When You're Stuck

Have you ever felt stuck? I'm sure you have, me too. But I'm referring to those times in your spiritual walk of faith when it just feels like your'e bogged down and can't get moving. It's a frustrating, if not frightening feeling.

A few years ago, I was working along the newly poured footings of our facility, sucking an exorbitant amount of rainwater out of the outer excavation, when I slipped down into the Missouri mud. Yes, Missouri mud is different. It has a not-so-subtle way of pulling you in and holding you. I felt myself being slowly sucked downward. It started at knee level and quickly advanced to envelop my hips. I was alone with no help available. Down...down....down.......down I went. In a burst of panic and a vocal prayer for help I was able to finally pull myself out and walk away, muddy but unscathed. Forget the water!

From time to time, our walk of faith can get sucked into a muddy halt. I don't like it at all, but it happens. Jacob, in the Book of Genesis, was stuck like that. He had relied on his own wit and deceptive brinkmanship for so long that he let God's covenant promise slip behind the horizon of his character. His life was formed around attempting to out-deceive his slave-master father-in-law and it wasn't working. But then, his barren wife, Rachel, miraculously conceived and bore Jacob a son. She was so overjoyed that she immediately claimed the conception of a second child by saying, in faith, "The Lord will add another!" Those declarative words formed the name JOSEPH. (Jehovah Yowcef)

Jacob was jarred by the miraclaculous. In Genesis 30 we read that he took the birth as a sign that it was time to move out of the mud and get on with his life, a new life of trust in the Lord, and God responded. Jacob began to prophet honestly. He left his self-produced slavery. He launched out on his own and encountered the Lord in a wrestling match. In the process, God transformed his inner-man and changed his name to Israel (God's Prince) The change was wholesale, to the point where he was able to reconcile with his wronged-brother Esau. He left the mudhole.

In times of muddy stuckness....I believe, if we really and truly call out to the Lord for help, he will send us a Joseph...not just a helper, but a multiplier of God's blessing and presence. In fact, he already has. His name is Jesus.. "The Salvation of the Lord." Through him, mud-rescues occur, characters are transformed, and blessings abound. "Now to him who is able to do far abundantly more than we can ask or think, through the power that is at work within us..." Wow! Let him do that and see how quickly you can be pulled from your mud-pit, your mirey clay, your place of deadness.
Pastor Jim