God Do You Hate Me?

“God do you hate me?”

The question reverberated through my mind over and over as I gazed upon the mountain of challenges and obstacles laid in front of me. A financial strain that never seemed to dissipate, fresh health concerns, exhaustion from a particularly brutal season of day to day living with chronic illness, and there in the distance lies a much larger mountain of vision yet to be scaled. It is calling me.

“God do you hate me?”

Why tempt me so? My dream, my hearts desire, lay on the larger mountain yet I can’t even seem to transverse, by comparison, the foothills that lay before me. Why frustrate me? I have come so far yet I long for the peace and quiet that retreat might bring. The comfortableness of mediocrity and sameness. Yet you don’t allow that to satisfy me. You urge me onward.

“The LORD hates us”

These words resounded from a group who also were faced with significant hurdles. The Israelites were paused at the culmination of their journey through the desert awaiting entrance into the land that had been promised to them only to be shrouded with half truths of discouragement that left them wavering in there resilience to continue. The report?

“Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, ‘The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.’” (Deut 1:28)

Looking at the mountain before them they lost heart. What does one do when what seems ahead is so much harder then what one can manage? We are often told not to look at the past and to only look forward. Buried within this chapter we find how the recognition of our past can actually help us move forward. Moses in response to their fright responds with some compelling reminders.

“Then I said to you, ‘do not be terrified, do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.’ In spite of this, you did not trust in the LORD your God, who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way you should go.’” (Deut 1:29-33)

Moses is encouraging them to peer into their recent adventures with God. God delivered them from the Egyptians with signs and wonders, He brought them through the Red Sea, He carried them through the desert and cared for them as a father cares for his son, and He guided them to exactly where they found themselves at the moment, facing impending danger and conflict. Moses reminds them of all that God had brought them through. Each event in itself seemed impossible from the deliverance out of Egypt to the parting of the Red Sea to the provision of manna from the sky. But here they find themselves on the edge of something wonderful that God wants to give them and their memory lapses. They forgot that each one of those obstacles brought them fear. What should have been a familiar pattern, risk…fear…God pulls us through, fell prey to a much older pattern of hopelessness.

I fear I am much like the Israelites as they evaluated their obstacles without factoring God into the equation. I tend to escalate into those same feelings of hopelessness. I need to take Moses suggestion and remember:

- Just as God delivered the Israelite’s from their bondage to slavery, He has delivered me as well

- Just as God brought them through the Red Sea with miraculous signs, He has done miraculous things in my life also.

- Just as He carried them through the desert in their bleakest moments, He has carried me in mine.

- Just as He had provided for them, He too has provided for me. I have always had enough for each day He gave me.

- And just as God had something amazing on the other side of the obstacle that was before them, there is something marvelous awaiting me as well.

I press onward…..

"Life can only be understood backwards. Unfortunately, it must be lived forward." Kierkegaard