What do you do when things seem impossible and there’s no way out and there’s no way you can go back?
As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. Exodus 14:10
There was no way of escape and their backs were against the wall. Like the Hebrews, when our backs are against the wall it can take our breath away. We worry and complain it’s just not fair and try to control or find some way out of our situation, but to no avail.
Some people believe that when they are faithfully following God He will keep them from trials and conflicts. If so, you would think that Paul during his great missionary journey to Rome would have been kept by God’s sovereignty from violent storms and his enemies.
Yet, just the opposite was true. Paul tells us, “we are hard pressed on every side, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed…we were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9; 1:8
Paul endured beatings, imprisonments, riots, sleepless nights and hunger, poisonous snakes, shipwreck and narrowly escaped drowning by swimming to shore at Malta. .” Is this a God of infinite power? Yes.
Paul went on to say, “Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” 2 Corinthians 1:9
Like Paul, could it be that God has orchestrated our circumstances?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9
The story continues… Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. Exodus 14:21
For Israel the real work of God was not when they awoke in the morning and found that they could get over the Red Sea; but it was ‘all that night’ that God was working on their behalf. There is great comfort in knowing that God works in the dark when we can’t see it and least expect it. God worked all that night for the Hebrews. The next day simply revealed what God had done during the night.
Are you in a place where life seems dark? “All that night the Lord drove back the see.” Do not forget that it was ‘all that night’ that God was working. With the enemy behind them and the sea in front of them that night seemed blacker and fearful than anything they had ever experienced before. That long night God’s weary children saw that God had been working all that night to make a path for their future.
You may not see it either, but God intimately knows your situation and is working ‘all that night stuff’ in your life for your future. Trust Him, He is worthy of it!
