When the journey of your divine destiny includes difficulties that are inherent in fulfilling the dreams God placed in your heart, do you retreat back to a life from which you’ve been delivered? When God delivered the children of Israel out of bondage, they mumbled against Moses several times. Instead of asking and believing God for what they needed, they complained and suggested that it would have been better if they had stayed in or returned to bondage. They even went as far as to say “let us get a captain and return to Egypt,” while standing on the edge of their promised land.
When challenges on the path to the promise get difficult or even scary, we must not return to the prison of our past. We must trust that God has planned every provision for the entire journey.
Here’s a very short version of what happened. God delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt in Exodus, chapter 12; Pharoh’s army pursued them in chapter 13 and was drowned; they sang praises and wrote songs about God’s awesome power in chapter 14; three days later in chapter 15 they were murmuring about water; and 12 days later in chapter 16—just 15 days after deliverance—they were suggesting that they should return to Egypt because they were hungry.
Isn’t that how we sometimes treat God? We enter into praise and worship on Sunday mornings and by Monday or Tuesday when we face the challenges of that new job or promised relationship, we wished we had stayed in that dead-end, unfulfilling job or think we should have remained single. We have to stop suggesting that what we have been delivered from is somehow better than the promise toward our destiny just because it gets challenging.
Here are three suggestions to keep us committed to the path of our promise and not be persuaded to return to our prisons.
1) Be realistic about what our past was really like when we were living it. As humans, we have a way of glorifying a life we’re no longer living when in actuality it was horrifying when we lived it. We want to exchange a “new” discomfort or challenge for an old one by making the situation from which we were delivered seem less harsh than it really was. Exodus 1:15 says of the Egyptians' treatment of the Israelites while in bondage “They made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar, brick, and all kinds of work in the field. All their service was with harshness and severity.” (AMP) We must not allow ourselves to think that being full and enslaved is better than being free and hungry, especially when we are God’s children!
2) Know that all challenges are allowed by God to prepare us for the promise. Many of us are familiar with the scripture “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28, KJV) We must remember that everything we go through is not coincidental and is not going to destroy us—even the attacks of the enemy. God’s love and power always prevail and we just have to keep the faith and trust that God knows what He’s doing.
3) Our lives are for the glory of God. It’s much more difficult to return to your old ways just to have the misguided comforts of this world when you embrace the beauty and power of being God’s vessel. We cannot let the enemy convince us that what we want (or need) is something different from what God has for us. No matter how big or powerful our thoughts are about our needs, our lives, or our future, God has something bigger, better, and more powerful. Paul said in Ephesians 3:20 “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” (KJV)
Challenge: The next time you think that you should have stayed in a situation you know God needed to deliver you from, stop yourself, cancel the thought, and pray God’s Word of victory over your life. The children of Israel received what they requested. They were imprisoned in the wilderness of Paran for 40 years after doubting their ability to receive their promise. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to remind us of the realities of that past situation and grant us perfect peace to overcome the challenges that are inherent in our journey of promise.