The Parting of the Red Sea

So, I have been looking at some artwork of a friend and she was asking friend's advice on what to name her latest piece and it struck me that it appeared to me like the beginning of the parting of the Red Sea and I started to feel like there was something much deeper here and then I started listening and things started rolling out.

I know what it feels like to have my back to an insurmountable obstacle and facing overwhelming circumstances? You want to cry out to God that you were doing everything you can. You try to follow what you think He wants and you still end up here; nowhere to go and no way to go back.

Then God reminded me that the people of Israel had their backs to an insurmountable sea and they faced an overwhelming army of men and horses and chariots. Nowhere to go, death before them and destruction behind them, and then God reveled Himself in a death defying and undeniable way. Over and over in the Bible there are stories of God's followers seemingly trapped by life and circumstances, sometimes out of their control and sometimes of their own making. But THEN God reveals Himself and they learn that He was there all along. The Children of Israel are one of the best examples of that. But the plan goes back so much further and can only be seen from nearer the endgame.

Not the beginning, but picking up when Joseph's brothers were so jealous that they sold him to Egypt to be a slave. (Not a good thing) and Joseph ends up in a situation, NOT of his own making and innocent that gets him thrown into jail. (Again, not a good thing). But it is there that he meets and makes the connections that eventually lead to him becoming second only to the Prince of Egypt and in a position to save the entire Jewish race from starvation. Roll forward a couple hundred years and the Israelites became so numerous that Egypt feared what they might do and eventually forced them into slavery, even going so far as to murder all of the 1st born male children to stop their population expansion. It was during this time a baby boy, that would have otherwise been killed, was placed in a floating basket and cast into the Nile (where the crocodiles lived, you know the big aggressive ones) only to float safely up to a bathing Egyptian Princess and became adopted as her own; becoming a Prince of Egypt. His own birth mother brought in as a wet nurse to teach him the ways of his own people. So when he saw his people being abused, he could not stand by and ended up through a series of events lasting over 40 years, including some bad choices of his own, becoming a vessel for God to speak through to the King of Egypt to demand that the Israelites be released from their bondage. In this process was also a whole list of events that the world had never seen before or since in a list of plagues that swept through Egypt ending in the death of all 1st born sons with whom the Passover blood had not been posted (A little payback perhaps). And so the people walked out of Egypt, dancing and singing, only to end up on the banks of the Red Sea with nowhere to run or hide and death on their heels. And God showed up. He literally dried a path through the depths of an ocean (can you imagine the canyon walls of water so high you couldn't see the top, but the sand you walk on firm and dry) then he appeared as a funnel of flame that held the Egyptian army back until the Israelites had time to cross that vast sea. This was not a quick jaunt across a pond, but a journey that took days and nights of walking and camping to get thousands of people across an ocean on foot. And when they were across the funnel disappeared and the army charged in. (I always wonder what they were thinking... being told to charge into a path cut through walls of water). Then God released the water and the army was swallowed by the Sea.

So, I reminded you of that, to tell you this. God has a plan. That plan has not been messed up due to anything we or anyone else has done. That plan was set in motion long before we were born, like a movie whose lines we were born to say because even though we will make the choices, God knew from the beginning what those choices would be. We cannot circumvent God. He is far more powerful than anything we can do. So don’t be afraid that you messed up God’s plan for your life.  If you have made mistakes, repent, and face forward with the intent to live more Christ like from this point on.

If you are out there, up against a wall of unending water that only seems to pull you down to drown in the depths. God is about the show up. I don't know exactly when or where or how, but He is about to start parting the water and don’t waste your time worrying about the things you cannot control. Step forward when He calls time to move and have Faith that He is about to step in with miracles that the world has not seen before. God is getting ready to make His presence known to the world and to His people and the harvest is about to begin. So make ready. Gather what is important to you and your family, prepare yourself for God to move and most of all, be prepared to move with Him.  Blessings in this new year and keep watch. The time is drawing ever close

The 

No such thing as "time"

Slightly Bad Girls of the Bible

by: Liz Curtis Higgs

My reflections of a prodical Daughter

A few years ago I read Higgs’ books Bad Girls of the Bible and More Bad Girls of the Bible and laughed and reflected and learned. So, when the opportunity came to get her new book Slightly Bad Girls of the Bible I was all in (I might even have fangirled a bit when I found out she was there and autographing them too). Anyway, as I began to read the first chapters about Sarai I was not expecting much because let’s face it, I do not have children, have never wanted children of my own and am perfectly happy this way. And then I get to the meat of the story. Sarai’s pettiness and bitterness and, drum roll here, how long she had to wait to receive a promise from God.  Suddenly, my own struggles with singleness and loneliness were not as uncommon as I thought.  Not that our desires were the same, but at the core, both of us were burdened and overwhelmed with a life we didn’t want or choose and had no option to change. 

