Hello friends, I know it’s been a while. I’ve been going through a little bit of a trying season, from dealing with some physical and mental health stuff to trying to just do summer with three young kids, it’s been a lot. I was really starting to feel the strain back in the spring and felt God calling me to just take a step back. I felt like I needed to take some time off to really refocus and try to find some peace again.
Surprisingly, this break didn’t really go as I had planned, but I think I’m figuring out that it went exactly as it should have.
Initially, I thought just taking something off my plate would be relief enough, but I started to realize that where I wasn’t focused on Jesus, the world wasted no time in creeping in with its own narrative about how to handle everything that was going on around me.
Being the self-starter that I am, I wanted to take this time to really figure out what was going on with my health and the health of a few of my kids. We did all the tests, went to all the appointments and ruled out everything we could, only to get to a stopping point while we waited for more appointments. But in the meantime, life must go on, so without concrete answers, we have to figure out a way to move forward anyway. And while I think it’s important to be on top of your health and wellness, I was starting to find myself putting all of my confidence in that system while we looked for answers and ultimately was let down, at least in the meantime.
This wasn’t the only area that started to feel this way…
I had started a new bible study for my devotional time at the beginning of summer and it started out well. It was a little bit of a different style of study that was less than what I was used to doing and I thought it might be nice to lessen the load in that area as well. After all, summer is usually very busy for us. But, I started to notice that it was providing more scripture verses for me and I consequently wasn’t reading the Word as much for myself. And, interestingly, the less time I spent studying the Bible wasn’t filled with more fulfilling activities or family time, it was filled with more social media scrolling.
Everything started to feel even more overwhelming and stressful.
The more I looked for answers and relief, the more I found overstimulation and fatigue. I kept thinking if I could just figure out the exact right way to move forward, I would be set. It would solve all my problems and I could get back to my normal life. I started to feel as though I was trapped in a maze and every pathway I took to get to the exit just lead to another dead end.
That’s when God started pulling me back in…
I knew this form of devotional wasn’t working for me, at least in this season, so I needed to get back in the Word. I am typically someone who is way more successful following a plan, but I didn’t have one at the time so I asked God where I should open my Bible. He pointed me to Exodus 18.
(A little backstory on Exodus)
I was the typical church kid growing up. I learned all the Bible stories as stories and never really understood the context of the entire narrative until a few years ago when I read through the entire Bible.
I had no idea until that point how impactful the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt to the promised land truly was to the entire bigger picture of the Bible. I had no idea until that point how much it was referenced to or how it tied into the entire Gospel story. So since that time, I have found Exodus extremely interesting and I’ve reread it a few times just to see what all I could get out of it.
Back to Exodus 18…
So I started in Exodus 18 and didn’t really know where to stop so I finished after Exodus 20 and journaled a bit about a few things that stuck out to me, not really knowing where this was going. One of the main things that stood out to me was when Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, was explaining to Moses the he needed to delegate, or basically that he couldn’t do everything on his own.
That night, I felt like God told me I needed to read Exodus 2-8, so I made a plan the next morning to dive back into Exodus. Again, I journaled a few things that stuck out, asked a few questions that I meant to research to get more information about what was going on at the time, but ultimately ran out of time and kept putting it off. The main verses that stuck out to me though were Exodus 6:1-3:
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Now you shall see what I will do to Pharoah. For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of this land.’ And God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord.’ ‘I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name Lord I was not known to them.'”
Exodus 6:1-3 NKJV
My questions mostly revolved around why Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew God as “God Almighty,” but to Moses, God revealed Himself as “Lord,” but again, without taking the time to look into it, I didn’t get any answers right away.
If you keep reading in Exodus 6, it says:
“‘Therefore say to the children of Israel: ‘I am the Lord; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.’ ‘I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.’ ‘And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and I will give it to you as a heritage: I am the Lord.'”
Exodus 6:6-8 NKJV
It didn’t hit me until this morning that God is basically explaining to the Israelites what His name Lord will mean to them. God will be their shepherd, their provider and their guide.
The next day, I felt like God was taking me to Matthew 4:8-11, a very specific group of verses about when Jesus was tempted by Satan before He started his earthly ministry.
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.”
Matthew 4:8-11, niv
In this passage, Jesus is referencing scripture from Deuteronomy 6:13, which says:
“Fear the Lord your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name.”
Deuteronomy 6:13 NIV
I didn’t look into the context on this passage until this morning, but found it interesting that in both references, Jesus says to fear or worship the LORD your God and serve him only.
If you back up a little to Deuteronomy 6:10 for a little context on this verse, God is warning the Israelites against disobedience once they enter the promised land. He basically warns them not to forget everything God has done for them in bringing them out of Egypt, through the wilderness and into the promised land that was prepared for them. They didn’t have to work the land promised to them, it was already prepared for them. They just had to get there and be obedient.
Stay with me here…
So backing up a little bit, if you’ve been following me for awhile, or know any of my personal testimony and what God has brought our family through in the last few years. A few years ago, we moved to a new church we felt God was calling us to.
As soon as we started this new journey, it was a very exciting and positive time, because we were coming from a very trying situation that had lasted years and we were honestly very relieved about the new scenery. We came from trying to create change in our old church to a church that was already on the same page that we were.
But as soon as we started to get plugged in at our new church, I got this strong feeling that God was warning me not to backslide. Not to take this relief and allow it to make me comfortable. At the time, I felt like it was a very strange and out of place warning, but I noted it and just tucked it in my back pocket and tried to do what I felt like God wanted me to do at the time.
That warning hasn’t come into play until this morning when I read about God’s warning to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6:13.
So back to today…
Yesterday and today, I read Exodus 16 (Bread from Heaven) and Exodus 17 (Water from the Rock). It never hit me before that the Israelites literally had no food with them. For FORTY YEARS, they had to go out in the morning and gather manna to have food eat and God sustained them that way, giving them all of the strength and energy they needed to keep going. They had to remain so reliant on God EVERY DAY to succeed.
God didn’t send them into the wilderness with a stash of snacks they just ate too quickly and manna was the backup plan. This was the plan from the start! God wanted their reliance on a daily basis, and He gave them a very practical way to practice that. Only then, would they be prepared to enter the promised land.
I realized that God wants my daily reliance.
God doesn’t want me to rely on my own strength, which clearly isn’t getting me anywhere. He wants me to draw near to Him and lean on Him for my strength, my sustenance, my support, my patience, all of these problems that I’ve been trying to solve on my own. These are things that I’ve known in theory in the past, but to know them on a deeply personal level, in the moment that you need them, is a whole new understanding altogether. I felt like God was being so quiet for the last few months, but He was working the whole time to help me realize where I needed to be to move forward.
I know this post has been very personal to my story, but I hope that as you read it, you can relate to something that I’ve gone through and that God would speak to you through it. My gut instinct was to announce that “I’m back!” but God very quickly corrected that statement to “He’s back! I’m back to being His vessel.” I pray that this space continues to be a blessing to you and something that causes you to dive deeper in your own relationship with God. I pray that it urges you to spend your own quiet time with God and allow Him to change your thoughts to be more like Jesus. I have no idea what He’s got in store for this next chapter, but I’m so excited to be along for the ride and I can’t wait to share it all with you!
