The Journey IS The Miracle!
Your life’s Journey is a constant miracle from God
Text: Exodus 14 - Exodus 17
by Pastor Byron
Introduction:
We ask God to work miracles in our lives, but have you ever considered that God’s daily activity, His divine intervention, is a miracle in itself? The miracle is that God works through the ordinary circumstances you encounter to draw you close to Him.
Your life is a constant miracle. Everything you encounter is God’s way of leading you to the place where he wants you to be. I’m not saying that God causes everything in your life to happen. God does not cause bad to happen to you, but he uses it to help guide you. God is constantly working a series of miracles in your life. Even through things that seem to be bad, to bring you into your personal promised land.
When I say that your life is a constant miracle, I am not saying that only good things will happen to you. What I am saying is that God is constantly working through your circumstances.
You may be saying, Pastor, you don’t know the troubles and trials I’ve been through. You don’t understand the hardships and circumstances I’ve had to endure. No, I don’t. But I do know that your life is a constant miracle in the hands of The Almighty and the journey that God is taking you on is a series of events which is encompassed by His divine intervention.
Many of those miracles God works through you, you don’t even recognize as miracles. To you they are only ordinary occurrences, accidents, or happenstances in your life. Should we dare consider these events as miracles? Isn’t that over spiritualizing the banal? Can the ordinary actually be God’s way of working in you, and through you, to bring you to a place of the extraordinary? The miraculous!
He lets me rest in the meadow grass and leads me beside the quiet streams. He gives me new strength. He helps me do what honors him the most. Even when walking through the dark valley of death I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me, guarding, guiding all the way. Ps 23:2-4 TLB
I. The Blessings of Following God Are Great - And Nobody Said it Would Be Easy.
God Does Not Promise An Easy Journey – Following God is a journey each of us are personally called to take. No one else can take that journey for you.
See Exodus 14 - Exodus 17
An entire generation died in the wilderness.
An entire generation came to life in the wilderness.
Which generation do you most closely associate with in your wilderness experiences? Are you coming to life in the wilderness? Are you allowing God to work through your ordinary experiences?
For those of us who come to life through the wilderness experience will find that God will give us a better land / a promised land.
The miracle is that God will be with you on the journey. The miracle is God’s presence in your life. And that God will work a series of events in your life in the attempt to get you to the place where he wants you be.
Yet there are many needs in the midst of our journey. And God will meet every need:
1) You will need to be spiritually protected - Expect spiritual attacks. Rely on God and let him protect your heart.
- The Israelites were attacked by the Egyptian Army as they were leaving Egypt. –Exodus 14:26 - Moses, stretch forth your hand over the seas so that the waters may flow back...29. The entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea, Not one of them survived. But the Israelites when through on dry ground.
–The Israelites were attacked by the Amelikites while wondering in the wilderness. Exodus 17:11 - As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but when ever he lowered his hands, the Amelikites were winning...When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up – one on one side, one on another – so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekites army with the sword....Moses built an altar and called it The Lord is my Banner. He said, For hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord.
Point: you will come under a lot of spiritual attack on your journey. You will get attacked when trying to leave your old life. You will come under attack when wondering in the wilderness, seemingly without direction. You will come under attack trying to enter God’s promised land. You will come under constant spiritual attack when serving God. But if you keep taking steps forward, and lift your hands and heart to God, God will fight your battles for you.
2) There will be basic needs on your journey - if you wait on God he will meet those needs. God’s greatest goal is to take you to a promised land. A place beyond where you are currently dwelling. God will not necessarily meet your immediate need if it will interfere with your ultimate need. Your ultimate need is for you to inhabit a place blessed by God beyond where you are currently dwelling. A better place that God has prepared for you. A place where God has a fuller plan for you. Right now God is working a series miracles in your life to get you to that place.
When the people saw that God had delivered them from the Egyptians, the bible says, "the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant." Ex. 14:31
Yet their trust seem to be short lived.
–3 days in the desert w/out finding water. Ex. 15:22
–the people grumbled against Moses Ex. 15:24
–there the Lord tested them. Ex. 15:25
–1 ½ months w/out food Ex. 16:4
–the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. Ex. 16:4 (God provided quail in evening & manna in the mornings
–he was testing them to follow His instructions Ex. 16:4
–their clothes lasted 40 years w/o wearing out or ripping.
