Today’s Reading: Ex. 15:22 – 18:27
Do you count how many times the Israelites “grumble” in today’s reading? If I could reach my hands into the Bible, I would have smacked them by the 3rd time around! “Who are we, that you should grumble against us?” – how true! Way to go, Moses! This is the same man who did not want to lead the Israelites in the reading of Day 22!
“If you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you” — Do you listen to the voice of God? What? What voice? The Bible — the Bible is the voice of God – in fact, a personal assistant to all of us at every minutes of our life! Do you pay attention to his commands? What commands? We got two big commands – “love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love others like yourself” Remember “40 days of love”?
If any of you has ever been in a leadership role, I hope you feel so encouraged by today’s reading — “Moses cried out to the Lord, “What am I to do with these people?”” Whenever I serve as a leadership role, I do cry out like that. Then, I usually have a strong urge to run away from that very spot. It is only by the Grace of God and his power to keep me stay in that position!
And today’s reading gives a great tool for those in leadership– DELEGATION! One of my favourite passages!
“What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone…. You must be the people’s representative before God and bring their disputes to him. Teach them the decrees and laws, and show them the way to live and the duties they are to perform…”
When I feel so overwhelmed with life in general, I usually ask “am I doing what only Jennifer can do right now?” If I am doing something another person could handle, then I delegate it with proper training. Remember, the delegation is not just giving the duties to another person – you MUST train that person to be able to perform the duties; otherwise, you set that person to fail and you end up doing more work to repair consequences. For example for me, a task of feeding my children – I know my mother could do it for me from time to time to help me out. But, having a mother-daughter weekend with my daughter – I know I am the only one who could do it. For work, I am the only one that give a legal advice to my clients, but all of my staff can photocopy documents and file those documents properly AFTER proper training.
Let’s ask ourselves today:
- Do I listen to the voice of God?
- Do I pay attention to his commands?
- Do I do only things I am designed to do by God?
- Do I train those who could perform properly?
I hope your answers to the above is a sounding “yes”! If not, let’s ask God to help us to say “yes”!