August 19, 2022

Almost from the very beginning of our son’s battle against cancer he has stated his conviction that God is going to heal him. “But,” he adds, “I have to go through the process to get there.” In other words, it’s not going to be an instantaneous healing.

“Going through the process;” that’s the part we don’t like to hear. We want God to step in with a celestial magic wand that makes everything better…right now! It doesn’t often work that way. In Exodus 5, Moses stands before Pharaoh with the message God had given him: “Let my people go!” If Moses thought deliverance would be a cakewalk, he got a rude awakening when Pharaoh decreed that from now on when his Hebrew slaves were making bricks, they would have to find their own straw for binding. Oh—and they were to maintain the same quota of bricks. God had told Moses Pharaoh would be stubborn, but the Hebrew leaders were taken aback by this news. This was an unexpected setback.

Here’s truth: things often get worse before they get better. Our present circumstances and setbacks don’t necessarily reflect the ultimate outcome. In the Biblical Exodus story, the Hebrew overseers complained to Moses about their worsening situation because they hadn’t themselves heard from God. Their knowledge of God was second hand, and second hand knowledge is never adequate for first hand problems. Remember that: Second hand knowledge is never adequate for first hand problems.

We can only go through the process  when we believe more in the ultimate destination than in our present distress. That only happens when our relationship with Christ is more real to us than our crisis. The reason we so often fail at the process is because we don’t have a living relationship with the One who is taking us through it.