STAND FIRM, BE STILL & SEE GOD’S GLORY
Imagine being jolted, tossed around, turned upside down as you are carried at high speed and then dropped from a dizzying height. It is a full-body experience of extremities but you are told to remain seated and keep still at all times without twisting or shifting your body in a way that may compromise your safety.
To be sure, roller coaster rides are not for the faint-hearted. In many ways, so is life. While most of us are not thrill-seekers who go after extreme experiences, life has its way of throwing us into turmoil, turning our lives upside down and jolting every shred of faith we have in a loving God.
So what do we do when our normalcy no longer looks familiar and everything going on in our lives looks hell-bent to crush us mentally and emotionally?
Retrospectively, we can all quip, ‘What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?’ (Romans 8:31b). But when we really find ourselves going through struggles that don’t seem to end, we can turn to Exodus 14:10-14 for a dramatically similar scene where two million Israelites felt hemmed in by an impassable ocean in front of them, an intimidating army behind them, and intense panic within their hearts. Up to that point, there was nothing in the history of mankind or from their life experiences that provided any clue or gave them the confidence that there would be a way out.
Here are three life-changing reminders from these verses to help us stay the course and allow God to take us through to the other side of crisis.
STAND FIRM
We often mistake the presence of storms for the absence of God. After all, what kind of God lets you go through a storm? Humanly speaking, markets should not collapse if capitalists with huge capital and experts with over-sized confidence have substantially invested in them, technology should not displace valuable workers if business owners care about their workers more than the board’s interests, non-smokers should not get lung cancer, good drivers should not be involved in fatal accidents, and mismanagement should not happen in churches with people who love God. Why do bad things happen?
Joseph Marshall III has this to say: When a storm blows, you must stand firm. For it is not trying to knock you down, but it is really trying to teach you to be strong.
To be strong in the Lord is not the same as stoically accepting some mysterious ‘fate’ or waiting for ‘lady luck’ to appear and change outcomes. It is about making up our minds about who God is in our lives. Often the greatest challenge is not what we have to contend with in our circumstances but what’s going on inside our unseen minds - the enemy’s playground and battlefield. Once we start believing the arguments he plants in our minds against God and God’s Word, once we begin to think that our own cleverness is far more real and helpful than seeking God’s wisdom, once we stop trusting that God is still in control, the enemy has won.
We see how this played out in Exodus 14. Caught between the dreaded Egyptian armies and the deadly ocean, the Israelites grew desperate and hostile towards Moses. We all know how futile it is to talk to one enraged man, so imagine Moses addressing two million angry people. But Moses’ response was this: ‘“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”’ (Exodus 1:13-14).
Moses wasn’t giving a motivational spiel. He was speaking to the people’s resolve, to their inner spirits, to hearts devoid of courage and faith in God. In the same way, when we feel defeated by circumstances beyond our control, we can say to our hearts ‘Stand firm against him (the enemy) and be strong in your faith.’ (1 Peter 5:9a ) and ‘Put on the full armour of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.’ (Ephesians 6:11).
This is not positive thinking but releasing the truth of God’s Word into our natural minds. It’s standing behind the enemy line and applying reverse engineering to expose the schemes of the enemy of our soul who works behind the scenes to sabotage all human life.
BE STILL
The safest place to go to when you feel that you are in the fight or flight mode is to be still before God. It sounds simple but it’s not easy to rein in the impulse to seek temporary relief for short-term results and keep ourselves still before the Lord. In fact, it will take everything within you to stop running away, hiding behind busyness, numbing yourself on social media, pretending that your feelings don’t matter, googling for outcomes, and struggling against reality. In addition, you need to drop your weapons of offence and defence, drop all acts of being immovable, and drop to your knees to be still before the Lord, allowing yourself to be real and honest with Him.
Whether you’re dealing with systemic injustice or covert discrimination - only God can fight for you. You can’t win on your terms. ‘Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way…’ (Psalm 37:7).
Even when you feel all alone in your experience, even when it seems like you’re the only one singled out, even when no one seems to notice what you’re going through, be still with the Lord who is on your side.
Please don’t think even for a moment that this is all fluff. Faith is about believing that God has the final say in all matters and He has a better reality that He has not yet revealed to you. God has this message for you, ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ (Psalm 46:10).
SEE GOD’S GLORY
The Bible reveals to us that God had hardened Pharoah’s heart so he would go after the Israelites and intensify the chase! Why did God do that? He had to remove all conditions so that people would not look back and say the exodus was initiated by a freedom campaigner (Moses), or permitted by a remorseful dictator (Pharoah), or that it was a populist anti-establishment movement.
Let’s admit it: when we tell others about our lives, we like to create narratives to save face and hide our fears and vulnerabilities. We struggle to say things like, “I feel God wants me to pause and empty my schedule for Him during this time” or “There are many things I do to ‘fix things’ for people but I feel that God wants me to take a step back and stop interfering in what He is doing in their lives.’
From the onset of the Israelites’ exit from Egypt, God had made it clear to Moses about His deliverance (though He didn’t say how). ‘I will gain glory for Myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord (Exodus 14:4). Eventually, this was what the Egyptians saw: ‘Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.’ (Exodus 14:25).
Friends, in the midst of your battles, do not lose sight of who God is in your life. Do not think that just because you’re a Christian that all should be fine and dandy. Our life battles are real as long as we live in this depraved world filled with sin and lawlessness. At the same time, don’t be distracted by the size or duration of your battles but remember the size of God in your battles.
God is the ultimate and transcendent change-maker in your life. He Himself affirmed this: ‘I am the Lord; that is My name! I will not yield My glory to another or My praise to idols.’ (Isaiah 42:8).
Whatever challenges you are facing today, stand firm, be still and see God’s glory unfold in your circumstances.
