/strive/ : Stand Still and Stand Back

Greetings! Welcome back to Making Waves! It’s definitely good to be back. Many of you may have noticed that there was no post last week, that was on account that I was “making waves” in another way… in Ocho Rios, Jamaica! My bride-to-be became my bride on July 30^th and we have spent the last week honeymooning like a couple of beach bums. Yea mon!

However, let me assure you all, you can take the preacher out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the preacher. I have been thinking about this /strive/ series more than ever and I am so excited to finish up the series today. For those of you that this is your first time joining us, or if you just need a refresher, we have been studying the key phrase from Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God.” During our first week, we talked about how this passage meant more than just casually being still for a minute, but we found that God was trying to tell us to cease our striving: permanently. The Psalmist is trying to encourage us to slow down and truly stop moving. Then we moved onto our second week, where we talked about how we “know God.” We discovered that we have to know God through prayer and we have to say “no” to our lives to let God in. After that, we moved on to dealing with the noise that would inevitably come at us when we start letting God into our lives.  Now, this week, we are turning our eyes towards the awesome power of God. But, before we get too into that, let’s dive into the Word. We are reading from the Old Testament this week, in a passage that may be very familiar to many of you.

^“10 As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites looked back, and there were the Egyptians advancing on them. In great fear the Israelites cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, ‘Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”¹³ But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. ¹⁴ The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still.”

¹⁵ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. ¹⁶ But you lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the Israelites may go into the sea on dry ground. ¹⁷ Then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. ¹⁸ And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.”

¹⁹ The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. ²⁰ It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.

²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided.²² The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. “

                                                                                                -Exodus 14:10-22 (NRSV)

Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be forever glorified in Your presence. For You are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Like I mentioned earlier, it is next to impossible to take the church out of the preacher. Even while I was over in Jamaica, I was still intentionally keeping an eye out for sermon examples and illustrations. And, folks, God did not disappoint. During our trip to Jamaica, Logan (my wife) and I were shuttled from the airport to our resort. The shuttle ride itself was around an hour and forty-five minutes, which at first made a 6 foot 4 inch man such as myself cringe. However, Logan and I were both pleasantly surprised at how incredible the drive was. It allowed us to really see what Jamaica was truly like to those that lived in the area. Instead of just seeing our Americanized paradise, our first encounter was to see the real, raw culture of a developing country.

Now, to be fair, we weren’t only looking out the window for the purpose of enjoying the sights (though they were incredible), we also had to do such because if we didn’t keep an eye on the road we were bound to lose our lunch. You see, Jamaica has very loose traffic laws. In fact, as far as we could tell, they only had one law and that was to get to your location faster than everyone else. Most of our drive was spent in the center of the two-lane road, and there were many times where Logan and I were certain that we were done for. Between the hoards of Jamaican citizens, dazed and confused tourists and an insane number of domestic goats, the road was frightening to say the least. And I say road very seriously. Jamaica has ‘a’ highway. Just one long road that stretches the extent of the tourist area. Now, in Jamaica’s defense, there were speed limit signs in kilometers on the side of the road that I noticed. But, as far as I could tell, I was the only one to notice them.

I could talk about our trip to Jamaica for hours, but I do have a point by telling you all about this traffic experience. While we were on our drive, Logan was fascinated by the breathtaking landscape. You could look to your left and see the expansive bright blue ocean, or you could turn to your right and see a mountain with tremendous concrete villas built into the side. It was an amazing sight. Their piedmont area was the width of a two-lane road that we were riding on. But, I was hardly paying any attention to the landscape; the traffic signs blew me away. You see, during our drive we saw several militia members and we saw a surprisingly large amount of traffic: from citizens to taxis to tour buses. But only once during our trip there and back did we see a government-issued traffic enforcement officer. And, the traffic itself was so crazy, I’m not sure that the two patrol officers could have handled giving tickets to literally everyone. The traffic officers are clearly aware of this, and so they have these signs posted along the drive of the highway. These signs (posted below) were made up of adorable little phrases that took an attempt at encouraging safe drivers. I was only able to find a few online, but I love these signs. Everything from “Protect your head, don’t end up dead,” which encouraged the use of helmets for motorcycle drivers to “Stay alive! Don’t drink and drive.” They even had signs that just encourage drivers to follow the speed limit.

For some reason, this truly just opened up my eyes to the absurdity of these signs. And we have signs similar to these in the States. But from the outside looking in, don’t they seem so silly? Why do we need to post a sign to do something as simple as follow a speed limit sign? We have signs that are just as silly. For example, Logan and I stopped for McDonalds on our drive back from Charlotte Saturday morning. The coffee cup has something written on it: Caution! Contents inside this cup are HOT. …well, DUH! That’s like putting a sign in a parking deck that says parking spaces are reserved exclusively for vehicles.

So, why do we need these signs? Why can’t we just follow the rules and stay within the lines? Like we have said from the get-go of this series: we are STRIVING. This is no different; we are striving for control in every aspect of our lives. We are unwilling to budge on any little issue, because we want total control of every situation. We become like the Israelites in the passage that we read earlier from Exodus. They let God have control over their lives, and then the very first obstacle they meet they cave in upon themselves. Because, although the Egyptians enslaved them, they had more control over their lives than when they gave themselves up to God.

Aren’t we tempted to do the same today? I know you are probably tired of hearing about traffic signs, but I have one more to share with you today. On our way back from Charlotte, I saw a very interesting billboard along I-85. At first, it made me smile. It was a giant billboard that said something along the lines of “Jesus loves you! Ask Him to be yours today!” My initial response was to be happy I was back in ‘Merica, where I see signs about Jesus instead of about not drinking whiskey while driving because it made it risky. But then I realized what the sign really said. “Ask Him to be yours today.” We have it in our heads that Jesus is ours. We have fallen into the temptation of taking our Savior and our Redeemer and making Him under our control. We have made Jesus our convenient excuse for when we think awful thoughts or when we sin. But Jesus isn’t ours, we are His.

I don’t think that any of us understand this 100%, because I certainly don’t. At my absolute best, on my mountain-top experience, I still only allow God to be the lead pilot of my life airplane. I become the co-pilot and backseat driver to God. I love to have control. We all love to have control. No one wants to break down his or her walls and allow total surrender to God. Well, maybe we want to, but I think few (if any) of us truly can.

Aren’t we just like the Israelites? We become free, because of God’s sacrifice and His love. Then we go out and, at the very first obstacle we approach, we begin to doubt God. We start asking things like, “How can God allow death? Why doesn’t God let me win the lottery? Could God have really made the Earth in seven days?” Now, I am not suggesting that we simply have blind faith, but I am stating that faith should not waver so easily. Instead of jumping to blaming God at our first challenge, why not instead turn to God? Questioning life is very different from bitterly fussing with God.

I believe that that is the final message of Psalm 46. We have to first be still. We have to stop our striving for all of these earthly, human things. Then we have to know God, and craft a relationship with Him. After that, we learn to fight back our sinful nature and the nature of the world. And then the last step is to stand back and watch the miraculous work of a loving Father. Instead of grasping for control in our lives, we should turn our focus to letting God lead us to the Promised Land. God will part the waters of our lives, but only if we stand back long enough to let Him.

Please feel free to post any comments for discussion, I will try my best to respond. As always, if you have any private needs or prayers concerns, feel free to contact me personally at nathan@makingwaves.cc.