Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Pt. 1 — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

Have you ever heard this expression, caught between a rock and a hard place? I think I have a feeling that many of us get both of these in our lives, a rock and a hard place. So, what are your rocks and hard places for your own life?

Now, they can be internal or external things. What’s a rock and a hard place for one person is different for another person. You might be familiar with the childhood game, rock, paper, scissors.

Well, in our lives we can cover our rocks and our hard places as well. And how do you do that? Well, many people pretend that the hard times don’t exist, and I think the counsellors call that denial. We can pretend that everything’s OK when it really isn’t. But in Christian sense, God’s grace and God’s love is available any time. Now that might be easy for me to say.

But how do you actually find this divine outpouring of God’s grace and love?

And what’s the best way to move through these hard rock places?

People of the Jewish faith once a year celebrate the holiday of Passover, and this commemorates the freedom of the Jews from Egyptian bondage. You can read about it in the Old Testament and their journey through the desert to the promised land.

And the Hebrew word for bondage is a word I can’t pronounce spelled M I T Z R A Y I M, which means a narrow place (also the Hebrew word for parts of Egypt). And the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and they got out, but they were not just enslaved physically. But once they were liberated, they felt restricted, and many of them lacked confidence. They lacked their faith in God, and they just didn’t believe, many of them, that God would deliver them to the promised land.

And I think there’s something similar here. Many of us have our own limitations and our own assumptions that prevent us from knowing God’s presence. We put mental and emotional shackles, as it were, on ourselves, and we become frightened at the negative experiences of life. In other words, we’re not prepared to step outside the comfort zone. We’re not prepared to trust God.

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And as a result, we put the limitations on ourselves. And you know what happens? It means that God’s grace does not flow in the way that it should.

So fear – fear is another awful thing that can keep us in our narrower thinking.

Experiencing God’s love opens our eyes to what life is really all about. So why not try and be open to identifying this grace, the wonderful grace of God? I’ve often referred in this programme to the dark night of the soul experiences. It’s hard going when we face difficulties.

And our conversations with God are more like, God, this sucks. God, where are you? God, do this for me once and why have you left me? Why aren’t you answering me? It’s difficult, isn’t it, in that space of fear and confusion. How actually can we identify the grace of God?

And then again, would we know God’s grace if it hit us in the face.

I think that grace is divine goodwill. It’s the divine favour of God.

It’s always there. It’s flowing, but it comes through every part of life in the daily simple things that happen. Maybe it’s a smile from someone or a word or a gesture or an encouragement that someone gives you. God, of course, does work in whatever way he wants to, in mysterious ways, so the grace of God has that ability to transform our situation. So if you’re struggling with that, just sit down for five minutes.

It’s not wasting time, and if you feel a sense of being overwhelmed or exhausted – take time to be with God.

If you feel you’re between a rock and a hard place or both. Give God the ability to show up in your life, and you know what? He will. We might close our fists and our hearts to God’s grace, and we might kind of feel we’re just trapped in this space of despair.

But of course, we can open our heart and say to Him, the God who loves us more than you know – Lord, I need you, Lord, I just want you to be there.

Let’s Pray

Well, Heavenly Father, forgive us for the times that we’ve become impatient with other people when we feel we’re stuck. We don’t mean to do that, Lord. It’s just that we forget to rely on the spirit of God to lead us, and we carry on in our own strength. May we be different because I ask this prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.

(Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Pt. 2 — Morning Devotions)

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