**Testing doesn’t radically change us in the moment of trial...Testing exposes what we have always been. Testing reveals thing to which we would have otherwise been blind."
Key thought: when you grumble you are not grumbling against people, you are grumbling against the Lord. --Ex. 16:8
"It would amaze us to see how many people we could influence for Christ if we would just treat people nicely and stop grumbling about life." – unknown
The miracle of the Journey here was that God waited to intervene with a miracle to test them. If God waits to intervene with a miracle it is because he is testing you?
Remember, it is not nearly as important to have your immediate need met if it prevents you from having your ultimate need met. The ultimate need is to dwell in a better place than you are currently dwelling (the wilderness place). I’m speaking with eternity in mind.
Let’s not forget our theme this year: Never Give Up! Never Quit! Embrace Jesus and Expect A Miracle!
Your life is a constant miracle from God!
II. The Blessing of Following God Are Great – But Don’t Take For Granted God’s Blessings.
God provided water for Israel. Exodus 15:22 -- Again in Exodus 17 the water supply evaporated at Rephidim. The people chided Moses and demanded water. What had been a supernatural provision, they now presumptuously demand. God told Moses to go to the rock of Horeb. There God’s glory was to appear before the rock and Moses was to smite the rock with his rod. This was to typify how God would one day once for all through Christ provide living water.
From the Exodus from Egypt to the Red Sea, from the Red Sea to the Promised Land God presents a series of miracles. From the beginning to the end of their forty-year journey was a series of the miraculous hand of God.
For Israel it was the miracle of transplanting a whole great nation from one land to another, maintaining them it in the interim of forty years.
God truly did bear the people on eagles’ wings. The first generation died out and a strong race of desert warriors as hardy as Arabs succeeded it. Deut 2:14 - An entire generation died out.
In bravery, courage, fiber and quality of life those that Joshua led across the Jordan were far removed from the motley crowd that left Egypt. Only Caleb and Joshua were left. All the rest perished in the wilderness as God said they would because of their murmurings and rebellion.
You life is a constant miracle from God. Although you may not recognize it. Even when things go bad in your life, God uses it for His glory and your benefit. Do not take the miracle of God for granted.
Let’s not forget our theme this year: Never Give Up! Never Quit Embrace Jesus and Expect a Miracle!
Your life is a constant miracle from God.
III. The Blessings of Following God Are Great – But It Takes A Vision For Something Better.
You are not on your journey alone. Look around and you’ll find others all around you in the same boat. It takes a vision for something better. It take the vision of Jacob & Caleb to look past the obstacles to see the Promised Land.
In sports you will notice teammates wear the same color uniforms. We are teammates for God. The people traveling with you are part of God’s plan. Don’t get short with them. Don’t grumble and complain at what you think they are doing to you. Just as God used the water, and the food, and the clothing needs of Israel. He waited to provide for them to test them.
When you grumble you are grumbling against God.
Your life is a series of miraculous interventions from God. When are you going to stop and take notice? It is interesting God will give you constant reminders of his presence. Just as he did with Israel, he led them by a cloud by day and a fire by night.
Stop and take notice, things are not happening in your life by accident. The journey is a miracle becasue God is the one directing your journey.
What I want you to see and realize today is that your life is a constant miracle before God. If you are unsaved...God uses these miracles to bring you into fellowship with him through the working of our loving Savior and his work at Calvary.
If you have a personal relationship with God, he uses constant miracles to bring you into a better land than you are now living. He wants to bring you into your personal Promise Land.
When I say that your life is a constant miracle, I am not saying that only good things will happen to you. What I am saying is, that God is constantly working circumstances in your life good and bad to lead you into the Promised Land he has for you.
Are you taking the steps towards the promised land? Or are you just wondering around in the wilderness of life waiting for something to happen. Some people died in the wilderness and some people came to life in the wilderness. God’s miracles are designed to bring you into the Promised Land. A place where you are growing spiritually, a place where you are giving yourself in ministry, a place where you are feasting on His presence.
The journey is the miracle because God is constantly intervening in your life. It is the miracle of God’s sustaining grace. The miracle is that God is with us in the journey. God wants to lead you but he wants you to follow him. He wants you to worship him. If worship has not changed you, it has not been worship.
Let’s not forget out theme this year: Never Give Up! Never Quit! Embrace Jesus and Expect a Miracle!
Your life is a constant miracle of God’s intervention. The Journey IS The Miracle!
