Weekly Word

Hi, friends! The past weeks I have really struggled with time management and taking the time to read the Bible as I should, but I finally got my life together enough to write this post! So at least that's something lol. Hopefully I will be better going forward as I decided to drop a class that was just stressing me out and taking all of my time.

The Weekly Word is a weekly post where I share what I've learned in the past week while reading my Bible each morning. I also use this to share my journey trying to be more faithful to God and His Word, as I think it is really important to share the truth of the struggle! Changing your schedule is hard. Making yourself get out of bed 20 minutes earlier is hard. Being consistent is hard. That is the truth, and there is nothing wrong with that! This is not a cute little hobby to post on your Instagram to show everyone how holy you are, this is a commitment to becoming closer to God and it is hard. I want to encourage anyone trying to do the same to continue and not feel like you are a failure just because you fall off of it for a week or two! God is always waiting for you to come back, and He is always proud of you for trying. He will always meet you where you are.

This week I learned:

It always gets worse before it gets better 

Have you ever felt forgotten? Or like God should have already fixed your problem by now, but for some reason He hasn't? I think we have all had experiences like this at some point or another in our lives, but we have to take faith that God does not forget His children or His promises. In Exodus 5:22-6:1 Moses is asking God why He has sent him to Egypt because it seems that his presence has done nothing but make life harder for the Hebrews. Moses' messages only make Pharaoh angry and cause him to increase the work load of the Hebrews. God has yet to rescue them as He has promised, so what is going on? But God reassures Moses that He will keep His promise and cause Pharaoh to let the people go. It just all has to be in His time. From our perspective it may seem like everything is falling apart and getting worse, but it has to get worse before it can get better. Our trials are always being used for God's purpose, and He is usually trying to teach us or show us something. So, it has to get worse before it can better, so we can see how far we have come and praise God for making it all work out for good. 

It is impossible for us to explain everything 

As God was sending the plagues to Egypt, Pharaoh kept refusing to accept the answer that the crazy things happening in Egypt were because of God. He was stubborn in that he did not know God, so he did not need to follow His wishes. He would call on his magicians and sorcerers to recreate the miracles that God performed through Moses, but they eventually came upon miracles that the magicians could not replicate. In Exodus 8:18 it says that the magicians were not able to recreate the miracle, so they saw and accepted that it was God. But, Pharaoh still would not accept this truth. This is a hard lesson for a lot of us to learn as well. We want to be able to explain things with our science and our reasoning, but sometimes things are just miracles. We can't explain them  because the answer is God.

God is always gracious 

No matter what we have done, what we are running from, or what we are trying to hide- God always has grace ready for us. This is something so important to see- that God loves us no matter what. He is full of grace for us, and He never runs out. If you watch the trials with Pharaoh God always sends Moses to give Pharaoh a warning of what is to come and a choice. If he would just choose to let the Israelites go, the plague that he is being warned about would not come to pass. Yet, he still keeps the Israelites in bondage, and God must send the plague. God even has enough grace to take away the plagues when Pharaoh asks! Pharaoh will always call Moses to pray to God to stop the plague, and Moses will. God stops the plague every time when He is asked. That is grace never-ending because Pharaoh never opens his heart to God, and God knows that he will not. Yet, he extends grace to him anyway in his time of need. We serve an awesome, loving, giving God. 

We always want God to fix things, but we don't want to have to follow what He tells us to do 

I don't know about you, but this one hit me right in the heart. I read this passage where Pharaoh is finally letting the Israelites go after years of slavery, and he asks Moses to bless him! He has enslaved these people, blatantly not listened to God, and broken his promises multiple times, yet here he is commanding Moses to bless him. Who does he think he is?? But don't we do the same thing all the time? We want God to fix our lives and make it easy, yet when He gives us instructions on what to do we don't want to do it. We don't want to have to do the hard stuff to get the promises of God, we just want God to give them to us with no strings attached. We want to get to do what we want, decide when and what God is going to do for us, and then go on with our lives after everything is back in order. But that's not how it works- God didn't call us to easy, He called us to a faithful walk with Him. 

Thank you so much for reading! I hope that some of these lessons have meant something to you, and that it can give you a little encouragement to start the week! I believe in you if you are in the same boat as me, struggling to stay consistent in your walk with God! You can do this! Have a great week!