The Part Of God’s Will No One WantsSample

Stay put He is in control

When Moses and the children of Israel stood at the edge of the Red Sea, with the Egyptian army closing in, they made an almost unbelievable tactical choice: they stayed put. They just stood in place. Why? Because God was weaving a story that a bridge across the water could not tell. The Israelites would have to walk through the sea to tell God’s great story of deliverance. Surely there were other routes, other plans of escape. Certainly, battles awaited them on the “shorter roads” too—but God wanted to take them the long way in a story that required an unprecedented miracle: the parting of the Red Sea.

“Our whole perspective changes,” says Robert J. Morgan, in his book Red Sea Rules, “when, finding ourselves in a hard place, we realize the Lord has either placed us there or allowed us to be there, perhaps for reasons presently only known to Himself.”¹ His goal for the hemmed-in Israelites was not the “dot” of the moment Moses must have seen through his straw like perspective, but a timeless story of God’s greatness that would be told and retold throughout history.

When you and I begin to look at the whole of God’s plan instead of the tiny part immediately before us, trust opens up. We can trust our great God to see us through. He has been faithful to those who’ve come before us, and He will be faithful to us. The psalmist wrote, “Your faithfulness continues through all generations; you established the earth, and it endures”.

Martyrs, widows, orphans, the impoverished, the forgotten, the persecuted and the wounded have all found Christ faithful. With such a rich history behind Him, He is not going to ruin His reputation by hanging us out to dry. He doesn’t just act faithfully; He is faithful. I don’t just act like Gregg Matte—I am Gregg Matte. That is who I am, and all that I can be. He is faithful. That is who he is, and it is all that He can be. “The one who calls you is faithful,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church, “and he will do it”. And again, to the church at Corinth he wrote, “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful”.

Note
1. A Robert J. Morgan, Red Sea Rules (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2001), p. 7.