Jan 27 Ex 15:22-18:27

And so starts the complaining! Complain, complain, complain. I know I'm guilty too but boy when you read about other people doing it, it's a great reminder to knock it off!

They sound like a bunch of kids! I can almost imagine: "Are we there yet?!" "I'm hungry." " This water tastes icky!" "I'm thirsty!" "Moses- he looked at me!" "Well, he looked at me first" "Nuh uh" For the most part we can see how their complaining is pretty 'normal' and 'human'. But to say they would have been better off having died in Egypt? Now that's pretty drastic. But isn't that just how we are? Especially when we think of Egypt as being reprentative of sin. As soon as it gets hard, we think of our old ways.....and think, "Well it really wasn't that bad".

But despite everything, God supplies all their needs. And they still try to manipulate it so they can save some.

With all that complaining and not following instructions, Moses must have had an awful lot of opportunities to get offended. They were constantly grumbling against him. He would have been tempted many times to get angry, bitter and resentful. Luckily, most of the time he took his complaints to the Lord and stayed on task. I just watched Joyce Meyer this morning and I loved what she said, "Offense is the bait of Satan". It actually comes from the greek word (scandelon) used for the bait hung above a trap. When we get offended we fall into his trap, get bitter and angry and it affects our relationship with the Lord and with others. So we have to remember (I'm talking to myself too!) to take our complaints to the Lord and stay on task and refuse to get offended.

The other great lesson was from Jethro. Moses' father in law. He told Moses he can't do everything, so it's OK to delegate. Like everything, this is all about balance. Some people try to do everything and can't delegate anything and others delegate everything possible. In delegating the things that didn't require his attention he was able to focus on the unique job called him to do. He didn't sit around eating bon-bon's, he still judged the difficult cases and did everything else God called him to do.