Going Beyond Ministries with Priscilla Shirer – Claim Your Victory

“At the end of the day, the enemy is going to be sorry he ever messed with you. You’re about to become his worst nightmare a million times over. He thought he could wear you down, sure that after a while you’d give up without much of a fight. Well, just wait till he encounters the fight of God’s Spirit in you. Because . . . This. Means. War.”
― Priscilla Shirer, Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer

Well, hi y’all. It is a privilege to be with you.
It is a gift to my husband and I, we came in from Dallas where we live and um, just had a privilege to be able to meet your pastors and leaders, the people who we’ve heard so much about.
We’ve heard so much about your church and what God is doing in this city and in this state and even beyond to this church, I don’t know if you know that or not, but the reputation of God’s people here and what God is doing through you.
It really does seep well beyond the walls of this community.
And so we have heard about you for so long to have to have the privilege to come and to serve you in this way on this Sunday morning as a gift to us.
I’m excited to be able to do it too because I believe in the power of the word of God.
Anybody believe in the power of the word of God, y’all.
It really is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword.
I’m telling you the blood of Jesus saves you from your sins.
The word of God saves your, your, your mind, it changes your mind and your soul and it makes you a different person.
And so every single time we open up the book together corporately like this or just alone, when you’re at home, you know, at your kitchen table and you have your quiet time.
Every single time you open up the word of God, you ought to feel the warm breath of God brushing across your cheeks as God speaks a now word into your life.
And so the reason why you are here today as the series starts for your church, this whole next level going to the next step, the next place, the next dimension in your relationship with God.
The reason why he would have us here today um At the beginning of this is it could only be if he has the next level up his sleeve for you and he fully intends for you to be prepared to get there.
So even if you, you, you just happen to come here, your first time visiting uh on the Sunday, you need to know that this is a divine, set up my friend.
The only reason he wanted us here is if he had something for us, he was trying to prepare us for.
And so I’m fully expecting that God is going to speak to you.
And to me personally, through this very simple word from scripture that if we apply it to our life, it will change us forever.
So let’s pray, Lord, thank you so much for your word.
Thank you that in these next few moments we’re about to spend together. You can take this one little message.
You can multiply it thousands of different ways so that every single person hears a direct personal word straight from the mouth of God.
Lord, nobody needs to hear me. They need to hear you. So I’m praying that you will speak.
We need a word from you. We are your servants. We are listening.
We are sitting on the edge of our seat because we cannot wait to hear what the spirit will say to the church in Jesus name.
Everybody said, Amen Jerry and I have three little boys.
Um I say little boys, I, I always say that because obviously they’re my sons, but they are not little boys.
I have an 11 year old who wears a size 11 men shoe.
Somebody helped me feed these kids, got an 11 year old, a nine year old and a five year old.
Our five year old is our surprise baby. We still don’t even know how he got here. We got Jackson.
He’s our oldest Jerry Junior. We named him, we call him J C our second and then Jude is our baby boy.
He’s five years old. Now. We call uh named Jude Jude because that is as close as I could get to revelation because it is finished.
It is the end of the line we’re done.
So I got these three boys and they are, they love sports.
So whatever sport happens to be in season at that particular time, that is the sport that we are playing.
So, football, football season and basketball, basketball season, baseball season has just begun.
Our second son really does enjoy baseball and it kind of is his niche. It’s his thing.
He’s a pretty big nine year old.
He has a lot of power behind him, so he can already hit a ball over a fence line and he’s great at first base.
He stops a lot of, uh, balls and, uh, great stops, great catches at first base.
So we’re pretty proud, proud of him.
And we think that’s his niche baseball and any of you that have Children that are involved in baseball, you know, that it’s so great when the season starts because it starts in the spring.
So you’re out there doing practice and games on Saturday and the weather is still particularly conducive to you being out there and enjoying yourself.
But, you know, after a couple of months, the summer rolls in and we got that hot Texas sun that starts to beat down on us and the sweat is rolling from our brow and, and you can still kind of handle it when you’re just in the regular season because it’s just one game on a Saturday that you’ve got to be out there for, but then towards the end of the season, the series starts.
So you’re in a tournament and if you have Children in little League, you know what I mean?
