S57P1 – Lessons from captivity: God’s plan prevails

This series highlights some of the many valuable lessons that God’s chosen people learned while living through one of the darkest periods in their history.  Spending multiple generations captive in Egypt, we can be sure that many never lived to see the promised land.  Even so, God’s power and faithfulness were on display, and we can find much wisdom and encouragement from a story that sometimes can seem frustrating and very dark.

Exo. 1:18-20

So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and allowed the boy babies to live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth quickly and their babies are born before the midwife can get to them.” So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong.

He knew that the cards were stacked against him, but he also knew that God had called him to something very specific.  It took years, but he completed that first book with honor.  Several more years went by as he shopped around for a publisher.  Rejection after rejection came, and it seemed like all hope was lost.  He wondered whether God’s plan was really for him to write this book for others because it seemed like there would be no way to get it into the hands of the people.  His only option would be to self-publish, but he did not have the capital for that.  Then, one of his friends spoke to someone who spoke to someone who spoke to someone else about this book, and the right person caught wind of the project.  He could not have expected that someone on the other side of the world whom he never met would put up the money to get his book into print.

God’s plans for his people are numerous.  Some plans are large, and some plans are small, but all of them are dear to him.  Some people might try to frustrate his plans for our lives, and that might seem like a pretty regular occurrence.  I cannot tell how many times my faith has been tested by this.  God gives me a vision or a word, but things occur that make it seem like what He showed me could not possibly come to pass.  However, experience has proven to me that God will cause to happen everything He wants to happen.  In today’s scripture, we see the king of Egypt trying to frustrate a plan that God put into place years earlier.  He promised that He would make the descendants of Abraham as numerous as the stars in the sky, and Pharaoh would not change that.  No man would cut off the bloodline of God’s people.  What God ordained for his nation would come to pass no matter what power tried to interfere.

We serve a God of unlimited power and strength.  We need never fear that someone or something else can successfully come up against him and what He has decided for our lives.  If God makes a promise, it is only because it will be fulfilled.  If God causes us to have faith for something to come, then we can be certain that thing will come.  We need not focus on the fact that the powers that come against us are stronger than we are.  We know that we do not rely on ourselves to bring about God’s plan and purpose, but we rely on him to empower us to walk them out.  Father, give us faith for the things that You have placed on our hearts, that we would believe against all odds that You will bring them to pass.