This message was birthed out of a conversation I’ve been having with God since March of 2020. When the world starting shutting down to “slow the spread”, the Lord told me this was going to be a Red Sea Moment for so many. This Red Sea moment would be a culmination of all the praying, pleading, and asking God to do something or shift something. I have felt like that meant things were going to change, and life would never go back to what we considered normal, because once you cross the Red Sea, you don’t go back.
We’re going to start with Exodus 14:21-25 NIV: “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. The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”
When I read this, I see the Lord fighting on behalf of the Israelites. “The Lord drove the sea back.” “The Lord looked down at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion.” He jammed the wheels of their chariots.” The Egyptians said, “The Lord is fighting for them against us!”
All Moses had to do was stretch out his hand over the sea and let the Lord do His work. How nice would it be if this was how life always worked? If we could just tell the Lord we’re ready to get out of somewhere, like waiting, enduring a storm, moving, transition, etc. Then, we stand and put up our hands and let Him do the work with our surrender.
Maybe we see this happen for someone else. We see someone get the promotion we’ve worked for. Maybe the love we’ve been searching for, the marriage we want, the baby we’ve begged and cried for, or the life we’ve been praying for. It is so easy to see these momentous occasions happening for someone else and believe that all they had to do was “surrender” to the will of the Lord. Or that they just prayed the right way, in the right moment, in the right place and the stars aligned for that exact thing at precisely the right time.
What we fail to see, in either situation, is how much persistence, doubt, resistance, and battle happened leading up to that point. In this message, I am going to highlight the path that got Moses and the Israelites to this point, with points for you to take note of to apply this to your own journey.
1. We are called and created for His purpose.
We all know the story of how Moses was put in a basket by his mother in order to save his life, then he was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. He was raised by the princess, after she asked his mother, not knowing who she was, to nurse him until he was weaned. This is the miraculous beginning to a story of a man called and commissioned by God for an amazing purpose.
Romans 8:28-30 NIV says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
This passage indicates that if you are a believer who has accepted justification by the blood, in other words, accepted Jesus as your savior, you are called. If you are called, He will work all things for your good. This does not mean things will be easy. This does not mean things will also make sense. This does not mean that you can make terrible choices and just expect it to work out. What this does mean is that He knows you, He knows your heart, and He loves you. He will work all things for your good when people’s free will appears to steal what has been set before you.
Even when you make choices that are questionable, you are still called. Moses killed an Egyptian man to save a Hebrew man. I would call that a questionable decision. In Exodus 2:11-15, we see that Moses hid the man and then was found out, so pharaoh wanted him dead. He fled Egypt and ended up giving the right girls some water for their sheep and their dad took him in. That man took Moses in and became him father-in-law.
2. God’s call on your life requires you to be paying attention.
Exodus 3:1-10 NIV, “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
Moses could have just glanced at the bush, saw it was on fire, and moved on because they were in the desert, and I’d assume that wasn’t necessarily something he’d want to investigate. He noticed something out of the ordinary and acknowledged the Lord’s call. When we are close to the Lord, he can use something that appears to be ordinary to get our attention. When we know His voice, we will be able to see the extraordinary.
3. The Lord knows what He is doing when He calls you!
4. Bring people along with you.
Exodus 4 is a story of Moses questioning everything the Lord is saying because he is not confident in who the Lord has called him to be. He first says, in verse 1, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”
God answers him and tells him what to do to let the people see that it was, indeed, God who sent him.
Then, in verse 10, he questions God’s call again, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
Again, Moses still questions the Lord.
In verse 13, Moses says, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.”
14 Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you. 15 You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. 16 He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. 17 But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.”
How many times do we know what the Lord has called us to, yet we continually doubt who we are? We doubt that we are capable or qualified of the things he has called us to. The Lord persists, he pursues, and he commands. This part of the story tells me two things: first, the Lord knows what He is doing and he gets frustrated when we question him. Second, when we feel like we can’t do the job, ask someone to walk it with you. Ask someone to be your accountability partner, to keep you in check, to remind you of what the Lord has said.
Romans 15:30 NIV says, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.”
Do not be afraid to ask for support as you fight through it. Do not hesitate to pray for and with your people when they are fighting through it!
5. The battle may get harder before you see any breakthrough.
When Moses first got to Egypt, Pharaoh wasn’t having it. He actually told his men to stop supplying the materials the Israelites needed to make the bricks that they were ordered to make. He very specifically told his men to make it as hard as possible for them to fulfill the same daily quota of bricks because he said they were being lazy, because he was angry that they were trying to leave with Moses to worship their God.