That means you go out early in the morning on one Saturday and basically you might play three or four games in one day until your team loses and then your team is disqualified.
And I don’t know if there is ever a point where it gets to be ok that you pray your kid loses so you can go home.
Can I get one witness?
Come on, somebody tell me I’m not alone, but you’re out there and you’re sweating bullets and it’s just ridiculous.
And we were last summer in the Little League World Series by World Series.
They mean all the teams that live right here in your neighborhood are gonna get together for a tournament.
And so we were out there for the World Series and we were about at that point when I was ready to pray that prayer, I mean, it was hot.
We still had more games to play for the day. The team was doing pretty good.
So they were winning and kept going from game to game just about that time.
We had a little bit of a break, went out for lunch, sat in the air conditioned, cooled off for a little while, came back to the field, got all of his gear out so that we could head over to the field and put his stuff in the dugout and get ready for the next game.
And as we walked over, I noticed something about my second son as he prepared for his game.
My second son is normally a very gregarious, outgoing, confident, young man. Um He, he believes in himself.
He’s got a good level of confidence. He normally walks with his head held high.
He looks forward to games, looks forward to the challenge.
But I noticed as we approach the diamond for the next game, he, he changed his countenance, changed his head, started to hang down a little bit and I saw him start to wring his hands.
He looked insecure and nervous. I looked around to try to figure out what was going on as we were walking over towards the field.
I watched him looked over and realized that he was seeing the team, he was about to play.
They were all seated underneath, they were kind of sprawled out on the grass underneath the shade of a big tree getting ready for the game.
And as I looked at this team, I immediately knew what the problem was.
This team had played my boys team earlier in the season.
They had met up with this team before and when this team had played my kids team, they had annihilated my boys team.
I mean, it had been an embarrassment. These boys on this other team are serious.
Baseball players you know, the kind that when their parents gave birth to them, they put a mitt on one hand and a baseball on the other and they’ve been playing every day, serious, serious, serious players, serious parents, you know, those kind of parents, the serious parents.
So this team was a serious team. My boy was getting nervous.
We had to walk past this group laying on the grass as we went over to the dug out.
And as we walked past them, we overheard a few of the team members whispering to each other, they thought they were quiet but we could hear them.
And this is what we heard.
There’s that kid from the other team, you know, the one that, that hit that ball over the fence the last game, you know.
Yeah, he was the one at first base that made all the, the ounce that we got.
Remember he was the one catching the ball.
Then one of them leaned over and said, yeah, that’s that Shire boy.
When my son heard his name past the lips of the opposing team, team members, all of a sudden that head that had been hung down all of a sudden, it was back up in the air again, that little insecure walk.
He had all of a sudden he got his swag back because it’s amazing how your countenance changes, how your insecurity will fade when you really understand what the enemy thinks about you.
I don’t know what battle you’re up against or what it is you are facing or the difficulty that’s ahead of you.
But this, I do know if you and I could just discover what the enemy thinks about us.
We wouldn’t be insecure or fearful or lack courage anymore.
Because listen, even if you don’t believe it, the enemy believes the word of God.
He knows that you have been forgiven. The enemy knows for sure that your guilt and shame has been removed.
He knows for sure that there is Therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
What he knows for sure is that second Corinthians chapter three says, you have been made competent by the spirit of God.
What he knows for sure is that you and I have been given access to a power and an authority that he will never ever have access to.
What he knows. My friend is that he can form a weapon against you but that it will never prosper.
Well, he knows for sure what he knows for sure is that in the end, you win, what a travesty it would be for the enemy to believe more about your potential than you do for Him to be fully convinced about everything that God says.
And by the way, he’s convinced, he knows, he knows and he knows if we ever get around to knowing he’ll be in trouble for the attempt of the enemy is to keep you from knowing for sure who you are in Christ as you and I go to the next level, the next dimension, take the next step in our relationship with God.
The reality is that there are going to be some hurdles that you have to cross.
There are gonna be some giants that you have to slay.
There are gonna be some things that you have to traverse.
There’s going to be something that could potentially stand in your way if you allow it to.
But it occurs to me and I wanna tell you this morning, in fact, I woke up this morning with this thought on my mind.
So I want to share it with you that some challenges are less about the enemy being against you and more about God wanting you to see what it looks like when He is for you, that some things that you might be facing right now.
