Today’s passage is Exodus 2:11-25. When Moses had become a man, he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew. The next day he intervened in a fight between two Hebrews but one of them taunted him with the murder of the Egyptian. Moses ran away to Midian, helped a priest’s daughters water their sheep because shepherds tried to chase them away. He married one of them, Zipporah, and had a son, Gershom. Back in Egypt the Israelites groaned under their forced labor and God heard their cries.
Why does Moses seem to be a self-appointed helper?
Why does God take so long to consider the plight of the Israelites?
“God acknowledged them”(25)
Sometimes I’m as thick as a brick and can’t see the nose on my face or the forest for the trees.
I also forget a lot of things. Both of these habits are related.
I forget because I don’t want to be inconvenienced by remembering something I don’t want really want to do. I’m self-centred.
I don’t see things because by seeing them I’d have to act on what I see.
I have a strong streak of irresponsibility.
My biggest example is my denial of my first wife’s alcoholism.
I didn’t want to see it, so I denied it existed.
That way I didn’t have to take any responsible and helpful action.
For just over a month now, I have avoided responsible fatherly action towards my daughter.
I saw she was ill-mannered, undisciplined, disorganized and lacked salvation.
I knew what I wanted to do with her and for her but I didn’t do it.
I chose to periodically remind her to do her homework, be polite, pick up her clothes, eat breakfast, come to church, and a few other things.
But I didn’t have a plan of action of how to help her correct some serious problems that will only get worse once she goes back to the undisciplined home in America, problems that, if left uncorrected, will undermine her development and lead to hardship and heartache.
And if she has not accepted Jesus before she leaves and her plane crashes, will I see her in heaven?
I’m a planner and organizer by nature, yet I made no plan for my daughter’s spiritual, personal and academic health.
That is my sin as her father.
Tonight my wife called me to account.
What was my plan? she asked. I had none.
I made Tess thirteen years ago, but I had no plan for her.
Now I have her with me for a little over a month more.
What can be done in that time?
Although I won’t know until we attempt it, I do know what needs to be done.
Maybe five weeks of consistent training, QT sharing, and praying with her will effect a godly change. I pray so.
With my wife’s help, I will make a plan of action in the next days and then put it into effect.
My daughter is my responsibility and I’ve long shirked my duty to her.
Application: to prayerfully and diligently create a plan of loving action for my daughter’s salvation and discipline.
Lord, let me not shirk my parental duty any longer. Give me your Spirit of courage and guidance.
