Eleven years of listening.
That is what he would call it if he were being generous with himself, and I am inclined to be generous with him, because he has not been lazy about it and nobody could say he had.
He has waited on God about one particular thing for eleven years, and what he has been waiting for is a sentence.
Something said. A word, an impression, a verse standing up off a page, a knowing. Something he could carry out of the room and act on, because he is not a man who moves without knowing why, and he was raised to think that moving without a word is presumption.
So he has listened. Early, for years, in a cold kitchen.
And here is what he has done in eleven years about the thing itself: nothing. Not out of disobedience. Out of a conviction that doing anything before the sentence arrived would be running ahead.
He has a stick in his hand, so to speak. He has had it the whole time. He knows exactly what the practical next step is and he could do it inside a fortnight, and he has been waiting eleven years to be told to.
So let me ask you, out here where it is honest.
What have you been waiting to hear instead of doing?
He was told to use the thing already in his hand
There is a morning in Exodus with no water in it and a very great many thirsty people, and Moses is at the end of what he can manage.
He does what you would do. He goes to God about it.
And the answer he gets is not an explanation and it is not a promise about the future. It is an instruction involving an object he is already carrying.
I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink. So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.Exodus 17:6
Take the staff. He has had it the entire book. It has been in his hand at every single turn of the story.
Exodus 17 puts the whole answer inside a physical act with a stick a man was already holding, and the Spirit who went before that people in a pillar was in the striking and not only in the speaking, so a thing done with your hands has never been the lesser half of obeying.
Now let me say the careful thing, because I am not about to hand anybody a technique.
I am not telling you that doing something makes God do something. That is not in the passage and it is not in me, and anybody who sells you that arrangement is selling you a lever and calling it faith. The water came from God. It came from God through a rock, in front of witnesses, after a man swung a stick.
And I am not telling you the waiting was wrong. Eleven years of getting up early in a cold kitchen is not a wasted life, and I would not stand at a gate and say it was.
But look at what happened here, plainly.
Exodus 17 has God answering a man's cry with a job rather than a paragraph, and the Spirit was fully in that ordinary swing, which means you have been listening for the wrong shape of answer for a decade.
You were waiting for a sentence. You were handed a stick, and you have been holding it the whole time.
Now the turn, and it is not a shortcut and it is not a lever.
Do the next physical thing, and keep listening while you do it.
Notice that those are not opposites. That is the whole error of eleven years. You have had waiting and doing in two separate rooms, as though moving your hands would insult the listening, and Moses did both in the same minute in front of the elders.
Nothing here promises you an outcome. I do not know what happens when you do the thing, and neither does anybody who tells you they do.
Exodus 17 records the answer arriving through a stick a man already held, and the Spirit who led that people was in the swing as much as in the sentence, so the next practical step has never once been running ahead.
You are not being asked to stop listening. You are being asked to stop treating your hands as disobedience.
Declare this over yourself
Say these where you can hear yourself. Know what holds them up. This authority is not yours by nature, it is Christ's, and in Christ it has been given to you, so you speak as one representing the King. And you speak under His will, never over it. However He answers, and in whatever way He comes, the outcome is His.
- Waiting, you are a posture and you were never obedience by yourself. Exodus 17 answers a man's cry with a job and an object, and it does it in front of the elders so nobody could say it was private.
- Rule that says moving my hands is running ahead, you have kept a stick idle for eleven years, and in the name of Jesus you are struck out. The Spirit who went before that people in a pillar was in the swing and not only in the speaking.
- Lord, Exodus 17 says strike the rock and water will come out of it, and the water was Yours and the stick was already in his hand. I am holding the tool this morning, and I am listening and doing in the same minute for the first time in eleven years.
Exodus 17:6
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