It’s all about the fact that God has allowed that situation to be in your life because He wants you to know what it looks like for Him to be God in your experience.
So the Children of Israel, they’ve got a message for us today because they were on a journey with God.
They were trying to go to the next level out of slavery in Egypt into the promised land, the place that represents the favor, the provision, the grace of God in their experience on a daily basis.
But on the way there was this obstacle, they could not figure out how to get across.
Just like for you, there may be a situation you’re figuring out how to traverse in your life, a marriage struggle, a financial struggle problem with this particular child or on your job, there’s an issue or in your ministry or just even in your own mind and in your own heart, you’re just struggling with, with something that is keeping you from getting to the next place in God.
The Children of Israel know how you feel because when they left Egypt, they came upon this situation, they had to deal with called the Red Sea.
They’re gonna teach us how to get across it today.
If you have your Bible with you and you want to turn with me to Exodus chapter 14, that’s where we find the story.
If you actually still use the Bible with paper pages like I do or you could just use your thumb and flip on over there with your iphone, your ipad.
Any manner of I just get to Exodus chapter 14 or I think they’ll put it on the screen and you can read it there.
Exodus chapter 14 verse 13 and 14 says this Moses said to the people do not fear stand by and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will, somebody say he will, which he will perform for you today.
For the Egyptians who you’ve seen today, you will never see them again forever.
The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent. I wanna read that again.
Listen, Moses said to the people do not be afraid.
Ain’t nobody got time for that stand by and see the salvation of the Lord, which he’s gonna accomplish for you today.
It’s already done. The Egyptians which you’ve seen today. You will never ever see them again forever.
The Lord is gonna fight for you.
If you’ll just be silent tucked within these two verses, you’ll see it.
There, there is a promise of victory.
He says to the Children of Israel, you don’t have to figure out or strategize or contemplate or maneuver your way through this red sea.
God’s gonna do the hard work. No sweat equity necessary.
All you have to do is obey these four commands to claim the victory.
God has already given you the victory is yours. You just have to claim that victory.
And so He tells them four things that you, that they needed to do.
The Holy Spirit is gonna teach us those four things today.
So that as you go to the next level, the next step across that red Sea, you will be able to claim victoriously all that God has planned for you.
He says to the Children of Israel, these four things he says, be fearless, do not fear.
He says, be still stand by. He says, be watchful, see the salvation of the Lord.
And he says, be quiet.
The first thing that he said to the Children of Israel was we got to deal with this fear issue.
He says you need to be fearless.
Now it makes sense to me that he would need to tell the Children of Israel this because the Israel, the Children of Israel, the Hebrews, there were approximately two million of them that came out of Egypt, all of them having the opportunity to go to canon of those two million.
Do you know that there were only actually ever of the original two million?
There was actually only two of them that actually made it to Joshua and Caleb two out of two million.
That’s one in a million that got to experience the promises of God.
Now, I don’t know about you, but if there’s only gonna be a handful of people that actually get to walk in the promise land experience, all that God has for them, I would like to be one of them.
Moses says, I’m gonna tell you how to get there.
You cannot be afraid, you can’t allow your fear to control you.
They needed to be told this because it made absolute sense that they would be the Red Sea was in front of them, an enormous body of water that looked quite intimidating.
They kept could not see one end from the other.
They could not see across the other side to dry ground and to make matters worse.
Pharaoh and his army didn’t stay comfortably tucked away in Egypt just allowing them to leave.
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened again. He decided to come after them.
There were thousands upon thousands upon thousands, probably millions of people that were with Pharaoh that day that were coming after Israel.
Scholars say that the army would have been so broad that they didn’t just come up behind the Children of Israel.
They would have spread out around the east and around the west.
So in essence, Israel was completely surrounded, a body of water in front of them and enemies all around them.
Some of you know exactly how that feels because right now you’re not just seeing a problem in front of you.
When you look to the right, there’s still a problem. When you look to the left, there’s another problem.
When you look behind you, there’s another problem.
You feel like you are completely surrounded and just like for the Children of Israel, it makes absolute sense that in a situation like that you would be afraid.
It makes sense. Our human tendency, our natural frailty is prone towards fear, which is why the Holy Spirit needs to tell us today.
