Making Sense of Your Life – Part 3: Tell It to Jesus!

“But they cried to the Lord for help, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians; he brought the sea over them and covered them. You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians.” (Joshua 24:7)

How can you make sense of a new invention unless you talk to the inventor? It’s the same with the creation. We have to understand the ways, thoughts, and purposes of the Creator in order to understand his creation; indeed, to make sense of our own lives.

That’s why we look at the story of God’s chosen people. When they were in bondage in Egypt, God raised up Moses and Aaron and the people were delivered, but not before the Egyptians mounted one last offensive against them and trapped them at the Red Sea. God permitted all these trials to build faith in his people and to provide them with his comfort as he delivered them, so that the very compassion of God would one day overflow to the comfort of others.

But notice that this compassion and comfort came when God’s people “cried to the Lord for help.” Nowhere in the history of the Bible had the Hebrew people prayed collectively until they went to Egypt. It was hardship that made them cry out to God. And when the Lord heard them, he said to Moses, “Go quickly, Moses, because the cry of my people has come to my ear.” It had never happened before. It was not that Abraham never prayed; but collectively there had never been that kind of hand-of-God-moving prayer until God’s people were going through difficulty.

And that’s what God wants for you and me. He wants us to be the kind of people who cry out, “I thank you for all your blessings, but you’re my Jehovah-Jireh; you alone are my source. And my faith is a little weak right now because I’m going through something; but, oh God, please come and help me! Give me strength to keep trusting!”

The Lord will give you that strength, even though you may have to brush away tears; because when we call on him, his promise is that he will hear and will answer our prayer! He allows the difficulties in our lives, so that we can come quickly to his throne of grace and cry out to him for help in our time of need.

And God will run to that cry! He will help you, comfort you, and deliver you. Because ultimately, what God is looking for is people who won’t be insensitive, who won’t put others down but will be full of faith and compassion, because they themselves know what it is to be in a tough spot. He’s looking for Christians who have learned the secret of crying out to God on behalf of their own needs and on behalf of others.

Finally, we can better understand how to make sense out of life! We see that it’s in the hard place that God shows his power, and that he makes you and me the man or woman he wants us to be. God isn’t looking for judges. Anyone can judge another human being. In fact, society is full of critics. Instead, God is looking for deliverers on the earth who are molded in the fiery furnace of affliction, who know how to call on the name of Jesus, and who emerge from their trouble with the confidence and conviction to tell another soul, “What the Lord did for me, he can do for you!"