Through the Storm
- The Narrow Path
- Oct 7, 2022
- 3 min read
The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.” (Exodus 14:15, ESV).
It’s summer in Kentucky. Hot days, lake trips, weddings, ballgames, and vacations are just a few things that pop up on the calendar this time of year. The plans we make are always contingent upon the weather. Scattered thunderstorms often appear in the forecast, so if you’ve spent much time in Kentucky at all, you know it’s vital to have a Plan B.
Several months ago, I was driving to my niece’s 8th grade graduation. Scattered storms were in the forecast, so I left about 20 minutes early just to be sure I would arrive on time. I pulled up the radar on my phone to see that heavy rain and storms were in the direction I would be driving.
As I turned off US-27 to head southwest, I was greeted with a cluster of storm clouds. I wondered if there was an alternate route that I could take in order to avoid the storm, but I quickly realized there was no other option. I would be forced to drive through the storm to reach my destination.
Isn’t life that way all too often? We’re headed toward a destination, whether physical or spiritual, and we’re met with significant storms along the path.
Maybe you decide to take a new job, but that requires you to move away from a community of people that you’ve always known. Perhaps you decide to quit your job to pursue a dream the Lord has put on your heart, and the world enters a global pandemic that halts your progress toward the dream. You’ve been saving money to buy your forever home, and you experience a significant financial hardship that nearly drains all of your savings. You’ve made plans for a dream vacation, but that gets halted by an unexpected medical diagnosis.
Many times, we are faced with a choice: keep going, navigate through the storm, and reach the destination to which the Lord is calling us, or look for an alternate route that would allow us to avoid the storm but will likely take us to a different destination entirely.
Moses was charged with leading the Israelites out of exile in Egypt. Exodus 14 shows us that the people of Israel had faced numerous “storms” along the way to The Promised Land and were ready to give up. They even went so far as to say in verse 12: “Is this not what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” Clearly, they were tired, lost sight of what God had brought them out of, and did not want to continue through the storm to reach the destination God had promised them.
How often have we done that in our lives, too? We get tired and forget God’s faithfulness. Though our stories are different, the storms have one thing in common: they can often be an attempt from the enemy to steer us off course and leave us stranded in the wilderness.
Exodus 14:15 says: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.'” I love this verse because it serves as a reminder that while it’s perfectly okay to cry out to the Lord in our distress from the storm, it’s imperative that we choose to move forward in trust. Like the weather in Kentucky, the storms of life are very unpredictable. May we choose to stay calm, trust the Lord, and keep pushing through the storm.
P.S. Don’t stop at Exodus 14. Keep reading to see how the Lord paved the way for the Israelites to move forward through the storm. He will do the same for you and me.
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