Exodus 5:11(NLT)
“Go and get it yourselves. Find it wherever you can. But you must produce just as many bricks as before!”
The Hebrew people had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years. Egypt had become a great nation: thriving and industrious, with a formidable army and a booming economy. The designs of their structures showed so much thought and intelligence that even in this modern day we seek explanations for them. It’s easy for a country to build prolifically and become great when it has the resources coupled with free labor, and Pharaoh had plenty of both. Therefore, when Moses came with a stick, saying. “Let my people go,” you can imagine that Pharaoh wasn’t the least bit interested. An entire nation had been built upon the backs of slaves; to release the Hebrews would upset the entire balance of the Egyptian way of life! Thus, Pharaoh sent the slaves a message: they must provide the straw to make bricks themselves. Not only that, but he insisted that the amount of bricks they made could not be diminished without harsh retribution.
Your body has established a very comfortable way of life. In order to maintain that way of life, it makes certain demands of you. Often, these demands are things that you feel trapped by, but when you make the effort to be free your body will do whatever it can to keep you in bondage. It will release chemicals into your bloodstream that scream for what it desires; it will flood the neural pathways with messages demanding that its needs be served; it will even cause you to retain water when you are trying to lose weight, in hopes that you will give up and go back to your old eating habits. Your body does all of this to make the burden of your captivity heavier, that you might acquiesce to the demands of bondage and lose the desire to be free.
May you find the resources you need and have the courage to ask for God’s intervention and assistance as you strive to be free from powers that are much stronger than you.
