Time To Let God Do His Thing

We've been discussing Four Things To Do When Facing Your Red Sea. Yesterday, we discussed step one, which was "Fear Not." No matter how difficult the situation, we must have faith that God will see us through. Today, I want to discuss the next step, which is "Be Still."

Wow! That goes against the grain, doesn't it? When facing a stressful situation, the last thing we want to do is be still. Nope, we want to pace. We feel the need to fidget. We want to get in there and fix things. We tend to take the approach that Sarah did when she grew weary of waiting on God. "Fine, if God won't do something, I'll just do it myself." That worked out well for all involved, didn't it? Not so much. And it doesn't work out well for us either.

Being still doesn't mean we're lazy. It means we're getting out of God's way and allowing Him to do what He wants to do in our lives. When we get out of God's way, He can perform that which is best instead of the "good enough" we're trying to work out. 

Imagine if the Lord had instructed the children of Israel to figure out their own way across the Red Sea. What would they have come up with? Go around? Not really an option with the enemy surrounding them. Build a boat? It would have to be an enormous boat or make several trips back and forth across the sea to get all two million Israelites across. How about a bridge? Unlikely since it would take years to construct, and with the enemy bearing down on them, they didn't have that long. Could they have come up with a solution? Possibly. But more than likely they would have ended up in a bigger mess.

The same can be said of us when we try to work things out on our own. We make a mess of it. God doesn't expect us to do the impossible. That's His job. He expects us to do what He's called us to do, then trust Him to do the rest. We trust. He provides. We wait. He works. We are still, and in the process, we open ourselves up to a new level of intimacy with our Lord and Savior. When we're not so distracted trying to solve the problem, we have the opportunity to watch God work (which we'll talk about a little more in the next post, Lord willing).

Be still. I know, the words make us cringe. Who has time to be still? Who has the mental discipline to be still? If we want to successfully navigate our Red Sea, we need to. Just like the phrase "Do not fear," this is not a suggestion or request. It's a command. There is a time for us to work, but there's also a time for us to be still and let God do His thing.

Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah. - Psalm 4:4

Here's a song to go along with today's lessons.  This is one of my favorites (though I admit, I have a lot of favorites!)