Exactly the same thing that Moses had to stare in the faces of the Israelites and tell them do not be afraid.
Doesn’t mean you won’t feel it, it means don’t entertain it.
It doesn’t mean you won’t be prone to it that you won’t have a tendency toward it.
It means don’t engage, it, don’t rehearse, it don’t nurse, it don’t go over it.
It means to separate yourself in the name of Jesus from your tendency to be afraid.
Which means, listen, you gotta to do battle against that thing. Listen, I have a friend of mine.
She was struggling with fear in the area of her life.
She literally found promises in the word of God that has specifically had to do with her situation.
And with fear, she wrote them down on three by five cards and posted them in her house in her car, in the, on the wall of the cubicle in her office space.
She put them everywhere she was so that everywhere she went, she had an opportunity to quote that thing out loud and to tell the enemy, you’re not gonna mess with me today because I’m not gonna be afraid.
I’m going to use the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God and do battle against my tendency toward fear.
The scripture says he has not given us a spirit of fear.
Listen, listen, he doesn’t give fear.
Which means if you have a spirit of fear attached to your life in regards to something specific, then you know, God didn’t give it.
Which means if he didn’t, the enemy did. The only reason why the enemy has ever given gifts.
If it’s because He is trying to give you something to steer you away from God’s best for you.
The only reason why He gives gifts.
So one of the reasons or the ways I am able to kind of detect God’s leading in my life when I’m trying to discern the voice of God, and I gotta make a decision or something.
If there is one decision, let’s say I’ve got to make a decision between two things.
If there’s one option that I really don’t want to choose and when I boil down all the reasons why I don’t want to choose it, the bottom line of it is I’m afraid of it or I’m fearful of it.
I automatically assume that that option is probably God’s option for me because if the enemy is gonna work so hard to make me afraid of something, he must know there is something in that, that he doesn’t want me to have that my destiny is wrapped up in that thing that the promised land for my life is wrapped up in that thing.
If he’s gonna work that hard to paralyze me with fear so that I don’t entertain that option, then that’s probably the option that is God’s best for me.
Is there something in your life you are afraid of? You’re intimidated by my friend, fight against fear.
The enemy is trying to steer you away from that which represents God’s best for you.
Moses says do not be afraid. Philippians 46 puts it like this.
It says be anxious for nothing but in everything.
Look at that contrast, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let those requests just be made known to God.
And then that peace that you’re looking for.
The peace that will surpass all understanding and comprehension, it will guard your heart and your mind.
In Christ Jesus that basically says when you feel a fear, when you feel fear rising on the inside of you don’t entertain it, don’t engage it, exchange it for an opportunity to pray.
I um remember when my boys first fell in love with baseball, I remember that day because it was Christmas Day.
My husband had bought the boys this little toy baseball machine.
It’s the kind of machine that catapulted out these little plastic balls at a certain frequency and a certain velocity.
And then, you know, my little three year old standing up there with that little plastic bag getting ready to at least swing at as many of those as he could.
They open that up early on Christmas morning. You know how your kids get up early on Christmas morning.
It’s supposed to be a holiday, but it’s kind of not for you.
You know how that is and they open up that gift and they immediately want you to go to work, they want you to put it together, they want you to take them outside at 6:30 AM and help them to play with this.
And so here we were outside, cold outside, we had our fluffy bathrobes on.
We’re letting the boys play with this little game.
And at the time, we only had our, our two big boys.
So the little one was three, then the older one was five.
And that confident gregarious one I told you about, man, he put on that little plastic helmet.
Three years old took that little plastic bat.
He was at least swinging at every single ball that came out of that shoe.
He could not wait all the while my five year old Jackson was standing off to the side watching this man.
He saw those balls coming out and he got more and more nervous with every single one of them.
He’s a little bit more cautious, a little bit more um insecure sometimes about his abilities and he stood there.
He wasn’t sure he was like mom. I don’t, I don’t think I can do that.
I said, baby, you got it. You can do it. I was just encouraging him, you can do it.
He’s like no mom, I can’t.
I said yes, you can and you’re gonna do it because we bought this toy for you and it’s early in the morning, you gonna do it.
So finally it’s his turn.
