(Part 4)
This article will conclude the series on “dry places.” To review the previous three columns they were 1. About how we can become dry and thirsty spiritually and have a need to seek diligently after the Living Water. 2. Sometimes things in our life may “dry up” after a season of being plentiful just to help us at those previous moments until God makes another way and 3. We may have issues that are in excess and need to be dried up for our own good and healing.
Now we get to the fourth part of seeing how God works through things being “dried up.” It is based on one of the probably more well known stories and accounts of how God “dried up” the Red Sea for the children of Israel to walk upon dry ground to get them away from their enemy who was coming after them. Just a small recap if you do not know the story but the Israelites had become slaves to the Egyptians for a long period of time and now through an unlikely hero God was going to use the leadership of one who felt very unqualified for the position, Moses.
After some convincing through a burning bush and a series of ten plagues the Egyptian Pharaoh decided to “let the people go.” However, as they started on their journey to leave the Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his troops to bring them back. We can read in Exodus 13:17-18, “And it came to pass when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest possibly the people turn when they see war, and they return to Egypt; but God led the people about through the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea.” This lets us know that there was a closer way; but a way that would have been harder. Harder to the point that the people would have turned on their own to go back to the bondage they were escaping from. So, they were brought to a place where their trust in God and faith had to be activated.
Some battles in life may get so tough that the thought of it may make us want to turn back into our “old ways.” Therefore, God will ultimately for our own protection open up new ways that only He can do. In the movies of this scene typically it shows Moses putting his staff down and the waters of the Red Sea from him back begin to separate. However, this is not how it actually happened.
Singer and youth minister, Jason David from MyTribe is one of the first times I heard it told how it really happened and how it explains in Exodus 14:21-22. God “caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night and made the sea dry land and the waters were divided and the children of Israel crossed on dry ground.” The waters started to split on the opposite side from where they were and it was happening all night. Which meant they couldn’t see what God was doing on the other side. As the divided waters were getting closer I’m sure they may have then heard that something was happening but not until it was right there at them would they then know that there had been a path made for them to cross.
If God had started the divide from where they were at then possibly the ground would have still been muddy and harder to cross. But, because of starting from the other side that also required their trust and faith something was happening even though they couldn’t see it at the moment turned out to be a great defining moment in their journey. As this series on “dry places” comes to an end it reminds me of a quote from a devotional, “Heart Rehab” by Jerry Flowers, Jr that said, “God may have to dry up some of the places in our lives to get us to go or be elsewhere.
Maybe you are in a spot where the enemy is fastly approaching from behind yet all you see is another huge obstacle in front of you that you see no way through. Trust that the Lord has already been at work “all night” and has been making a way that will give you “rays of hope” that a way will open up for you to escape some problems to cross on dry ground.
~TRS 2-15-26
Rays of Hope 