Writing Through the Bible in a Year

Let’s try this again! “Someone” must not want you to see this one…

Exodus 13:1-16:36

“And in the morning watch the LORD in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians.” Exodus 14:25

Tell me, if this ground had been buried under the Red Sea for years and years and years, wouldn’t it be a safe assumption that it would be a muddy sloppy mess waaaay down deep into the ground? Yet scripture tells us over and over that the ground was dry when the Israelites were walking across it. That may be a small fact that we pass right by when we’re reading something as awesome as the parting of the Red Sea, but it’s not a small fact at all! The ground was DRY; as in packed, hard, dirt and dust flying from feet pounding as they’re hurrying across the sea bed. Yet somehow, by the time the Egyptians go to cross this very same ground, their wheels get clogged and heavy.

Now I did a little digging on my own, through several different translations of this word “clogged”. It seems that there are two ways that the translators like to define it. Either they say “clogged” or they say “separated”. However the rest of the verse, “so that they drove heavily” is either translated “heavily” or “with difficulty”.

Don’t you think that if your chariot wheels, built light for speed and agility, getting clogged with heavy mud would tend to make you drive heavily and with difficulty and perhaps even cause your wheels to separate from your chariot?

But wait, how would that happen if the ground was still dry like it was for the Israelites?

Seriously, how awesome is our God? I mean really! First of all, to even part the sea in the first place, that’s just awesome. But then, like a cherry on top of an ice cream Sunday with whipped cream, He not only parts the sea, but makes the land dry so that their feet don’t get muddy and heavy. You know, because that would make it really hard for them to run across like He told them to. Oh! But wait! It gets better! Because just as the Israelites are finishing crossing, the miracle of the parting is beginning to wear off. The dry ground suddenly isn’t so dry anymore. The walls of water don’t seem quite so tall any more. The ground that was so easy to travel on earlier is not suddenly sticky with mud that’s getting trapped in the chariot wheels, slowing them down and making them simply fall apart! “Ummmm… guys, I think we should get out of here… This YHWH guy, yeah…. I think He’s fighting for the Israelites. Annnnd… I think He’s going to win against us.” WHOOSH!

“Heh, heh, heh, heh, Buh-Bye Egyptian warriors!”

You want to know what I think is really awesome? What Moses said BEFORE all that happened.

The Egyptian army is pressing in on them; they’re literally stuck between the Sea and the army – a rock and a hard place. Talk about the pressure being on! They are that mouse being squeezed until it squeaks! And look! What is it that they do in that moment?

“Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt; ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” (Exodus 14:11-12)

They squeak! They squeak and the overflow of their heart pours forth as speech. Do you really think they BELIEVE that they would have been better off in Egypt as slaves? Of COURSE they don’t! For years they had been crying out to God to save them from their slavery! But in that moment their hearts are so filled with Fear that they do the thing that we all seem to do in the face of Fear. Freak out. We say things that in our spirit we know aren’t true, yet it’s how we are truly feeling at the moment. We are so desperate for release from the pressure that we’ll say just about anything to keep from being crushed. And it is in that moment that we realize how humanly powerless we truly are. We are weak and fragile beings that no matter how strong and mighty we think we are, we are ALWAYS in desperate need of a Savior.

We are in need of a God who says to us, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which He will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall NEVER see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” (Exodus 14:13-14)

Be still and know that HE IS GOD! Yesterday, in my dream, when I stood face to face with pure evil there was nothing that I could do to save myself. And I didn’t have to! Because in the face of the most dangerous being in the universe, God took over for me. I fought until I was at the end of my ability to defend myself and then God took over from there. He defended me when I wasn’t able. He shielded me completely from the curse of the Enemy. What God has blessed NO ONE can curse! Not even Satan himself!

Stop fighting a fight that’s already been won! Jesus has overcome! Yes we will have trials in this world, but Jesus has overcome and so can we! We have been born into the kingdom of God where we now belong to the family of overcomers! YOU are an overcomer. Whatever trial or pressure that you’re facing today, you can and will overcome it! It will pass and you will have been delivered from it, and you will turn back around to look at the Enemy who has been chasing after you and you will LAUGH as they drown in your miracle!

