Faith Like Moses

Finally getting a chance to blog. I have been having such a good time in my devotional time lately. I love when new light bulbs come on where the Holy Spirit makes something clearer to me. I was in Hebrews last week and reading "the walk of faith" chapter in Hebrews 11. It gives this list of people who did things by faith that God told them to do, often without knowing or seeing where they might be lead. So many are referred to as dying in faith not having received the promises but seeing them afar off. Almost all of them lived by faith expecting to see the promises in their lifetime. However, I want to talk about Moses. He lived by faith even knowing that he would not get to receive the promise. God told him he would not get to enter the Promised Land and he still lived by God's commands and what God wanted. To me, he may be the greatest of all those mentioned in the walk of faith because of this. 

When he came of years he refused to be called the son of pharaoh's daughter but chose to suffer affliction with his own people. He esteemed the reproach of Christ higher than the treasures of Egypt. He knew that the pleasures of sin for a short time were not worth being outside of God's Will. ---Too bad more Christians do not have that attitude! 

To many, the here and now and what feels good this moment is much more important than living God's way and waiting for future blessings for obedience or for future reward in heaven. Yet this chapter 11 walk of faith is given as an example of how to live our lives...and leads right into chapter 12:1-2  Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Now, I can't tell you how many times I've heard preachers use verse 1 to say that the cloud of witnesses is our saved loved ones in heaven and that it is proof we will see them again. Weeelll, I disagree. The cloud of witnesses is those mentioned in the walk of faith in the previous chapter. Hence the word "wherefore". (Because of) 

The point of the above verses is to say that the previous chapter folks are our example and that because of that we should get rid of weights and sins that keep us from running the kind of race God wants us to run. 

I want to have faith like Moses and live not just for the moment but what will come in the future.