Feel Like You're Living On The Backside of The Desert?
Bennie P. Blount

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. Exodus 3:1

One of my favorite movies is Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments. In the movie Charleston Heston plays Moses, the prince of Egypt who renounced his earthly heritage and right to the throne of Egypt to serve the God of Israel. The movie was taken from the book of Exodus.

An interesting twist to the Biblical account is that Moses, after renouncing the throne of Egypt and returning to his people to serve God, spent forty years on the backside of the desert before God called him to action. Forty years . . . that's a long wait.

But that's the way God operates. Sometimes His call for our service is instant, sometimes it is years before He uses us in His service. I suppose that if we were to try to analyze His methods and understand why He waited forty years before sending Moses to deliver Israel from Pharaoh, we might say that He was using the time to strengthen Moses' resolve. After all, it took a firm will and solid determination to lead the millions of complaining Hebrews through the wilderness for another forty years. Maybe that was the reason for the long wait, maybe it wasn't. But one thing is certain, Moses had to wait on the backside of the desert for forty years.

In this "instant" society that we live in we expect things to happen now, instantly. When we make a commitment to serve the Lord we expect Him to respond now, not sometime later in the future. But God doesn't always work that way. Sometimes we have to wait on the backside of the desert. I think there are a couple of reasons why we sometimes have to wait:

1. But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. Exodus 40:31

Sometimes we are just not ready to do what the Lord wants us to do. We need time to build up our spiritual strength in order to do what needs to be done. I remember hearing a story about Evangelist T. L. Osborne who, many years ago, felt the call of God to go to India to preach the Gospel. So he got on a plane and headed for India. When the plane landed he walked off the plane and was met, face to face, by a witch who reached into his chest as if to tear his heart out. Osborne was so afraid that he turned and ran back to the plane. He got on the plane and, in his own words, "Went back to the hills of Oklahoma to fast and pray in order to be prepared for the next time he went to India."

2. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. John 11:6

Sometimes we have to wait because situations and people have to be put in place in order for things to work out the way God wants. In the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead we see that Jesus, after hearing of his fatal sickness, waited two days before going to see Lazarus. His disciples could not understand why Jesus waited two days to go see a very dear dying friend. But the disciples could not see the big picture, they didn't know that God was preparing the way for Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead. And neither can we see all the things that God has to do, like putting people in place and changing situations, etc., before His plans can be accomplished through us. Sometimes we just have to wait.

Sometimes we just have to wait on the Lord.