Why is it SO hard?

I’ve had the same conversation over the last few months with several different people.  The question that invariably has started these conversation is:  if achieving a goal is incredibly difficult, does that mean that God is using circumstances to let us know that it is not His will?

I must emphatically answer NO, NO, NO!!!!

This answer is not based upon my desire to pursue a goal despite multiple indications that it is going to be very difficult to achieve that goal.  This answer is based upon God’s own word.

Looking back at many of the major events in the bible, we see many, many, many examples of God’s people doing EXACTLY what they are supposed to do and encountering EXTREME difficulty.

Let’s consider just one example for now:  Moses. 

First, his mother had to release him, or he would be killed, as required by the Pharoah.  This could not have been easy, especially since she had to place him, a tiny 3 month old baby, into a basket, place that basket into the Nile and trust God to do the rest.  I am no wildlife expert, but a brief internet search revealed that wildlife common in the Nile valley currently includes many crocodiles and hundreds of years ago included hippos and lions.  Not exactly what I would like my 3 month old to be encountering.

Fast forward a bunch of years (yes, I am very exact).  Moses has murdered a man, run away from his home land in fear of the Pharoah, who wanted to kill Moses for killing that man, gotten married and lived in a foreign land for several years.  Finally, God tells Moses to go back to Egypt (where he had been a wanted man) and tell the Pharoah to let the Israelites go.  Moses, being sane and a little disobedient, immediately responded by telling God no and giving him a plethora of excuses, in effect saying:  God, what you are asking is too hard; I don’t have the status to appear before the Pharoah, no one will believe me, and I cannot speak well on top of everything else.

Of course, none of this was news to God (amazing how God already knows our weaknesses before He asks us to do something, isn’t it?).  Finally, Moses even says to God, send someone else and God  tells Moses that He will send Moses’s brother, Aaron with him, but not in his place. 

So I can’t recap the entire story here, it would be way, way, way too long (but it is a great story and if you have not read it recently, or ever, I would encourage you to read Exodus, Chapters 1 – 13), but Moses ends up going to the Pharoah 12 times (if I counted correctly).  TWELVE times!  Not until Pharoah had made life miserable for the Isrealites, himself experienced plagues of flies, locusts, and boils, plagues on his livestock, hail storms, water turning into blood and the death of all of the firstborn sons and firstborn male animals that were not protected by the blood of a sacrifice, did he finally agree to let the Isrealites go.

I have to say that never, never, never, not even once, do I think that Moses encountered the Pharoah’s refusal, not once, not twice, but TWELVE times, because it was NOT God’s will that Moses be doing exactly what God Himself told him to do.  God was accomplishing His purposes.  He was demonstrating his sovereignty.  He was preparing Moses for an even larger battle ahead.  He was working to make the Egyptians so sick of the Isrealites that they would literally PAY them to leave.

Sometimes, things are just plain old hard.   Even the things that God is calling us to do.  Sometimes, we don’t know why they’re so hard.  But one thing I can say with certainty is:  just because it is hard, does not mean it is NOT God’s will.

I wish I could say that I have a fool proof way to figure out if something IS God’s will, but I don’t.  There are indicators of God’s will and others, with much more knowledge than I, have written well on the subject, but I myself am not an expert on determining God’s will.  I do know that God NEVER calls us to do something that He has clearly forbidden (adultery is an example of one of those things).  I also know, though, that sometimes good things are NOT what He is calling us to do, sometimes He is calling us to do the BEST thing, which may be very, very, very hard. 

Sometimes, we don’t always hear what God is calling us to do and we can get it wrong, but please, please, please, don’t give up just because circumstances are not working in your favor.  Ask God about what you’re doing.  Ask Him to give you confirmation of the path that you are on, even if it seems like you should be exiting immediately. 

If you are one of those people who believes that following God means that life will be easy and will be smooth sailing, please take some time to read about the journeys of the people that God has used before.  Ask yourself if Paul’s life was smooth sailing.  Read about Joseph (in Genesis 37 and 39-50) and see if his life seemed easy after his brother’s threw him into a pit and sold him into slavery, but then see what God accomplished for an entire people through what Joseph experienced.

We are only humans.  We don’t always know what God is doing (and sometimes, but only sometimes, I am glad, because to know what lies ahead would probably scare me to death, but I think that I want to know).  We may not always be around to see the ultimate result of God’s work through the difficulties that we encounter, but we can take heart when we feel like asking the question “Why is it SO hard?” because God is  working and He will use us, if we say yes and keep doing what God is asking of us, even when it is SO hard.

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