Is that not the most beautiful picture? Satan is drowning in YOUR miracle. The very thing that God did to save us, is the very thing that swallows Satan alive and spits him out dead on the shore afterwards. HALLELUJAH!

That’s MY God! The God who doesn’t just save, He destroys the thing I needed saving from!

“The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen, of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.” Exodus 14:28-29

Exodus 13:1-16:36

Exodus 9:13-12:51

“It was a night of watching by the LORD.” Exodus 12:42

Last night the LORD gave me a dream and I’d like to share the last part of it with you. I was in a town park late at night in the middle of winter and there was snow all over in deep piles. Amongst the piles of snow there were fires scattered here and there as if it were a campground. A young boy came to me and said something to me to get me to follow him to his home. As I attempted to follow him I quickly lost him in his “home” under piles of snow. It was as if they had built a blanket fort and then piled snow on top of the blankets in order to hide the glow from a devilish fire that was raging inside the “tent”.

As I walked around the “home” searching for an entrance to the place I began to feel very uneasy and realized that this had been a trap set for me. The young child had drawn me near to this place of hidden evil beneath a cloak of pure white snow. A place that from a distance looked harmless and pure, yet from up close I could instantly tell that it was nothing of the sort. The eery orange glow that emanated between the cracks in the piles of snow just screamed get away. Just as I decided to leave I slipped at the top of a pile of snow and slid down to the bottom landing precariously next to another pile with that horrible light. As I slid to a stop, part of the base of the other pile slid away and there was an eye in the hole that was created. It had been closed, but with the movement of the snow the eye opened. Frightened I held my breath and closed my eyes willing myself to sink deeper into the snow I had fallen into. And that’s when I noticed my clothes; they were the same color as the snow AND covered in the same little piles of snow! Placing myself in stark contrast to the inside of the “home” which I could now see into quite plainly through the hole my fall had created.

The eye looked straight at me, but didn’t see me! But then the very evil man connected to that eye sat up and opened both eyes to see more clearly. It was at this point that he spotted me, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the “home”.

Once inside, it was a full sized building with room after room after room. Although it looked like a small blanket fort from the outside, it was cavernous from the inside! In the face of this man, so obviously connected with evil I had no fear and simply walked away from him into another room. His wife on the other hand was another story. She shrilled a scream of terror at my presence in their “home”. I terrified HER! She screamed for her husband to call “Sven” – whoever he was. I noticed that she had my son and my dog so I went over to them and grabbed them to shake them awake out of whatever trance they had been in to keep them there. And I told them to RUN! Which they did. Then I picked up one of the woman’s DVD’s from off the floor. It was in a white case that looked good, but when I opened it up the DVD was a Zombie movie. I popped the DVD out of the case and held it out in front of me taunting her, “what are you gonna do about it?” She was terrified that I was going to break it. So I, of course, broke it and took the halves of the broken DVD and got close enough to her to scrape one of her wrists with the jagged edges, but she didn’t bleed (which I found interesting).

