February 24

Exodus 14:13-14 (NIV)
13 Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. 14 The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

God wants glory! He has a plan to enable you to see His glory. In this case with Israel, it included Egypt having built up a strong army, hardening Pharaoh’s heart, hardening the official’s heart, enticing them to chase Israel down and bringing Israel to the brink of disaster! Many times in our lives we have to get to the brink of disaster or be at the “end of our rope” to turn to God, and especially to recognize that it is His glory that has delivered us from our trouble. When we are ready to be counted down and out and we are rescued, we understand fully that we were saved by God and God alone.

How about this – let’s be trained to recognize God in everything and everywhere, giving Him glory along the way and deflecting glory towards Him when we are part of what He just did. Did you get that? If we will learn to give Him glory and praise Him for the small deliverance or the fact that we didn’t need deliverance at all, maybe we won’t have to face so many “on the brink of disaster” moments. The point of the red sea deliverance was to show His glory to convince the people of God AND the Egyptians that He is THE God of the universe – the only true God who has the power to deliver from all things.

There is another beauty of the Father in this story as well. He took them via the Red Sea so they didn’t have to fight with the Philistines because they weren’t ready to be in a battle. They hadn’t been trained for war yet. What a great God we serve who will give us only what we can handle. Either way though it would have been His hand that delivered right? Just because we fought the war with our own hands doesn’t mean we take the glory since we are now trained to give Him the glory – for He trained my hands for war.