The Lord Is Fighting for You

 July 18, 2024

Thursday

I was an awkward kid. I didn't fit in the popular group. I was one of the youngest in my class. I didn't know how to act because I was so much older than my siblings and played by myself most of the time because we lived in the country with no other kids near us. That didn't keep me from wanting to be somebody.  

I had many jobs while in high school. One was working in a drive-up hamburger place. One of the popular girls in my high school worked with me. She had something minor that happened while we worked. I really can't remember what it was. It could have been a button coming off of her shirt. It seemed minor to me. What surprised me was her saying, "Why does this always happen to me?!" To me, her life was perfect. Yet, to her, bad things happened to her all the time.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with adolescence. At that age, we were always the center of our own attention. We fully expected that things go always right for some people and always wrong for us. It wasn't true but we didn't know how to notice what was going right. These moments seemed to come so rarely.

Yet, we may not have gotten over this. We set our sights on a new goal. We fail miserably. We try harder and things get worse. We pray with all our might and God gives us silence. At least, that's how we see it. We can't see the grace because we are too close to the situation. We don't realize what God is doing because we can't see Him doing it. Then, we assume that He is doing nothing.

When the Egyptians chased after God's people backed up against the sea, the people thought that they had been abandoned. They thought that they would be destroyed. They had seen God move in the ten plagues but they couldn't see Him moving at the moment. They complained to Moses. Moses knew that God didn't lead them this far to leave them. He knew that God would rescue them Himself. They merely need to be obedient and go forward when forward seemed to be the wrong direction.

We must remember that these people had been under the thumb of Pharaoh. They always got the wrong end of the stick. Their thinking was conditioned by this. They were like the Eeyore character in Winnie-the-Pooh who expected bad things to follow him wherever he went. Yet, that is not what happened. God had this right from the beginning.

Now, I don't know what might be going wrong for you, but eventually they will. You may pray with all your might and get nothing but silence. You might try harder and fail worse. But I want you to remember this: God is working right now to bring you a testimony of faithfulness. Of course, you will need to be faithful. He is fighting for you. never forget that. Never! Never! Never! Never!

Exodus 14:8–15 (NASB 2020) ⁸ So the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he chased after the sons of Israel as the sons of Israel were going out boldly. ⁹ Then the Egyptians chased after them with all the horses and chariots of Pharaoh, his horsemen and his army, and they overtook them camping by the sea, beside Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon. ¹⁰ As Pharaoh approached, the sons of Israel looked, and behold, the Egyptians were coming after them, and they became very frightened; so the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone so that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness!” ¹³ But Moses said to the people, “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will perform for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again, ever. ¹⁴ The Lord will fight for you, while you keep silent.” ¹⁵ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the sons of Israel to go forward.