And the third step is….

In recent blog posts (see 14th and 23rd April) I've written about the sad way that God's people  in the desert backed off from listening to His voice.

Step one: the people made a choice to hear God "second hand" - through Moses - instead of listening to His words for themselves. (Exodus 20: 18) 

Step two: the people got tired of the long silence and started to create their own gods to worship. (Exodus 32: 1)

Further on in chapter 32, we see the inevitable third step. When Moses asks his brother Aaron for an explanation of what is going on, Aaron replies, "When the people gave me their gold, I simply threw it in the fire… and out came this calf." (Ex 32: 24) How ridiculous! Aaron makes it sound as if the gold took shape of its own accord, and simply popped out of the fire as a fully formed statue of a calf. The reality, of course, is that the people knowingly sacrificed their gold jewellery and Aaron himself formed the gold into the shape of a calf. (Exodus 32: 4) 

Step three: denial of our own responsibility.

 It can be easy for us as Christians to slip into the same sort of denial as Aaron. We may no longer remember the point where we decided that listening to God was not something for us (step one). We may not have noticed that we began to slip into idolatry, sacrificing our time and energy on gods of our own making (step two). And so it's an easy third step to find ourselves blaming God for the fact that we no longer hear His voice or we no longer find any life in our reading of the Bible (step three).

Our God is not a silent God. When we can't discern Him speaking to us in prayer or through the Bible, it's seldom because He's silent. (Occasionally it might be that He's not telling us something because the time isn't right yet. Or sometimes He's silent because we've not yet obeyed the last thing that He said to us.) But usually He's not silent at all; it's just that we're not hearing because we've allowed our ears to get blocked, or we've allowed unbelief to deaden our expectation of hearing from Him. Golden calves don't "just happen." They're the outcome of a series of choices that move us away from God's highest for our lives. 

Moses (after he got over his temper tantrum!) forced the people to face up to their responsibility and make a decision about what they were going to do about it. "Make a choice right now," he said. "If you are on God's side, come and stand over here with me." (verse 26) Sadly, many didn't make that choice to align themselves with the Lord. They chose instead to continue denying their own responsibility for the situation they found themselves in.

What a sad episode in Israel's history - and so soon after God had done amazing miracles on their behalf. If you're in one of those seasons where you don't seem to hear God clearly, check in with Him and find out the reason: Is it just a waiting time and you need to have patience? Is God remaining silent because you've been walking in disobedience? Or have you slowly slipped away from hearing His communication because of a series of steps like those in the journey of the children of Israel?

The good news is that U-turns are always allowed. You can embrace your responsibility and take your place "on God's side" even today.