When God Provides for Our Feeble Hearts

The summer before I turned fifteen, I went to a Christian camp with my youth group. Although it was a wonderful experience, one wherein I began to develop my own faith, my adolescence was still steeped in drama and self-centeredness. I made it clear to God that I needed to hear from him personally that week. I wanted to know he saw me, cared about me, and had a plan for me.

I prayed specifically for a sign to assure me he was real and that he wanted me to follow him. I imagine I was expecting something of biblical proportions. The next morning I went to eat breakfast with all my youth group friends, and there was my answer: across the front of another camper’s T-shirt was the word “YES!” in large neon-orange letters. Cue the spotlight and the dramatic music—I knew it was my sign! God was with me, he cared about me, and he was trying to tell me something.

Only later, when I confidently poured out the news of my direct exchange with the Almighty, did I realize I had somehow missed a few key bits of information. My bewildered youth pastor delicately asked, “What do you think he’s trying to say to you?” I admitted I hadn’t a clue. I just felt important.

A few months ago, I was rereading Exodus. Before things got really interesting with the plagues, I noticed something I hadn’t before. Sandwiched between Moses’s self-doubt and his polite objections to God’s proposal is an interesting statement from the burning bush: “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain” (Exodus 3:12 NIV).

I kept coming back to this in confusion. What kind of “sign” is that? A sign from God that essentially says (loosely paraphrasing here), “I’ll be there. You’ll realize I was there when you get out of Egypt and worship me.” That’s not exactly my version of a sign; it rather sounds like an “I’ll show you.”

As I continued reading, I was reminded that God, in his mercy, gave Moses, his people, and the Egyptians sign after sign after sign—the staff, the hand that turned leprous, the plagues, the accurate predictions, and on and on.

So why did God tell Moses he wouldn’t truly know it was him until he was on the other side? Why was the future his one true sign for Moses? What about all the other tangible, outrageous signs and wonders?

It makes sense to me that God is gracious enough to sometimes give us signs during the journey, even if we’ve already heard from him in a powerful way in the beginning. It’s never as easy as we expect it to be. We quickly second-guess the words from above we may have staked our lives on just a few short days or hours ago. Maybe we didn’t hear correctly? Maybe God changed his mind? We don’t feel the same way. We have short-term memory loss when it comes to stepping out in faith. But God knows. He provides for our feeble hearts in things like manna and unexpected phone calls.

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He knows we need words of encouragement from him, but signs and wonders fade quickly when we get caught up in adversities. The firecrackers in the sky are like sips of water to our parched souls in the desert. They get us through. But ultimately, the only sign that provides us a nourishing feast at the end of our journey is the one at the end, when we sit down, breathe deeply, realize all he promised was done, and cry out in worship.

He knows we sometimes want signs that are flashy, self-serving, and show up on T-shirts during breakfast. And sometimes he obliges us. But the most meaningful signs are not merely those that point to what is yet to come. The signs that are rich, deep, and stay with us are found after the long journey. They point very simply to the God who was, is, and always will be. The One who asks us to step out in faith, sprinkles us with grace along the way, and waits for us at the end.

Emily Slimak is a Christian wife, mom and blogger. She’s a lifelong suburbanite, recently transplanted to the rural Midwest. Her housemates include a pastor, two female superheroes and a collective imagination that keeps the television at bay. Emily’s hobbies include analyzing friends and family, dramatic readings in British accents and writing children’s stories. Keep up with her thoughts over at emilyslimak.wordpress.com.

Photograph © Edwin Adrade, used with permission