Exodus 5:22-23
And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said, Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? why is it that thou hast sent me?  For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.

Faith takes patience.  It is a continual process of learning to trust God step by step.  It seems Moses may have thought that going the first time to Pharaoh would give Israel the deliverance they had sought.  But things were getting worse, not better.  Their burdens were heavier, not lighter.  Their work was harder, not easier.  Pharaoh’s heart was getting harder, his anger rising, his defiance growing.  Sign after sign had failed to convince him to let the people go.  And Moses’ reaction is a natural human reaction as he starts to wonder what is going on here and why things aren’t working out as he thought they would.

In this difficult time, God knew the whole plan, even though Moses at that time did not.  It would take going back to Pharaoh time and time again, being faithful and obedient to God each time, to finally be granted the answer they wanted.  And in our lives, in our trials, so often we want that immediate, easy answer from God.  But more often than not, it takes that process of faith to finally end up where we want to be.  It takes trust in God’s wisdom and God’s power that He will come through with His promises even when it seems like no progress is being made.

It can be frustrating to keep taking these steps of obedience only to end up feeling like a failure at the end of each one.  We can easily get discouraged if we are focusing too much on our circumstances and not enough on God and His promises to us.  And we may even be tempted at times to give up when things don’t work out how we had hoped.  But it’s important to remember that our timetable is not the same as God’s, and our minds and our vision are so limited that we can’t always understand how He is working, as much of what He is doing goes on behind the scenes.

So let’s persist in our faith and keep trusting God instead of getting upset or discouraged.  Let’s hold on to His promises and have patience if we have to wait a long time for an answer from Him.  Let’s keep going forward in obedience to the next task and the next challenge as they come.  And maybe if we don’t give up, we’ll start to understand how God is working out His purposes far beyond what we can see from our viewpoint.  So no matter what we’re facing, may we continue to believe God, wait on Him, and endure until the end.