more concerned about the reaction of their taskmasters than they were about pleasing God. For them to be free would mean that the pharaoh they were serving would be angry! It would mean that the Egyptians they had served all their lives might attack them. Freedom from their slavery did not seem to be worth the hardships they would inevitably endure.

When God sets out to free us, there will often be a price we will have to pay. Grief can be a terrible form of bondage, yet we can become comfortable with it. We can grow so comfortable with fear that we don't know how to live without it. As destructive as our sinful habits and lifestyle might be, we may prefer living with the familiar, rather than being freed to experience the unknown. We may recognize the harmful influence of a friend but choose to reject God's will rather than offend our friend.

As incredible as it seems, the Israelites were angry at Moses for disrupting the life of slavery to which they had grown accustomed. Have you been lulled into a comfortable relationship with your bondage? Do you fear change more than you fear God? Are you willing to allow God to do what is necessary in order to free you?

If you want career success - Stop Running from your purpose

The main principle to career success is one that many of us will have to learn the hard way. In fact, initially upon reading the title you may have wondered why you would want to run from your purpose. That is a good question. The truth is that we all have dreams and goals. I like to think that God places dreams in our hearts as a path to serve Him and others. However, some of us will never realize those dreams until we realize a very important truth: God’s ways of fulfilling those dreams may be very different from how we would fulfill our dreams if everything were left solely up to us.
Many times, as our dreams grow dimmer over the years, we, too, may begin to wonder how our current circumstances - our present job, our current boss, our career, our employer - are remotely connected with what we might have thought we were supposed to be doing in life. We look around us and say, “This can’t be right, my purpose isn’t this, I’m supposed to be doing ________.”
However we may fill in the blank, the result is the same. We come to a crossroad that is a test of faith when the dream we believe God placed in our hearts doesn’t line up with our current situation. For many of us, that is when we begin to run from our purpose and sabotage our career success.
The subtle truth is that we are often unaware that we are actually running from our purpose. We may even talk ourselves into believing that we are actually running toward it. This is how it works: We have an idea of what our dream job or dream career is supposed to be, and we then proceed to do everything that is humanly possible to achieve it. Of course, some glitch always gets in the way, and we work hard to either remove the glitch or to get around it.
But then, some other barrier pops up, and we do our best to beat it down or push it aside, all the while using up years of energy, emotion, knowledge and power to get this dream to work out our way. But when it doesn’t, we become frustrated, and we wonder what else we need to do to move our career along. We toil and toil and may have a few successes, but even those aren’t what we thought they would be. How does this fit in with career success? When we begin to see our present circumstances as divinely planned by God, we approach those circumstances differently.
You may be in a position today that isn’t the exact job that you want to spend your life doing. That’s OK. However, don¹t make everyone around you suffer by being bitter or having a negative attitude simply because you believe that you are supposed to be doing something else. Instead, accept the fact that there are aspects to your job that may prove in the years ahead to have been very valuable to you. Are you learning to be more detailed? Is it a chance to become better at building relationships? Or maybe you have a need to learn patience to wait on God¹s timing. No matter what the situation may be, it’s all for your good. Stop running from what can be used by God to prepare you for His purpose for your life.
Jesus did not enter into full-time ministry until He was 30 years old. However, from the very beginning, He knew what God’s purpose was for His life. While on a trip with his parents when He was only 12 years old, He was unknowingly left behind because he had been busy teaching and discussing deep spiritual matters with the leaders of His time. I’m sure that part of Him was anxious to get started with the purpose for His life. However, when His mother questioned Him about why He had remained behind to talk when it was time to return home, He dutifully returned with His family and began learning the skills of a carpenter. It would have been easy for Him to ask, “What on earth am I going to need to know how to do this for?” But instead, He became an expert carpenter and worked diligently serving His customers until it was time for His ministry to begin.
What about you? Are you viewing your current position as a part of God¹s plan for your life at this time? Or are you still debating whether it could possibly be something that escaped God’s attention? One of the best truths every written is found in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
This tells us that when we are in a relationship with God, He calls us to something specific that is meeting a specific purpose. It also tells us that everything will work together for good. This doesn’t mean that each single event will look good to us. Each job that we have may not in and of itself seem good to us. But what we are assured of is the fact that at the end of the day, when it¹s all said and done, everything will work out for good. Not only will it work out for our good but also for the good of anyone else whom God chooses to involve who are also called according to His purpose.
What this also points out is that it’s not all about us. Instead, it’s all about God. How He wants to use our lives and our jobs or careers will be a blessing to us, but it will also be a blessing to others, as well. Think as if you were viewing a really great classic film and in the middle of it the main character began to go through some difficulties; you wouldn’t jump up, leave the movie, and say, “I have seen enough, this movie isn’t going the way I think it should.” No, it’s more likely that you would stay glued to your seat, wondering how on earth the character was going to get through that plot twist, and remain until you saw how it all worked out.
Well the truth of the matter is that we don’t have a choice when it comes to the purpose God has planned for us. We may try to run from it, and we may think we have even succeeded for a while, but all we will have really done is taken the scenic route to the place God wants us to be. And it will be the place we will want to be once we get a grip and realize that it’s all good

Realising Your Dreams

No matter where you are in your life... The life of a dream is no different than the life of a Christian. A dream is born, it grows, it matures, but ultimately it must die, be buried, and return to its creator before it can truly realize its full glory and potential. There is always a time in my life when my dream was in the stages of death, burial, and submission to God. I took great comfort in knowing that when I submit my dream to God, when I truly let it go and return it to my creator, it will bloom forth like a flower in the desert. If you have a dream, but it seems that your dream cannot be fully realized -- if you are frustrated or discouraged and feel that your dream is withering -- You will discover what Jesus said, “unless a corn of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone -- but if it dies and is buried, it will bring forth much fruit.” Give your dream to God. Return your dream to its source. Let it die and be buried in the rich soil of God's fertile field. You will find that by giving your dream to God, it will exceed your wildest dreams. Whatever preconceptions you have about your dream, give them to God. Whatever hopes and ambitions you have for your dream, give them to God. Whatever selfish attachments and aspirations you have for your dream, give them to God. You will discover that your dream cannot flourish by your will or by your efforts. But in the hands of Almighty God, your dream will grow into a mighty and powerful force, greater than you could have ever thought or imagined.

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Comfortable to Bondage?

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