Confronting Your Own Red Seas (Part 4) “Closing the Door to the Past”
There are times when I have encountered problems and it was clearly my own choices that led me into it. Ever been there? We can’t blame God or anybody else – it was our own bad choices!
But there are times when our heart is SO in the right place, and we truly love Jesus and want to please Him, yet it seems God leads us to a brick wall. And we are faced with so many Red Sea types of obstacles in our ministry or personal life.
Why is this? Why the long, arduous, difficult, traumatic Red Sea route? We have been unpacking Exodus 14 to help us to see the value in these Red Sea times.
Why does God lead us the Red Sea route instead of taking us the quick and easy route? We have already seen three reasons in our three previous blogs:
1. The Red Sea route can protect us from destruction.
2. The Red Sea route can create great opportunities.
3. The Red Sea route can deepen our understanding and trust of God.
But let’s consider a 4th reason – The Red Sea route can close the door to the past.
Had God taken Israel the quick and easy route to their Promised Land, they could have seen war or difficulty and turned around and gone back to Egypt. You may wonder, “Would they really have gone back to Egypt and back into slavery?” Oh yeah, in a heartbeat! We know that from reading Exodus 13:17 and 14:12.
But when the Red Sea came back down, there was no going back! They could only move forward at that point. With the Red Sea closing, it now sealed off the Israelites’ route back to Egypt. It closed a door to their past, which was a good thing.
Sometimes God takes us through a Red Sea to close a door that needs closing. It’s closed and locked and there is no going back. Those experiences are scary and painful, but so necessary. One of the worst mistakes that people make is to try and return to the past, live in the past, or continue doing something that needs to be in the past. We were created to live in the present, looking forward to the future. Paul said,
“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.”
Sometimes God sends us the Red Sea route so there’s no going back. We experienced this recently. We had been feeling for some time that we needed to resign the pastorate and embark on a new ministry of coaching and encouraging other pastors. I understand the daily challenges of ministry work, after pastoring for 30 plus years. My heart is to help pastors protect their mental and emotional health, as well as protect the health of their marriage and family.
When I finally resigned publicly from our church, it was as if the Red Sea had come back down, which was a good thing! There was no going back; we could now only move forward! If we would have tried to begin this new ministry while still clinging to the pastorate, we probably would have never gotten it off the ground and actually done it. The door to the past needed to be shut!
It has been so exciting and so incredibly rewarding, but it took God taking us a Red Sea type of route to get there. God knew what we needed! We needed the door to our past shut tight, so that we could focus on the present and future!
This blog series on the Red Sea has been based off of a message I delivered to Parkview Church in Palm Coast, Florida on July 2, 2023. Here is the link if you would like to hear the entire message.
https://parkviewlife.com/media?sapurl=Lys0ejUzL2xiL21pLysyYnc2cDRtP2VtYmVkPXRydWUmcmVjZW50Um91dGU9YXBwLndlYi1hcHAubGlicmFyeS5saXN0JnJlY2VudFJvdXRlU2x1Zz0lMkI3MjZubjVt