Move On!

After weeks, I am still musing in Exodus 14. This is the chapter in which the Israelites have begun their exodus from Egypt, but now find themselves hemmed in by the sea and the desert with Pharaoh's troops in hot pursuit. Of course, we all know that God miraculously delivers them in the end. I want to focus, however, on their initial response to this frightening situation in the hours before they see God move on their behalf.

In verse 8, the Bible tells us that at the beginning of their exodus the Israelites were "marching out boldly." Isn't this the way we always start out when God has spoken something new to us to do that requires an active faith response? We have a fresh word in our hearts, we're brimming with confidence and faith that God is in control, and we march out boldly. It often seems there's a divine ease in beginning, at least once we overcome the initial inertia that plagues many of us.

That's before we hit the wall. Israel hit a wall. Verses 10-12 describe their response to the very LARGE wall that they hit.

As pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"

One look at the sea before and Pharaoh's armies behind was all it took for them to go from "bold" to "terrified." Suddenly Pharaoh looked big and God looked small. In that moment, a life of servitude under the status quo seemed infinitely preferable to, well, certain death. But this very point is where the rubber of adversity meets the road of faith. The Israelites had forgotten one thing: they forgot Whom they were serving and Who had led them by His own sublime, divine design to this perfect place of impossibility. Their problem wasn't the sea and the Egyptians at all, because God had their back on that situation. Their problem was their fear and reticence to leave the safe familiar for the scary unknown.

How much easier it is to stay in the place, at the level, with the things we are familiar with than it is to strike out into the great unknown of pursuing our dreams and destinies! Many of us have been in a season for some time when we have faced our own walls, our own Red Sea and pursuing Egyptians. It has been very difficult, not only to see the way forward, but even more so to see that the benefits of moving forward will outweigh the cost. If we remain in "Egypt", we can stick with familiar challenges that we have figured out how to deal with. There we can continue as we always have, with neither too much cost, nor too much benefit. In other words, we can simply maintain the status quo. This is what the Israelites wanted to do.

Yet, throughout God's church He has been speaking that this is a season to strike out boldly and pursue dreams and destinies. Most of you have sensed this in your own hearts. He has repeatedly given His assurance that if we will strike out, there will be provision and fulfillment and fruit IN THIS SEASON, not in some distant and undefined future, as it has seemed in the past. I see God's grace and blessing and provision like those nets full of balloons they often have at conferences or arena-sized celebrations. God's net is loaded with balloons of blessing, ready to drop. He's just waiting for someone to pull the string of faith to release them on us.

Pulling the string requires us to trust God like never before and to "march out boldly" in the direction of our dreams. But it doesn't follow that this is a hard thing. In the past season it may have seemed hard. No, it WAS hard. Now, however, God is so eager to meet us in this divinely ordained time that we needn't fear stepping out of our Egyptian comfort zones into the Great Unknown. The Promised Land is there waiting for us. And when we arrive, it will be so worth every step of faith we have taken in the dark, however small or tentative, every tear we have cried, every wall we have scaled and every prayer we have uttered. Soon we will sing along with the Israelites:

"I will sing to the Lord,
for he is highly exalted.
The horse and its rider
he has hurled into the sea.
The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation."

In fact, for a great time of worship, go ahead and dance and sing the whole Song of Moses in Exodus 15. We might as well get in practice. Let's move on!