There are times in your life where it is just so easy to give up and say, “I have had enough.” You could sit down in your mess and say, “I am done and do not want to go any further. I am through. I have given it all I got, and the struggle is just too much.” You tried, but you just ran out of fight. Life has a way of taking the life right out of you. How can you dare to come to a place and say, “Is there more to life than this?” God has a way of taking you out of your mess, but you still are surrounded by a mess. Like the children of Israel, God took them out of slavery, which was a mess, their bondage.
For many, this bondage represents those years you were without God, doing and living any kind of way. But someone told you about Jesus, and you knew it was time for a change. There were some things you had to leave behind. You had to cross your Red Sea, and bury those things that had you in bondage, give up some stuff, friends, and a life-style not pleasing to God.
You may have seen God clean you up, got rid of stuff you thought you could
never have gotten rid of and took the desire of it away, and for some it never returned. You gave up some friends you thought you could never live without, those party friends, for a life of the Promised Land. The Red Sea parted and buried all that stuff, just as the Red Sea parted for the children of Israel when they left Egypt. Those things in which they were enslaved, God buried them in the Red Sea and promised them a Promised Land.
But for some of us it did not take long to rehearse our old life-style and, for
some, wanting a taste of it again.
We read in Exodus that after leaving Egypt, it was just
three days later that they were complaining to Moses: “What are we supposed to drink?”(Exodus 15:24). “If only the Lord had let us die in Egypt! There we sat by our pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted! You brought us out into this desert to let us all starve to death!” (Exodus 16:3).
They had forgotten the goodness of God and what God had promised
them. They were saved but weak, redeemed but not released. Saved from their mess but stuck in the desert, in the same old place you were. Redeemed but locked in the same old mundane life. “I can go no further, I am tired, stuck in a rut, and stalled out. I thought the Christian life would be better than this.”
There seems to be a disconnection between the promises of God in what the
Bible says and reality of life. The Bible speaks of grace, but your shoulders often carry burdens and sometime guilt of how you really feel. Jesus said, “I bring joy,” but there is often sadness or no joy. You feel like you are in a wilderness when you should be living the Promised Life. It is time to make a change and go get your blessings and take the Promised Land.
Go get your promise; expect to be challenged. Do you hear me? Expect to be
challenged. I did not say expect challenges to come and overtake you. Expect Satan to pull some tricks, but my God says in John 16:33: “I have told you this so that My peace will be with you. In the world, you will have trouble. But cheer up! I have overcome the world.”
