Spent

Haggai 1:13 ESV

“I am with you, declares the Lord.”

I was five when we made the change. I wasn’t sure at the time why but we started shopping around for a new church. My parents had attended First Baptist Church for ten years and we were now looking for a church. After visiting a few churches, they settled on the quickly growing church in town, Emmanuel United Methodist Church. Since that time Emmanuel has always been with me. Yes, that pun was intended. Emmanuel means God with us. As the Angels declare it from the sky we are to know that, what may come, God is with his people.

As the people have come back and are facing opposition and trials associated with coming back to the land. The funds and leadership needed to rebuild the temple. The people had fallen into slack religiosity, and grown too busy with the needs of life to spend much time on the things of God. God gave them a daunting job to do, rebuild the temple. The fallen down, burned up, pile of stone up on the hill. They were simply overwhelmed by the task at hand. So, God sent them a message.

God declared to his people that no one was like Moses, a man he talked with “face to face”, and yet Moses was overwhelmed, “Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me?” (Numbers 10:28) As we come to David “a man after God’s own heart” we find a man crying out to God “Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck.” (Psalm 69:1) I come to one of the most celebrated Prophets in Elijah and what do we find a man crying out to God because “I, even I only, am left.” Even though he knew this wasn’t true based on the testimony of Obadiah (1 Kings 18:13). God had pushed all these men to the place that they were simply overwhelmed by their circumstances and the call that God had placed on their lives. Moses was fine shepherding in the desert but God called him to lead a “stiff necked people” and it was breaking him. David had been called out of the field to be king of God’s people, and yet at multiple points prior to his crowning he was overwhelmed, and even on the run from his son. Elijah was called to speak truth to a people so far God they would murder his prophets rather than listen to them, yet he was called and so he did, and the stress made his ministry much shorter than his successor.

Looking at my house of eight children between 12 and 2, and I must admit. This might break me, but I am God’s to break. Moses, David, and Elijah all had calls from God for the task they were given to do and all of them were broken and overwhelmed. I don’t know what your call is, but if you are really called to it, God will probably push you to the point you break. What is the call you have on your life? What task has God given you that you might “spend and be spent” (2 Cor 12:15), with the full knowledge that being poured out for that call might be the full measure God has called you to give?

Just because it has gotten hard doesn’t mean you have not been called to it. As his people are struggling to fulfill their call, he has only one message for them “I am with you, declares the Lord.” Emmanuel, God with us. In the midst of the trials, we have been called so let us take comfort knowing God is with us. Even when we feal we are failing.

CORAM DEO