Rescued For Worship

The LORD told him, “I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cries of distress because of their harsh slave drivers. Yes, I am aware of their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and lead them out of Egypt into their own fertile and spacious land. . . . When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this very mountain.” Exodus 3:7-8, 12

ANY OBSERVER WATCHING the Hebrew people working day after day in the hot sun for Pharaoh would not have expected that a generation later these people would be settling into a land of milk and honey, a place where they could live at rest. No observer would have believed that these people, immersed in the culture of Egyptian gods, would put their trust in the promises Yahweh made to their ancestor Abraham. And certainly, apart from divine intervention, it would have been impossible.

Perhaps as an observer of your family, you can’t see how you or your children will ever break free of deeply ingrained patterns that have made you slaves to consumerism, slaves to body image, slaves to spending time and money in ways that do not honor God. You can’t imagine that you and your children could ever be transformed into a family of glad worshipers, a family who finds your greatest happiness in praising and pleasing God.

But when we open the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, we discover a God who intervenes to help his people. He comes down. He came down to dwell among his people in the Tabernacle. He came down to deliver his people in the person of Jesus Christ. And he still condescends by his Spirit to rescue and redeem. He still moves in the lives of people who are slaves to sin and leads them into freedom, transforming them into glad worshipers.

Lord, when things aren’t changing as quickly as we’d like and in the way we’d like, we wonder if you have really seen the need in our family. We wonder if you’ve heard our cries. But we know that you see and you hear and you rescue. Please rescue us from the things that enslave us to what is evil. Transform us into a family of glad worshipers.