Keep Walking

This morning I was thinking about some of the junk I've been struggling with and how excited I am that I can more or less view it in a detached kind of way. I've been combatting my ungodly feelings with prayer and praise and humbling myself before the Lord. I'm trying to submit my life to him, and I feel like God has honored my efforts by keeping at bay the general nastiness of my emotional responses to tough situations.

As I was thinking about things, I had this picture of my sin as being like the wall of water God made from the Jordan. If you've seen The Prince of Egypt, you'll have a picture of what I'm talking about. I was picturing the Israelites walking across the Jordan. I know that they walked across on dry land and that the Lord parted the waters for them, creating a wall of water (Exodus 14:21-22). For God, it would have been just as easy to create a dam upstream to hold the water back, or perhaps just make some kind of funnel to suck all the water out. But the Israelites had to walk through the river while watching this wall of water looming over their heads. This morning I was really feeling like my feelings of bitterness, anger, frustration, distrust, sadness, worry, and who knows what all were all stacked up right next to me. I could almost see God holding them at bay. I'm not overwhelmed by any of it, but I can see it right there, so close, threatening. God just reminded me that I need to keep on moving and not be frozen with fear. After all, the Israelites had to keep on walking. They couldn't just camp out by the wall of water. But at the same time, God protected them and made sure they got to the other side safely.

I kind of think that if the Israelites had seen the Jordan all dry without the wall of water, they would have been able to explain it away without God. Maybe some unknown tribe had built a dam. Maybe it had been a particularly dry few years, and the Jordan was just out of water. It was much scarier to have to pass by that wall of water, in part because it meant confronting the knowledge that God was directly involved, and they had absolutely no control. I've found that the more scared I am, the more I have got to trust God. It's not fun to feel out of control and frightened, but I know for certain that I'm going to reach the other side of my Jordan with a stronger reliance on God and a newfound ability to trust him. All I have to do is keep on moving in faith.