Hands Lifted



Exo 17:11  It turned out that whenever Moses raised his hands, Israel was winning, but 

	whenever he lowered his hands, Amalek was winning. 

Exo 17:12  But Moses' hands got tired. So they got a stone and set it under him. He sat on it and 

	Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on each side. So his hands remained steady until 

	the sun went down. 


	To lift up one's hands would seem like an easy enough task, but to hold them there 

for an extended period can be quite the difficult or impossible one. I can remember a couple 

classes in college where holding up my hand became extremely hard. I took a conducting 

class where we were to hold up our hands for an extended length of time while conducting a 

musical piece as a class. I became a bit embarrassed as my shoulders began to ache and, 

while the female students appeared to be having no difficulty, my hands fell lower and lower 

till I had to drop them and relax my shoulders for a few seconds. The same thing happened 

in my fencing class where holding up the saber was key to any chance of winning a bout. Not 

only was the saber a weapon of offense, it was also a means of defense and I would 

sometimes find myself to be quite vulnerable as my shoulder would ache and my saber 

would fall lower and lower. 

	It may not appear that a particular situation or circumstance in life should be all that 

difficult to endure and, unless someone has been there before us, they may have very little 

understanding or sympathy about what we are going through. It may be that it is something 

as simple as lifting a hand, but the difficulty has come in the longevity of the task. While we 

may be able to easily take it, performing admirably for a short period of time, we find our 

strength growing weak and our arms falling to expose our vulnerability as the time of 

dealing with it gets longer and longer. This may be the period when our faith is being tried 

and patience is having her perfect work in our lives. While the battle is sure to come to an 

end, there is still this necessity of keeping the hands uplifted in order to insure its victorious 

outcome.

	No matter how "spiritual" we may be and how much Word we know and confess, 

there is a point at which the condition of our physical and emotional frame is in need of 

assistance. God will always be our source of strength and motivation and He has chosen to 

provide this support and encouragement through those in which He lives. As we come into a 

group of believers and begin to worship together, there is a lifting of the hands and a turning 

of the battle. Where we may not be able to find or enter into that place of victory on our 

own, God has made it so that our hands and heads don't have to stay down in defeat, but in 

an atmosphere of praise and worship, the sounds and sights all around us can lift us beyond 

the capacity of our natural ability to a place of soaring victory. And we don't come for just 

the purpose of our own victory, but as by faith our hands are lifted and our voices raised 

there is an immediate effect in those around us as they are also strengthened by our praise. 

We are a body fitly joined together and we should never have to feel that we have no ability 

to continue on our own. There is the provision of a lifting power in the place of worship 

among other body members and we can be assured that our burdens will be lifted as our 

hands are lifted by the spirit of worship all around. 


3/15/04