Brought out of Egypt

 This story starts with God who heard saw the of the oppression of His people.

Exodus 3:7-8

⁷ And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their ^[a]sorrows. ⁸ So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. 

As with most of my posts they are very personal and based on what I am going through. This one started at the beginning of this year when I began to feel the need to pray for God to open a door to move me from one job to another. We prayed and prayed, this was not the best place for me, it was if you will my Egypt, a place that was not good but comfortable because I knew pretty much what to expect everyday. In praying for God to open the door He sure did, He moved me out of our Egypt and on the journey towards our promised land. Where that land is I have an idea but there is a journey that goes along with it and this is where I am at right now on that journey.

Exodus 14:10-12

¹⁰ And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ Then they said to Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us, to bring us up out of Egypt? ¹² Is this not the word that we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.”

You see it would be really easy for me and it has been to complain about God moving me from that comfortable place of hurt and pain, I had grown so used to. Why Lord would you move me out of this job/ Why into this wilderness where I don't know where my next paycheck is coming from? There are many reasons as to why God brings us out of a particular place, the biggest one is for HIS glory. You see God does not work in a vacuum, He knows exactly what He is doing. For me there are a number of reasons as to why I believe God moved me from my last job, ultimately, I truly don't know, but what it boils down to is God's ways are not my ways and He has a plan that is going to cause Him to get the glory, it will cause us and others to worship Him.

 Exodus 14:13-15

¹³ And Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation^[b] of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. ¹⁴ The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold^[c] your peace.” ¹⁵ And the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward. ¹⁶ But lift up your rod, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it. And the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.

 You see as with the people of Israel, God had to take them to the end of themselves, God does the same thing with us, when there could be any sort of claim that we did something God won't get the glory, over and over again we see this throughout the bible. Here as we are discussing in Exodus, the people were locked in and couldn't go forward or back, Joshua at Jericho (Joshua 6), Gideon and God's defeat of the Midaneites (Judges 6-7), probably the most well known story of being saved, the virgin birth of Jesus (Luke 2), there are even more stories, the Apostles walking out of Jail, Jesus feeding the 5000. Do you see where I am going? God wants all of the glory. Here is the best part of this story, when God came to save His people He was right on time, not late but look at something here really closely, they walked through on DRY GROUND! you see God cared about them so much He even made the ground dry, they could have I'm sure walked through on muddy ground, or even damp sand (dirt) but they didn't THE GROUND WAS DRY!  don't miss that part, because in all my years of studying these verses I've missed that part. When God comes to save us He doesn't just save us halfway, He does so beyond all that we can ask or think (Ephesians 3:20-21). 

As I was praying this past week I really felt the Lord impress upon my heart to seek Him first, but not just the first part of Matthew 6:33 Seek first the Kingdom of God... but the second half as well and all these things will be added to you. Throughout the bible over and over God promises to take care of us. We are to seek His kingdom first, and let God worry about the rest. Easier said than done. I pray that for those of us reading this, including myself, that I would trust that when God parts the Red Sea that He will give us dry ground to walk on.

Blessings,

Nick