Don't Go Back to Egypt
Are you currently waiting on God for something? Or have you ever been in a season of waiting and lost hope or patience in the waiting and taken matters into your own hands? I’ve learned from experience that this is never a good idea. Or maybe you’ve experienced God’s goodness and deliverance but quickly forgot about it when things got hard, and fell back into old traps and patterns. In my recent study of the book of Exodus in the Bible, I’ve learned that we are not alone in this struggle!
To give you some context, the Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years when God used Moses to lead them out of slavery by parting the Red Sea and ushering them through on dry ground. He rescued them by parting the sea, allowing them to walk through it, then collapsing the sea back onto their enemies, the Egyptians, who were chasing after them. This is a miracle. I cannot even imagine being there, seeing an entire sea split in two!
After they were safe, He fed them manna in the wilderness (which is bread that literally fell from Heaven) and cared for them. Prior to receiving this bread, however, they complained to Moses about how they wanted to go back to Egypt where they had “pots of meat and ate bread in the full” (Exodus 15). They were hungry, tired, and were running out of supplies so they dreamed of going back to Egypt, where they were oppressed slaves, just to have better food to eat! We say some rash things too when we’re hungry and tired, right? We forget God’s provisions and ability to provide sometimes. God heard their complaints and provided for them. Bread fell from Heaven. They didn’t work for it or earn it. All they had to do was collect enough each day for their household. What a blessing! But even after seeing and experiencing the miracle of manna and walking through the Red Sea, they lost patience the very next time they had to wait and forgot about the goodness and character of God.
God had called Moses up the mountain to give him the 10 commandments, which Moses would then come down to give to the Israelites. But they gave up on waiting for Moses because they felt like it was taking too long!
It was only forty days!
The thing is, God was actually working in their lives for their good during their waiting period, but they just couldn’t see it.
The Bible says in Exodus 32:1, “When the people saw that Moses was delayed in coming down the mountain…they made a golden calf to worship.” But in 32:8, God sees their lack of faith and idol worship and says to Moses, “they have quickly turned away from the way I commanded them.” The people thought God was delayed. But God calls this same amount of time quick! What’s quick to God can sometimes feel like an eternity to us.
When they couldn’t see with their eyes, or when they didn’t have a guarantee of safety or the victory didn’t come quickly, they panicked and lost their faith. They took matters into their own hands and fell back on their old ways. They worshiped a golden calf, which was part of the pagan culture they were rescued from in Egypt. Some of us go back to alcohol or drugs or a toxic relationship. We trust in bad habits or dirty money or friends with different morals than ours. We return to Egypt too so to speak. But if we wait on the Lord and we persevere through the waiting and the loneliness and the seemingly unanswered prayers, we will see victory. We’ve got to have faith in our God who knows what’s best for us and is never really slow at all.
Hebrews 11:1 says,
“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot or do not see.”
Psalm 27:14 says,
“Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; Wait, I say, on the Lord!”
Sometimes the waiting is short and other times, it is long. If you’re in a season of waiting, trust in God’s timing. Don’t give up, give in, or go back. God is pruning you, strengthening you and making a way. His ways are higher than our ways. He loves you and has a grand master plan for your life. In other words, while you’re waiting, don’t go back to Egypt.