But Moses said to the people, “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the LORD which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The LORD will fight for you while you keep silent.” Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward. As for you, lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, and the sons of Israel shall go through the midst of the sea on dry land. ”

—Exodus 14:13-15

Confession time. I saved this balance for last because it’s the one I struggle with the most and I’ve struggled to find the balance. I want to accomplish great things with my teaching and writing, and I often end up overworking myself in those areas, but at the same time, these tasks can be huge and incredibly intimidating, so it’s quite easy for me to put things off for weeks or months in the name of waiting on God to do something even though I know what I need to do. 

I think the reason this balance has always been confusing to me is that both options are biblical. It is clear from the very beginning of Genesis that work is good. Working is one way we express our identity as the image of God and demonstrate our faith in Jesus. At the same time, however, we’re supposed to wait on the Lord as a demonstration of faith as well. We are meant to trust and rest in Jesus rather than trying to achieve in life based on our own striving… but where is the balance here?

When I think about waiting on the Lord, I think about Exodus 14, partly because the people of Israel are actually told to wait or stand by, and partly because some pretty amazing miracles happen when the people do what they’re told. At this point in Exodus, the ten plagues have done their job. Pharaoh released the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and God’s people were leaving, carrying the rich gifts given to them by the Egyptian people.

At one point in their journey, God tells Moses they need to double back and camp by the Red Sea, but Pharaoh, who has been keeping tabs on where the Israelites were, sees this as confirmation that the people were weak and lost and could easily be reconquered. So he sends his best chariot unit to bring the people back.

That’s what the people of God are afraid of here—the most powerful ruler in the world was sending his special forces to beat them back into submission and they had nowhere to run. And this is where the instructions to stand by fall—not exactly what seems like the best time for waiting around.

As I said, I’m not an expert on this topic, but here are some things I noticed while studying this passage:

• The things God told Moses and the Israelites to do were man-sized. Specifically, they were physical forms of work. He told Moses to lift his arm and to raise his staff. Both are easily manageable. Granted this may not have made sense to them at first, but it was something they could do.
• The things they were supposed to wait on were God-sized things. There was no chance of a couple million untrained and abused slaves defeating 600 of Pharaoh’s elite, most expensive and well-trained warriors. There was also so little chance of them finding a way to escape, that the people never even considered it. They mentally went straight to “we’re gonna die.” These things were not even remotely possible apart from God and God did not expect the people to attempt them.
• When the people were told to wait on God to do God-sized things, it was not a passive waiting. The word translated as stand by seems to have a military connotation. They weren’t standing around twiddling their thumbs. They were told to stand at the ready as if they were waiting for a signal to call them back into action.
• Every single part of this formula is rooted in the confident belief that God would provide. As humans, when God calls us to do a man-sized thing that doesn’t make sense, we do it because we know He’s up to something. When our instructions are to stand by, we wait in expectation of the amazing things He’s going to do.

What strikes me the most about these observations is that there is such rest in the confidence we’re meant to have. The entire system in Exodus 14 is set up in such a way as to allow the people to rest from worry and fear. They didn’t, but nonetheless, they had every opportunity to rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I’m going to try to do this more with my writing. I’ve been striving because the overall task seems monumental to me—definitely God-sized—but He has given me man-sized pieces I can work on and a few bigger pieces I can confidently stand by on. If you have a similar situation, I hope you’ll join me in learning to rest in the confidence that our God is working.