Pastor Charlie Rousey
1 Corinthians 10:11, "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come."
This has been a very busy and challenging week for the school staff. We converted our entire school from a traditional classroom setting to giving the students all the educational instruction online. My wife, our fourth grade teacher, has been up until 10 PM many nights preparing lessons for her students and grading papers. I am sure this same schedule is being duplicated by the rest of the teaching staff during our nationwide quarantine. I look at how God is meeting the needs of our ministry and the needs of my family, but He never seems to do it in the way I accept.
I look at the example of the children of Israel as they were led by Moses to go into the promised land God that had prepared for them. They were forced to leave a place and life to which they had become accustomed. God started this trip off with an amazing display of His ability and a powerful picture of His future sacrifice with the slaying of the Passover lamb. Next, He would deliver them with a long walk through a parted sea followed by destroying the most powerful arm of that day.
I, like the children of Israel, see the extraordinary things God has done in our ministry and in my own life, yet I easily forget. We witness the Hebrew people continue to doubt in the wilderness path God had started them down. They would go on to ask Moses in Exodus 14:11, “...Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?” They wasted many years going in circles because they did not trust that God had a great plan for them.
I see God taking our school, our church, and my life to places I would have never gone. It is easy to be content with a school or a life when it is all we have known. God seems to have put us in an unknown and unexpected wilderness, and we are not really sure where we are headed. We do know that He is a master guide, and we can get behind Him because there is a promised land ahead.
I have faith that when our journey is done, we will look at where we have arrived and marvel. I see our ministry doing things I would have never dreamed, our staff growing and our school being stretched into a stronger and better equipped educational institution. I also see my faith being tested and having to trust in a very certain God during a very uncertain time. My hope is that our faith during this time is an example used to strengthen and build all those around us.