So, Sarai, long past the age of hope, is given a message that her life is going to change and everything she ever dreamed of having is going to happen. I imagine there were years of joy and faith, then perhaps that surety faded into hope and prayer until finely nothing was left but despair and bitterness of not only not gaining the thing most prized of all, but of a seemingly broken promise.  Maybe God didn’t always keep His promises, maybe He changed His mind, maybe I did something to screw up my own reward is probably the thoughts that crosses Sarai’s mind as the years passed. I know they have mine.  Author Liz added, that Sarai had to have been thinking, TOO LATE!!! You are Too Late when she was 75 and already through the change of life. Staring at calendars and clocks instead of facing God is where Sarai went wrong and just like her, it is where we go wrong too.  I have been staring into the clock of my life and have given up because of the “time.” Too old, the world says. Too old, my family says. Too old I say to myself in the mirror, and God replies, “Nothing is impossible for me.” 

But, like us, Sarai, began to think of ways to MAKE God’s prophesy come true. In her desperation to have a baby she gave her servant to her husband as a second wife to have a child that she was probably planning to take and raise. Who knows what she was thinking, but it seriously could not have been very coherent because who couldn’t see the end of that story coming a mile away like a runaway train.  But then, desperation makes us do stupid things.  Things that we would never try in an ordinary circumstance because they are obviously not good choices. But desperation makes us think that we do not have the time (there we go back to clock watching again) to wait for our miracle or our promise.  It is not happening in OUR timing so we must not be doing something right, therefore making it our responsibility to change or make a way for it.  Bringing our thinking right back to center around ourselves. Our needs, our time, our lives, our promises, like we have any power at all to change the course of God’s Divine Will. ( Not saying that we cannot make choices that can and do alter our lives, but ultimately God’s Will is the way it will end, we just make ourselves go down much longer and rougher roads than necessary because of our choices).

But enough about Sarai’s choices and her doubt, eventually, God dealt with her doubt and God is big enough to deal with our doubt as well.  Who knows the mind of God, so who can say why God allowed Ishmael to be born (causing thousands of years of war and death to this day) but he did and one very large lesson we can get from it is this: Ishmael is the man made attempt to fulfill a destiny of God’s without God’s Blessing and Isaac is the miraculous divine fulfillment of a promise by the creator and giver of that promise, Jehovah.  You may arrange circumstances to look like your dreams have been granted by your Heavenly Father, but unless God makes the path, it is NOT a fulfillment of His Promises and ultimately will not satisfy you. It is the same for ANY of our dreams and hopes. If they are not part of God’s plan for our lives then they will never bring us joy or hope. It is only though the mercy and grace and blessings from above that we find any sense of true contentment and well-being.

In my case, this means my being single all these years was not a mistake!  I did not do anything to make it not happen! I am not too ugly or fat or stupid for anyone to love! I am not unlovable! It simply means that God’s plan for my life did not involve marriage. BUT even though it seems as if my “time” has run out, that I am too old for love and too old to do all the things I wanted to do, God is bigger than time. In fact, time is simply a human created measurement so that we could track the passage of existence and God is certainly bigger than anything humans could create. Like Sarah, I have to see and understand that TIME is irrelevant to the God of the Universe. Not that this is to say that I will ever get married, (God did not promise me anything) but as long as I continue to place His Will before my own desires and dreams, then I will be better off because He wants only the best for my good, and only He knows exactly what that is.  Therefore, I have to take my eyes off the clock and keep my eyes focused on Him because to God there is no such thing as time.

So, as a person who loves kids but has no interest ever in having my own found common ground with a woman who was desperate for children and found that she had something important to teach me about not only God’s timing, but about time in general. And in a time of life where hope seems to be in short supply, her story reminded me again that NOTHING is too big for God. And even if He doesn’t make a big production of it (like holding the Sun in place for a battle to be won, (Although techniquely would it mean he held the Earth still instead, because the Earth is the one causing day and night by rotation – don’t you just love my brain?) lol) He can still alter the very laws of physics and nature when he wishes.

There is a Path

So, continuing with the whole rise up and go thing (where the last post started as well lol).  God revealed something to me about HOW we walk in His Will affects our ability to walk the path He has made for us. The thoughts were barely formed and written, when Satan attacked me through the nature of the very things God was revealing about to me. I have struggled internally all day today to get my emotions back under control and Satan has poked at them every single time I started to find balance, so I tend to think that this revelation has some depth to it, at least for me, if for no one else. I was writing so fast in church today as the thoughts came and I felt like it was of serious substance, but I have not had a chance to sit down and focus again on it until now. So, lets see what we learn.

Today, the sermon was on getting up and just starting. It was about how the people in Ezra who stepped out to go and build the temple were those who's hearts had been moved by God. 

So, God will be calling forth His people, but it will only be the ones who are listening and paying attention that will hear the call to rise up and face this world and our times with God's anointing and his power. 

Then we read about the widow and her son, (I Kings 17:10-16) who were about to fix their last meal when this stranger (Elijah) showed up and told her that God would provide, but to fix him food first using the last bit they had.  The message there was that God directed, the widow responded, and then God provided a bowl that never emptied for years until the rains fell again and the widow and her son did not starve.  

