Red Seas, Enemies, and Desperate Pleas
LISTEN TO EPISODE 8 HERE.
This week, we are talking about those moments in life when we try to walk out our faith, but things do not go as planned and we are left with our backs are up against the wall with no escape route in sight.
Many of us can probably resonate with the idea of being “called out” or “called to something higher.” And if we can be honest, we know that many of us do not always or willingly step into a call of this nature because of fear, unknowns, or a loss of security.
Any change, especially a big change, can be disorienting and uncomfortable.
Looking to the biblical example of the Israelite nation's exodus from Egypt, we can see that following God will not always be easy.
Examples from Exodus
- God could have protected the Israelites from an attack by the Egyptian army.
- He could have taken them on a completely different route, far away from the Red Sea.
- He could have sent a blinding sandstorm towards the Egyptians to push them back to Egypt before they ever got close to the Israelites.
However, God did not do any of those things.
In fact, as told in Scripture, it appears that the Lord (who was leading them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night), led them right up against the bank of the Red Sea at just the right time so that they would be walled in by the advancing Egyptian army.
As Christians, we will not only encounter many challenges and hardships, but we will also have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that there is a sovereign God who could have easily prevented those hardships.
Yet, when we come through these faith-testing moments, we can see that God does not lead us to these moments only to leave us trapped. He does not ask us to follow him only to let the enemy advance victoriously.
He always has a plan. Always! And the challenge for us is this: To not lose hope in the hardship. Very often, the only way out of these deeply challenging moments is to walk through them. Part of the purpose of these deeply challenging circumstances is so that we can learn to walk with God through these moments. Like the Israelites, what we will often find is that God is waiting to create pathways of escape…right through the walls sitting before us.
But, he is also the God who may also choose to let us wait for a moment before he intervenes. He often chooses to be present, though not necessarily evident, as we face some of our greatest challenges.
What does this mean for us?
We are going to have to fight & resist the tendency to catastrophize what is happening. There is no shame in feeling hurt, fear, loss, sadness, or confusion. This is completely normal. But, we have to ready our minds to respond in faith because of flesh will never lean in that direction independently.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Our brains respond to pain instinctively with fight/flight/freeze responses. So, our first instincts will be to resist what is happening.
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Our brain responds to uncertainty the same way it responds to failure. If uncertainty is perceived to be negative, it sends up panicked alarm responses that can actually resemble these flight/fight/freeze responses. We are wired to recoil from the uncertainty of negative circumstances.
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We will often internalize negative circumstances as some sort of punishment. In doing so, we can get into some serious spiritual shaming and blaming that is deeply destructive.
- This sort of scenario is fertile ground for comparison & self-pity. Israel demonstrated this on many occasions!
Life is going to try you. God himself may even lead you into challenging circumstances as you step out in faith and obedience. And it will feel like a confusing betrayal! But it is important to remember that the presence of hardship is not the absence of God, or his grace, or his power.
He will never leave. He will never abandon, forget, or neglect us in our trials.
On the contrary he invites us to walk with him by faith as He leads us out by taking us through to new seasons, opportunities, levels, and provisions.