Then Sven entered the room. He was by far THE most evil thing I had seen in this dream! He looked like a modern day vampire in every sense of the word. His eyes were completely black, his skin was pasty white, yet had the same evil orange glow as the light that was coming from all these rooms. And he HATED me; as terrified as the wife had been of me, that’s how much he hated me. And …I was a little concerned with him. It was as if I had perhaps met my match in this Sven. He was pulling something out of his pocket; something that I knew had the power to destroy me. I stepped backwards into a little space between bookshelves, or furniture of some sort, and I could feel a change in the room. It was as if I had just stepped over a line they had created to trap me and they were happy about it. But they didn’t know that it wasn’t going to work on me. I jumped up onto a desk in the room so that I was standing taller than he was (which was for some reason important, perhaps because I am so short in real life I don’t know). And at the same moment that he opened up another white DVD case to show me the DVD inside, I did the only thing I could think of to do, I began to speak in tongues against him. I may have only gotten one word out, but it was enough. I stood there in complete awe as a bright pure white bubble formed around me, totally encapsulating me and protecting me from all the curses Sven was attempting to throw my way. Nothing he did worked. I just stood there looking at him through my pure white bubble of light. And through the bubble I could read something written in blood backwards, the “line” I had crossed was a curse they had written in blood in order to trap me. But it didn’t work, because I have the blood of our spotless lamb of God, JESUS CHRIST smeared on the doorposts of my heart for all eternity. I have been sealed in His Holy Spirit as a signpost above the home of my heart that I belong to HIM and therefore “the destroyer is not allowed to enter my house to strike me”. (Exodus 12:23)

My friends, if you have not witnessed the baptism of the Holy Spirit I strongly encourage you to seek it out! It is a PROTECTION from the Enemy that you can not match with anything else. Just like the Israelites had to be circumcised in order to take part in the Passover dinner to remain completely safe from the destroyer, we too need to have our hearts circumcised by the Holy Spirit! Only His circumcision doesn’t hurt, it HEALS! I’ve been reading The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson (fabulous book, highly recommend it to EVERYONE), and in this book David recounts the story of several boys who were heavily addicted to Heroine who were completely freed from this addiction when they accepted Christ as their savior and asked Jesus to baptize them in His Holy Spirit; to be sealed for His purposes in their life. Time after time these boys told David that that was the moment they truly felt free from their addiction. When the Holy Spirit came in and flooded their heart with His presence.

There were a few that had, after receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, had returned to the drug, only to find that it didn’t work for them anymore. Although they succumbed to the tremendous pull and temptation of the drug, it no longer held the euphoria that it had in the past. Now instead of the drug having them in its grip, GOD had them in HIS.

The power of God is available to us through His Spirit. We need only ask Him for it and be willing to receive it. He is faithful and He gives His Spirit to us willingly!

“And I tell you, ‘ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Luke 11:9-13

“If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light”. Luke 11:36

“Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Whatever you have learned and received and heard and seen in me – practice these things and the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:8-9

If you would like to know more about the Teen Challenge Program (they help addicts kick their addictions) or find a location near you, click here.

Exodus 1:1-4:31

“When she could hide him [Moses] no longer she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.” Exodus 2:3

A mother’s love for her child is an amazing thing. We will defend our children at any cost. But sometimes the best way to protect them is to let them go.

Moses had grown too large to stay hidden any more. The officials were bound to find him sooner or later. Now we have no way of knowing what his mother was thinking. Was she hoping that he would float to a safe distant city down the river where a kindly farmer would find him? Did she actually have the princess in mind when she put him in the reeds? We have no way of knowing what her ultimate hope was for her precious son. But we do know this; in order to keep him alive, she had to let him go. And we can only imagine the pain that must have caused her. Yet she still had hope. Hope in her God that He would protect this son that was so obviously special. He had survived those three months without being discovered and immediately killed that was no small feat. God had managed to keep him alive this long, perhaps He would continue to bless little Moses and keep him alive long enough to find a new family to care for him.

I doubt that she could have imagined what came next. The audacity of hoping that not only by letting him go, he would end up coming back to her and she would get PAID to do the very thing she wanted to do in the first place. Mother her child. But beyond that, to then be able to watch him grow and flourish while living in the palace as the Pharoah’s grandson! He was right under the nose that had been trying to kill him in the first place.

We all have things in our lives that are REALLY hard to give up. Things that mean the whole world to us. Things that are so much a part of ourselves that it hurts when we let them go, Moses was her child, he was her flesh and blood. He was a part of her heart living outside her body. But in order to see him even have a chance at life, she had to let him go. And I believe that she clung to that audacious hope that somehow he would survive and she would get to see him again before she died. But even if she didn’t, she would know in her heart that she did everything she could to help him survive.