REFLECTIONS #115: IT’S ALL ABOUT THE WHO!

"…with God nothing will be impossible!" (Luke 1:37)

As Sophia Petrillo (Golden Girls) might say, “Picture it, it was the year 1250 B.C., and we had been marching for seven days out of Egypt. We were camped before Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the Red Sea. Suddenly, behind us, we could see the Egyptian army, hundreds of chariots and horsemen, racing toward us, but in front of us was the Red Sea. …we were trapped, no way to escape. Everybody was frantic, asking if anyone had any ideas. ‘We could surrender and beg for mercy–maybe they would just take us back to Egypt to be slaves, instead of killing us.’ That idea was rejected because we would wind up dead or slaves. So we asked if anybody else had an idea. ‘We could take a stand and fight them!” Let’s see, they are a well-trained army with weapons and we are a bunch of runaway slaves with our wives and children and no weapons, so we wouldn’t stand a chance. So, no.” Anybody else got an idea? ‘We could just throw ourselves into the sea.’ Drowning may be preferable to slavery or a bloody death, but we will still be dead. Not good. Anybody else got an idea? We couldn’t think of anything else to do, so we thought our goose was cooked. We started telling each other good-bye and cursing Moses and the day he came back to us. And then God spoke to Moses! God had a plan! He told Moses to lift up the rod God gave him and to stretch out his hand over the sea and divide it (see Exodus 14:15-16). As Moses lifted his rod and stretched out his hand over the Red Sea, a strong east wind began to blow and the Sea started to part! Seriously, the waters parted to the left and right and stood up as a great wall on each side. And in the middle was dry ground we could walk on to cross to the other side. We looked at the dry ground before us with the standing walls of water on either side and we looked behind us at the advancing Egyptian army, and decided we would take our chances with the walls. We all made it through just fine, but when the Egyptian army tried to come across, the wheels on their chariots started falling off and they all got bogged down in the mud. Then the walls of water collapsed on them! Not one of them survived, and not one of us died! You should have been there!” (See Exodus 14:17-30).

Like the Hebrews, our solution when we are trapped between a rock and a hard place or the devil and a deep red sea is not the HOW we can figure out – it’s GOD, the WHO! HE is still the Mighty One of Israel, who brought specific plagues challenging the major Egyptian gods to deliver the Hebrews from the cruel and powerful Pharaoh of Egypt; HE is still the Parter of seas to give His people safe passage; HE is still the One who brought down the six-foot thick and twelve to 17 foot high wall of Jericho with a shout. HE is still the God who gave the Israelites victory after victory over armies vastly superior to them in numbers and equipment; HE is still the God of knowledge (1 Sam.2:3); HE is still the God of our salvation (Isa. 12:2).

HE is still YAHWEY – NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM! (Luke 1:37)

Sometimes even many of us who claim to be mature Christians read the powerful stories in the Old Testament as entertaining, encouraging, and even inspiring stories, rather than a revelation of the power of God and His willingness and desire to intervene in the affairs of men. We don’t do much better when it comes to the stories of miracles in the New Testament. We believe they happened then, but they don’t have application to our lives now. Why is that?

I believe it's because we weaken our faith by getting bogged down trying to figure out HOW God can bring the answer or the miracle we need. Our problem is we look at the problem--and we don’t see any way to solve it. We examine it from every angle and conclude that not only is it impossible for us, but we can’t see any way even God could fix our problem. So we give up, accept defeat, and justify our surrender by thinking that it just “must be the will of God.” This response is totally human and totally in the flesh; it is also totally sinful, because we are denying the power of GOD, and "whatever is not from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23).

Whatever our crisis or our problem may be, from personal to global, no matter how big and impossible it looks, GOD is still YAHWEH–NOTHING IS TOO HARD FOR HIM, NOTHING IS TOO BIG FOR HIM, NOTHING IS TOO COMPLICATED FOR HIM, AND NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM!

Instead of wracking our brains trying to figure everything out, we need to remind ourselves WHO HE IS. We need to bring our problem to Him and seek His counsel. And when He tells us to do something, we need to trust Him and obediently do it, no matter how ridiculous it may seem to us! I’m pretty sure Moses and Gideon and Joshua and many others wondered sometimes about the plans God gave them. Strike the rock to get water for the people; send thousands of your army away, keeping only 300 men to fight a vast enemy army; attack Jericho by marching around its walls in silence and then shout – these things don’t make sense in the natural! But Moses and Gideon and Joshua knew the WHO behind the HOW. They knew they served the omnipotent GOD who commands both the natural and the supernatural. They obeyed GOD and saw mighty wonders.

Guess what? We serve the same GOD they did, and He has not changed! Hallelujah!

When we trust the WHO, leave the HOW up to HIM, and obey in faith, we, too, will see mighty wonders!

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Hallelujah!

Love, Hugs, and Blessings,

Syandra