Are our hearts set on ‘Following’ Jesus or are we held in place (stuck) by the reassurance of the ‘Familiar’?
Israel finally came out of Egypt, with all the wealth of Egypt and crossed through the Red Sea on dry ground – a miracle from God. Exodus 14 It’s interesting that we read the events of the next 4 chapters of Exodus, 15, 16, 17, 18; Israel’s new journey with God through desert lands. Israel had suddenly changed from being a settled, enslaved people (being told what to do and when, No ‘Freedom’) to being nomads and journeying as they were led by God. Exodus 19 begins;
On the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt – on that very day – they came to the Desert of Sinai. 2 After they set out from Rephidim, they entered the Desert of Sinai, and Israel camped there in the desert in front of the mountain. Exodus 19:1,2
All the events of those 4 chapters of Exodus 15-18 were compressed into a period of just 3 months, to the very day! God’s timing is amazingly precise when He chooses to be. Israel had been slaves in Egypt for 430 years to the very day! Exodus 12:40, 41 They had grown from a family of 12 brothers to twelve tribes and a nation under God.
Israel had cried out to God in their captivity and He’d heard them and brought them out of Egypt (represents the world system) with powerful acts of judgement. They’d lost their ‘Familiar Lives’, where they knew how to navigate and were now in a strange world, unknown to them, but God was with them.
The world today has changed for many people, even most people and may never return to what it was before. Some Prophetic Voices are declaring it’s a new Era, the Era of the Coming Kingdom of God. The big question for the Believers today is will we go forward into the New Day or will we look back to the Familiar?
In Luke 17:20, the Pharisees asked Jesus, ‘When the Kingdom of God would come?’ He later told His disciples that just at it was in the days of Noah and Lot, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. Luke 17:26
Jesus warned His disciples and us not to try to hold onto our lives, perhaps we could say, ‘past lives’.
Remember Lot’s wife! 33 Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. Luke 17:32, 33
We must be willing to give up the ‘Familiar and Follow the Lord’ into what He has for us – ‘Freedom’ in our true destiny. Remember all that we see today is temporary but the unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18
May God bless and keep you and make His face shine upon you, in these coming days.