This has become my daily ritual. I'm up again at 4 a.m. praying and praising. I opened my Bible and found this:
The Power of God in His Deliverance of Israel
Psalm 114
When Israel went out of Egypt,
The house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
Judah became His sanctuary,
And Israel His dominion.
The sea saw it and fled;
Jordan turned back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
The little hills like lambs.
What ails you, O sea, that you fled?
O Jordan, that you turned back?
O mountains, that you skipped like rams?
O little hills, like lambs?
Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the God of Jacob,
Who turned the rock into a pool of water,
The flint into a fountain of waters.
This psalm spoke to me so clearly of God's mighty and wonderful deliverance of His people. The sidenotes in my Bible say, "The Lord delivered them from bondage in Egypt, He parted the sea as they came out of Egypt, and He parted the Jordan River when they entered the Promised Land."
Sometimes in our lives, God has to deliver us from a situation...even though it may be a painful experience. There are times when He must pluck us out of our situations in order that we might see His majesty and tremble in awe of His power and presence.
I woke up this morning and God reminded me for the 47th time, "Kaylan, I am El Shaddai...I am All-Sufficient. I am much bigger than what you give Me credit for. Look at what I've done: I've parted the waters so my people could safely cross, I've turned a rock into a pool of water, I've raised a dead man from the grave. Do you not believe I can work a miracle in your life as well?"
Genesis 17:1-2 says, "Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.'"
If anyone needed to know and understand El Shaddai, it was Abram. He and Sarah were childless, yet God had promised to bless him and give him an inheritance. But instead of waiting on God, Abram took matters into his own hands with a handmaid, Hagar.
Abraham moved forward on his own and didn't wait on the Lord. He didn't fully trust that God would fulfill His promise, so he found a temporary fix until the Lord was ready to come through for him.
Some time later, God finally revealed Himself to Abram as "El Shaddai" and commanded him to walk before Him and live blamelessly. In her book, Lord, I Want To Know You, Kay Arthur says, "God [gave] Himself to Abram, and then Abram perfectly [gave] himself to God, and by God [Abram was] made fruitful."
I have been struggling with whether or not I should move forward on my own to temporarily "fix" my situation or wait on God to fulfill His promises and plan for my life. I think I've found my answer.
All of my rambling just goes to show that I am finally recognizing what God is teaching me through all of this: He has delivered me from my situation, He is still the great I AM that works miracles today just as He has since before time began, He is my All-Sufficient Protector during this time of desperation, and I am to wait on Him to fulfill His promises in my life.
So for now...I am going to claim Genesis 17:1 (among the many other verses I've claimed thus far) and recognize that He is saying to me right now just as He did thousands of years ago to Abraham, "I am God Almighty...El Shaddai. Don't forget that. Walk before Me by faith and be blameless."
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