This is what the spirit realm feels like when you are going toward what God has called you to! Spiritual warfare will make you feel like your whole world is crumbling when you start trying to make progress. There may be illnesses, flat tires, broken down vehicles, flooded kitchens, or other great losses or trials. Do not be discouraged! When I was having a baby, they told me that the part of labor that is the hardest is the time right before the baby is coming. You feel like giving up, but it means it’s time. I believe breakthrough is often like that.
6. Be persisitent.
Moses went back and asked no less than 10 times for pharaoh to let the Israelites go. The Lord fought on their behalf, with plagues, and death, as Moses was continuing to be obedient. Even though he went in doubting his ability to follow through with the Lord’s command to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, the Lord did as He promised and walked with him and fought on his behalf. With each plague, Moses gained more confidence. He started to believe that what the Lord had said to him was true, and that he could be used in a mighty way to accomplish the Lord’s will.
I am going to tell you a story of how this has played out in my family’s life. Let me start with a background. My husband and I got married in 2010, and began trying to start a family in 2011. Long story, and probably a couple sermons worth of lessons later, we adopted our first son, Sam. Then, a year later, we did some fertility treatments and ended up adopting our second son, Noah. Then, three and a half years, a cross country move, and failed adoption later, we adopted our daughter Ariel. Since I was a child, I always knew adoption would be part of my life. It was a bit of a road to get there, but once Nolan and I were on the same page, and willing to be obedient, the Lord prepared the way and guided our hearts to precisely where they needed to be and to the children who we have the honor of raising.
After three adoptions and parenting three children, I continued to feel the Lord telling me that I would be pregnant someday. I kept telling him I didn’t want it. I was scared of postpartum and pregnancy complications, and whatever other horror stories I had heard. I kept telling the Lord that I would adopt again, and that He could just stop telling me I was going to be pregnant, because I had moved on. But when I would see pregnant women in places, it always stung, and I would start the conversation with God all over again.
We eventually felt the Lord give us permission to go forward with IVF, after 10 years of infertility. When I was 16 weeks pregnant, I went in for a routine doctors appointment, where part of the appointment was listening to her heartbeat with a doppler. They couldn’t find her heartbeat. They were super nonchalant, and reassuring that it was just because at that point, babies are trickier to find. So, they sent me to the waiting room to wait for the sonographer to do an ultrasound to be sure she was ok. I had to wait about 20 minutes. She was fine, moving around, and her heart was so strong.
But, during that 20 minutes in that waiting room, I started tearing up. I began wondering how many women in that waiting room were wishing they were pregnant? How many of the pregnant women waited as long as we did? For a decade, those waiting rooms were utter torture. All I saw was women with their newborns, or women with their sweet bellies full of life. I fought the thoughts that I didn’t know what it took for them to get there, because I was bitter and resentful that they had what I so desperately wanted.
So, while I’m waiting to hear evie’s heartbeat, I start realizing how thankful I was that Nolan and I were obedient all these years. That, during our excruciating wait, we lived a lot of life. We were able to follow the leading of the Lord, even when we felt broken. Our obedience when it wasn’t what we wanted led us to our three beautiful, incredibly gifted, and unbelievably awesome children. We have met people all over the country through our moves, and specifically because of conversations about adoption. We have been able to tell people about God’s faithfulness specifically through conversations about adoption and infertility. We now have four beautiful children, that baby girl turned one in august and is beautiful, healthy, and so full of life and joy!
When we wonder what the Lord is doing, and we doubt our ability to be cut out for the job, we undercut what He could be preparing for someone else through our experience. We were persistent, we lived and moved and continued, even though we very frequently still wonder if we were the right people for the job. We had amazing people come along with us, who prayed with and encouraged us. So, next time you see someone else’s Red Sea moment, don’t be envious because you have no idea what the battle was that got them there. Remember that the blessings that you pray for will have battles to get to them. Pastor Chitty once said, “We have hard things because we ask for hard things.” That is something my husband and I talk about often, because when we got married, we asked for a life that glorifies God and builds the kingdom. That has definitely led us to some moments that were battles that became testimonies.
When we think about the Red Sea, we know it was the culmination of the exodus from Egypt. We know it was how the Israelites ultimately escaped 430 years of captivity. When we have Red Sea moments, we must remember that they are bringing us out of wherever we’ve been enslaved, whether by addiction, grief, unforgiveness, expectation, trauma, or any combination of things. Don’t judge your journey to the Red Sea based on what you’ve seen for someone else.
In summary, your journey to your Red Sea should be viewed in light of Moses’s journey:
- We are called and created for His purpose.
- God’s call on your life requires you to be paying attention.
- The Lord knows what He is doing when He calls you!
- Bring people along with you.
- The battle may get harder before you see any breakthrough.
- Be persisitent.