Playing Tickling Games With God

Suggested Reading: Exodus 10:16-11:10

When my son was very young, he and I had a game we liked to play. He would come up and "attack" me when I wasn't expecting it and I would "retaliate" by tickling him. He'd begin to cry out between fits of laughter, "Stop! Stop!" I'd ask if he was going to attack me again and he would promise not to. I'd release him and he would immediately "attack" me again. We would repeat the cycle numerous times until I got worn out or he got tired of being tickled. But the key to the game was my son knowing that I would relent if he promised to stop and my being prepared to tickle again as soon as he attacked.

Throughout history, many people have thought God was playing a similar game with them. Pharaoh was one of them. When God sent Moses to deliver his people from slavery in Egypt, he sent Moses with a repertoire of miracles/plagues to perform against Pharaoh when he refused to cooperate. The first nine of these plagues were temporary kinds of plagues and, when the plague became too much to bear, Pharaoh would promise to comply long enough for God to remove the plague. Pharaoh played a game with God, believing he could go back to doing what he wanted as soon as God relented from the plague. He kept doing it until Moses announced to Pharaoh, “This is what the Lord says: At midnight tonight I will pass through the heart of Egypt. All the firstborn sons will die in every family in Egypt, from the oldest son of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, to the oldest son of his lowliest servant girl who grinds the flour. Even the firstborn of all the livestock will die (Exodus 11:4-6, NLT). Not until a plague arrived that couldn't be taken back - the death of Pharaoh's firstborn son - did Pharaoh realize that God was not playing a game.

How often do we try to play the same kind of game with God? We suffer terrible consequences for sin in our lives and pray for God's mercy, only to return to our ways when the consequences lessen? How often do we end bad habits because life gets tough, only to return to those same habits when things get a little better?

Whether it's mishandling finances or abusing drugs or simply being nonchalant about spending time with God, are we playing with God, hoping things will get better so we can go back to doing our own thing? My son was never able to win the tickle game with me, and we can't expect to win when we play games with God. Isn't it about time we get serious?

Clones, Falling Globes, and Frustrated Callings

Suggested Reading: Exodus 5:1-6:12

The final season of Smallville started off with a great deal of hope that Clark Kent would finally become Superman. In fact, the iconic Superman suit made an appearance in that initial episode. Clark saved hundreds of people from being crushed by the spinning globe atop the Daily Planet building when an explosive knocked it from its perch high above the city, and he did it in a fashion that resembled flying, the one power he didn't have the hang of yet. But he also became so angry with the man who set off the explosion (a clone of Lex Luthor) that he nearly killed him. When Clark, in his high spirits from saving the day decided to put on the Superman suit, the spirit of his Kryptonian father zapped him away to the Fortress of Solitude, pointing out his fit of anger as an example of the darkness inside him, declaring him unfit to be a hero, and trapping the suit in a crystal enclosure that Clark couldn't open. In one fell swoop, both Clark and the audience that had waited ten years for him to finally become Superman were punched in the gut. Suddenly, Clark's transformation into Superman seemed farther away than ever.

Moses had a similar moment not long after he obeyed God's call to return to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh let his people go. Moses had gone to the Israelites, telling them of his encounter with God and they had believed him. But when Moses went to Pharaoh, Pharaoh laughed in his face and then upped the Israelites' work load just for spite. When the people complained about the added work, Pharaoh told them it was Moses' fault and so they stopped listening to him. When God told Moses to return to Pharaoh again, Moses objected, "My own people won't listen to me anymore. How can I expect Pharaoh to listen?"(Exodus 6:12, NLT). Moses had gone to Pharaoh like he had been instructed. Moses had delivered his message to Pharaoh and it had seemingly backfired. The Israelites had been forced to endure even more brutal conditions than before and had stopped listening altogether. To Moses, it must have seemed that the goal of freeing the Israelites from their slavery was even farther away than before. God had previously warned Moses that Pharaoh would not initially listen, but Moses' frustration overtook him anyway and he questioned whether he should even continue.

God's call upon our lives does not mean that everything will be easy or even that we will always seem to be moving forward. Sometimes God's call leads us down a brutal, trouble filled road. And when we experience those difficult times we cannot act surprised. Jesus described following God's call as abandoning one's life and he told us that the world would hate us because it hated him. One of the few things we were actually promised was that the road would be difficult. We can never make the mistake of expecting an easy path when we follow God's call on our lives. But we must also never make the mistake of doubting God's call just because things get tough or look impossible. Before Moses could free the Israelites from slavery, things had to get worse; a just and merciful God doesn't simply pour out his wrath on someone because he feels like it. Pharaoh had to have the chance to comply and refuse. The extra labor the Israelites were forced to endure was always part of God's plan, even if it didn't feel like it when the people started blaming Moses for their troubles.

Experiencing difficulty and setbacks does not mean that God has not called you to your task. Those troubles may be necessary for you to complete your task, even if your goal seems farther away than ever. Clark Kent did become Superman, Moses did lead his people to freedom, and you will accomplish the task God has called you to, if you don't give up.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Sister-Wife

Suggested Reading: Genesis 12:10-20

Growing up, one of my favorite books was The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The first time I read it, as Edmund accidentally stumbled into Narnia while following his sister Lucy, and then as he encountered the White Witch who wooed him with Turkish Delights, I remember thinking, Don't trust her Edmund, she's lying to you. She spoke to him in a very sweet, reassuring way while promising him the chance to be king of Narnia with her as his queen. But you knew, reading that scene, that when he came back with his brother and sisters she would turn on him and kill them all. You just knew that her actions would not match her words.

I had a similar experience the other morning reading through the book of Genesis. In Genesis chapter 12, Abram (not yet Abraham) was taking his wife Sarai to Egypt to survive a famine. On the way there he said, "Look, you are a very beautiful woman" (Genesis 12:11, NLT). I remember thinking, I wonder if that is why she goes along with Abram's plan to call her his sister. I mean, a lot of women would want to cooperate with a man who starts off that way, especially if you are already in love with him. Abram went on to explain that Sarai was so beautiful that she put his life in danger because the Egyptians would kill him in order to have her for themselves. So, saying she was his sister was the only way to keep him alive.  But just a few verses later, Abram had given up his beautiful wife in order to keep up the charade and save his own skin.

The story reminded me that even the "best" of us can find it difficult at times to make our actions match up with our words. We talk a good game, telling people how much we care about them, promising them that we will care for them in one way or another, but we find it much harder to follow through and match up our actions with our beautiful sounding words. We say we love someone but we never actually express interest in their lives. We tell someone how important they are to us but then never make any time for them in our lives. But we also do the same thing in our relationship with God. We insist that we love God but aren't willing to spend 20 minutes in prayer. We talk about how important it is to share the Gospel with people but we never actually open our mouths when we have the chance. We argue about how it is the church's job to care for the poor rather than the government's, but then we never make plans to fulfill that purpose.

Rather than being discouraged at our own lack of consistency or using our "hypocrisy" as a reason to keep our mouths shut, let's work on making our actions match our words. Go visit that person you claim to care about. Set aside some money to provide for someone in need. Whatever your problem area in matching your actions with your words, don't back down from saying the right things; just make a plan to do the right things, too.