This was followed with 3 John 1:2 which states, May you enjoy good health and all go well with you, even as your soul prospers. Tyler noted that God WANTS us to prosper in everything in our lives. NOT, btw, prosperity teaching, but (referencing 3 John) that God wants us to have healthy and good lives; that the health of our lives will directly reflect the health of our souls. 

And this is when the revelations started.  God especially blesses those who act in faith when hard times come.  Not because God is giving a special blessing to those people, but because those who walk in faith during the really hard times are placing themselves into the direct path of God's desired pathway.  God desires us to walk in faith of something bigger and more enduring than we ourselves are.  When we do this, we step onto the path that God has already laid out and His power is already flowing through. It isn't God giving us a special blessing because we were good little children, but our receiving the blessings God has already put in place because we line ourselves up with where He is. God blesses us all the time in our lives, but this is one of those places where we HAVE to come to Him for the power to flow. And when God's power flows, lives are changed and worlds change. 

(I have a sketch I am working on that shows all of this :D)

For those who choose to let themselves be overwhelmed by the world and its minions, and fret and worry, they are also blessed by God, but they cannot walk in power  because they have not placed themselves in the pathway of the flow that is already established. It isn't about being happy or having joy, it is about choosing to believe that God is in control of everything and that everything is Father Filtered (thanks Brenda lol). This is not a magical prescription that makes the bad stuff go away or even always removes our fears, but it DOES place us in the center of God's Will and His Flow of Power WHEREVER God is going.

This is something I have always struggled with. The whole concept of how do I say 'things are good,' for example, when my life is crashing down around me or I am sunk in sadness. To me, that was a lie.  I refused to say things were good unless things were good, but what I was not able to grasp until today, was that things are always good when viewed from an eternal perspective. I would not be lying, I would simply be claiming God's perspective instead of the World's. Doesn't change what I may be facing, but it reminds me constantly of what is REALLY important. 

Although there are those who would rather trust in themselves to get through life's tuff spots rather than God, but the path they have to walk is much more difficult and leaves a lot more scars. God still loves them and will still bless them, but they will never really walk in God's power because they are not on the path He prepared for them.  

Then there are the people like myself. Good Christians who want to trust completely in God, but somehow always get caught struggling with our emotions and worrying about the things of the world around us, like our jobs, families, hopes, dreams, etc...  So, we are also forging our own paths through the muck of the world around us, but we try to stay within sight of the path God wants us to take. We get the trickles of power that flow out along the pathway, but never walk in full strength and power. Our path constantly a struggle to accept and believe and continue to have faith when in reality, we choose to make our own way, just like those who have placed God in the background, except that we occasionally get little spurts of God Power when our path takes us closer to Gods, but we always know that there is something missing and we long for it, thus we stay within sight of the true path, even though we do not have the faith to walk it.  In a way, we are the saddest of all, because we know that we are crippled and that God can "heal" us, but we allow our fears brought on by this world to keep us fighting to try and make things work instead of resting in our faith that God has already handled it and we simply have to follow the path He laid out.  

It is time to CHOOSE to believe and have FAITH, and then, it is time to step onto the path that God has already prepared for me personally. A path where His power is already flowing in Spirit and Truth and all I have to do, is let go of my fears and worries and hurts, and simply walk and believe. THEN, THEN will my life change, because then I will be changed from the power of the Spirit of the Living God and when I am changed, the world around me will also be changed. Perhaps even literally, but for certain that which makes me, me will expand and grow and all those things I long, the closeness with my Heavenly Father that I crave, and the things that I never seem to be able to grasp will be the fruit of my flowing and growing in the Spirit and Power and Truth of God.

This is true for all of God children. There is no perfect place that we are supposed to be.  There is no perfect moment of making our choices that ends the cycle, but a constant every day, every minute decision to CHOOSE to believe in the Truth of God's WORD even when directly opposed to what we appear to be seeing around us. There is no "right place, right time."  It is not just for some Christians, but for all of us.  It is not a "luck of the draw" moment, but an always moment, open to anyone who chooses to trust God and walk out that trust even when everything around them is shouting that there is no hope. 

In my case, it is more often my own flesh that is shouting that hope has gone, that no one wants me or ever will; that I am broken beyond use to anyone.

THAT IS A LIE!!!

My heart is broken, but not in a useless way. I am in the perfect place for choosing to hold on to Faith in God's plan for my life, even when everything around me to this point has shouted that I am useless. That I am too broken and have no worth to anyone.  I am in the perfect place to CHOOSE to step out on God's path, instead of trying to make everything work on my own while still staying close to God. I can CHOOSE to trust God and His WORD for my life and when His Spirit begins to flow, I will be in the middle of the path and He will flow through me!

As a side note - I have already been attacked by Satan using my own emotions against me over and over today and I can't help but believe that means that this is a big deal for me and will change the very nature of my life from this day forward.