Exodus 2:7-12: in context

Rescued from the river and, by God's quiet providence, nursed by his own mother in Pharaoh's household, Moses grows up. One day he goes out to his own people and sees their burdens, and sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brothers. Looking this way and that to be sure no one is watching, Moses strikes the Egyptian dead and hides the body in the sand. His concern for his people was right; but the way he acted on it was violent, secret, and premature, and it would send him fleeing into the wilderness for forty years.

Moses had a right cause and a wrong method. He was moved, rightly, by the suffering of his people and the injustice done to them; Scripture even suggests he sensed his calling to be their deliverer. But he took the work into his own hands, in his own way and his own timing, striking down the Egyptian by stealth, glancing about first to be sure no one saw. It was zeal, but zeal in the flesh, running ahead of God, acting by violence and in secret rather than waiting for God's time and God's way. And it went wrong: the deed became known, and Moses had to flee, his premature attempt at deliverance setting back the very cause it meant to serve by forty years. There is a caution here that we need. It is possible to have a right cause, even a God-given one, and to ruin it by pursuing it in the wrong way and ahead of God's timing. Zeal for a good end does not justify wrong or hasty means; and running ahead of God, taking his work into our own hands to force it in our own strength and on our own schedule, often backfires, setting back what we hoped to advance. Moses would indeed become the deliverer of his people, but not like this, not by a hasty killing in the sand, and not yet; God had forty years of preparation for him first, and a very different way of deliverance in mind. The lesson is not that we should be passive before injustice, but that God's work must be done in God's way and time, not seized and forced by our own fleshly zeal. When we are moved by a right cause, the temptation is to run ahead, to act by whatever means and at once; and often we would do better to wait for God's timing and to seek his way rather than our own. Moses' right cause pursued by the wrong means cost him forty years.

When I am moved by a right cause, even one I believe God has given me, am I tempted to take it into my own hands, to force it by my own means and on my own timing, running ahead of God as Moses did in striking the Egyptian, and can I learn to pursue God's work in God's way and time rather than by my own fleshly zeal?