God knows when it won't work.

Exodus 7:2-5(NLT) 2Tell Aaron everything I command you, and Aaron must command Pharaoh to let the people of Israel leave his country. 3But I will make Pharaoh’s heart stubborn so I can multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. 4Even then Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you. So I will bring down my fist on Egypt. Then I will rescue my forces—my people, the Israelites—from the land of Egypt with great acts of judgment. 5When I raise my powerful hand and bring out the Israelites, the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD.” I read this the other day and something really stood out to me. Maybe because I've been in the middle of a situation similar to this. No, God has never sent me to the leader of a country to beg for the release of tortured people of God. And, no, I have never caused water to turn to blood, or other plagues to take place. I guess what I'm saying is that God has asked me to do some pretty itimidating things before and I wasn't sure whether they would work out or not. And in some cases I've been absolutly right!! It didn't work out. At least I didn't think it worked out. But look at this story and maybe you need to go back and read the whole thing in context but this was one part that sparked a series of revelations for me. God asked Moses to do something that He knew wasn't going to happen. At least not right now. He said, go tell Aaron to tell Pharaoh to let my people go. THEN COMES THE NEXT VERSE. BUT I will make Paraoh's heart stubborn.... Do you catch that? God asked them to do something He knew wasn't going to happen. Why would He do that? He goes on to explain the reason is so that something greater can happen. I believe that we have no idea how often we view things as failures and give up on them so quickly because we were sure God asked us to do them but they failed anyway. I know what's it's like to struggle and wonder, "did I really hear from God?" We begin to question everything and eventually feel like giving up. But if we will trust God and trust His voice and just hang tight we just might see something even greater than we were expecting in the first place. Our God is bigger and greater than we could ever think or imagine. Don't get discouraged when things don't go exactly as planned. Sometimes God asks us to do things to set Him up for something big. Our obediance is just His opening act! Listen, obey, trust, watch.