When Following God Makes Your Life Worse | Exodus 5-6

Ever feel like following Jesus is making your life, not better, but worse?

In this message from Exodus 5-6, we dive into one of the most honest and unsettling parts of the Bible—where God's people accept His promise of salvation, and then their suffering immediately gets worse. Moses shows up with God's message of freedom, the Israelites worship and believe... and then Pharaoh makes their slave labor brutally harder. The people who were just praising God now curse Moses. Even Moses starts questioning God.

If you've ever felt like following Jesus made your life more difficult instead of easier, this message is for you. This isn't a "everything happens for a reason" message. It's an honest look at why the path to freedom often leads through deeper struggle first—and why that might actually be evidence that God is working, not absent.

Download this week's group discussion guide.

Chapters

• 0:00 Following Jesus… why does it feel worse?
• 0:26 The Splinter
• 3:28 “Are you trying to hurt me?”
• 4:34 Back to Exodus: the story of salvation
• 5:38 Simple—yes. Easy—no.
• 6:44 The "Come to Jesus" Moment
• 9:22 Making a baby vs. Having a baby
• 12:40 “Who is the LORD?” (ancient trash talk)
• 14:35 How to know if you are enslaved
• 15:59 “How dare you Sabbath them”
• 17:49 Pharaoh vs. Yahweh
• 24:19 Pharaoh’s playbook: five tactics of slavery
• 28:43 Teresa of Ávila in the mud
• 32:43 How the Devil tries to keep us enslaved
• 35:20 Seminary professors & suffering
• 36:58 God’s Answer: “I am Yahweh” (x5)
• 40:00 In Jesus, Yahweh gives us Himself