Being Misinterpreted

Once I was speaking on holiness through an interpreter to a group of people who spoke Spanish. Several times people in the audience interrupted my interpreter with suggestions for her that were intended to improve her choice of words in translating what I was saying. I began to wonder what understanding the group was gaining from my effort.

In Exodus 17, Yahweh’s intentions toward the Israelis He was leading away from Egypt were being badly misinterpreted:

The entire Israelite community left the Wilderness of Sin, moving from one place to the next according to the Lord’s command. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So the people complained to Moses: “Give us water to drink.”

“Why are you complaining to me?” Moses replied to them. “Why are you testing the Lord?”

But the people thirsted there for water, and grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you ever bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”

Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What should I do with these people? In a little while they will stone me!”

The Lord answered Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take the rod you struck the Nile with in your hand and go. I am going to stand there in front of you on the rock at Horeb; when you hit the rock, water will come out of it and the people will drink.” Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. He named the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites complained, and because they tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
(Exodus 17:1-7 Holman Christian Standard Bible® ©)

We often misinterpret the events we find ourselves in the midst of as attacks from our enemies, when they are the process of our God leading us out of Egypt. His intentions are to lead us through processes that dig the carnal and anti-Christ ways of thinking and interpreting out of our minds that have been taught to us through the influences of the world we have been redeemed from.

When things seem to be going wrong, a proper response might sound like, “Father, what must I do to co-operate with Your work in my life in this situation?” rather than one that sounds like, “God, don’t You care that we are about to die?”

A response that looks for clues to the Way out is the response that will find Him in the dust storm, and be led to the oasis and to Life.