He stood in front of the machine and he was a little bit uncomfortable and insecure waiting on that first ball to come out how I wished I could get that little five year old brain to understand something that I knew.
What I knew was that Jerry, his dad who loves him had gone behind the back of that machine had opened up a little flap that reveals some gears.
He had manipulated those gears because they could control the frequency and the velocity of all the balls.
So, so the bottom line is the frequency and the velocity of the balls was set up to suit Jackson’s ability.
So Jackson could stand there in front of that machine with complete confidence because he had somebody who loved him who had gone behind the scenes to manipulate everything to his benefit.
The reason why you don’t have to be afraid my friend is because you got a daddy who loves you.
He’s already gone behind the scenes.
He’s already manipulated events and people and put folks in the right place at the right time.
And he has set up the scenario so that somebody with courage can stand up to the plate and be obedient to God.
And when we do it, we’ll be set up to win.
Moses says, don’t you be afraid God’s gonna park this red seat for you.
Second thing he says, not only is to be fearless, he also says be still some translations read, stand by others say stand firm.
Some the one I read today says, stand still notice the two parts of that command, the standing part and the stillness part.
Both of those sound like very passive commands.
They sound like the command you don’t want to hear when you’re facing a problem because I’d rather be strategizing and planning and maneuvering and trying to figure out it seems like there’s something so much more active that I need to be doing in this scenario.
But Moses says, don’t do anything except stand, stand still sound so passive and like you’re disengaged from the reality.
But I want you to think about this for just a moment when you come home from a long day at work.
When I do when I’m working or out with the kids all day, and I come home and I’m tired.
The last thing I wanna do is stand anywhere.
I take off my shoes, you know, you loosen up your tie.
When you come home from the office, you getting something to relax. And what do we do?
We sit down, find the most comfortable chair we can and we take a load off.
We sit down, which means the responsibility for carrying our weight is no longer on us. It’s on something else.
We have completely relaxed ourselves into the control of something else. On the contrary, standing is not passive at all.
Standing requires a resolve of your mind. A decision of your will.
It requires muscles that you might not otherwise use to plant your feet firmly and stand and control your own uh decision to, to firmly be rooted somewhere as opposed to relaxing it to the control of something else.
Moses says, God’s part is to fight your battle, your part, not a passive part, your very necessary active part of crossing your Red Sea is to stand firmly on the promises of God to not be relaxed, to not allow yourself to be swayed with our crazy culture that is redefining family and redefining philosophies and trying to come up with their own standard of truth to our world.
Truth is subjective, but really there was only one objective standard of truth by which there has to be a remnant called the church of Jesus Christ that says it don’t matter what y’all do.
We gonna stand firmly on the promises of God and believe that God is who He says He is and that He does not change with the culture.
He can still accomplish what he says that he can accomplish. You gotta decide.
Am I gonna do my part of this battle? Am I gonna stand?
Am I gonna believe that whatever God is teaching me applies to my life?
And I’m supposed to stand on it.
I’m not just supposed to clap about it or wave my hand to it or say amen to it when I’m hearing it on Sunday, that’s just supposed to be a prerequisite to how I live Monday through Friday.
See, it’s a waste of time y’all.
If we meet here on Sunday, your pastor meets with you every single week and, and you gather here and you hear the truth of scripture.
It is a waste of time.
If everybody hears it and celebrates and then everybody goes home and lives like they didn’t hear anything on Sunday.
What has to happen is there are a group of people called, called the family of God, the church of Jesus Christ, what Paul called in Ephesians three.
This mystery race of people that live by a different standard that don’t adhere to the standard of society.
They hear to a different truth.
They plant their feet firmly on it and they stand having done all to stand.
Ephesians six, stand firm, therefore, plant your feet and stand now.
Uh I was thinking about this because we had a friend of ours named Katie.
She was traveling with us and Katie’s from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
She came to Dallas to intern with us for about three months and we traveled with her quite a bit during those three months.
And I gotta tell you the Baton Rouge Louisiana Airport is a little bit different than Dallas Fort Worth Airport a little bit different.
She had never been to D F W Airport if you’ve been there. You know what I mean?
When I say it is, it’s a monster.
When you, you want to get to your flight, you first have to just know what terminal you’re going to.
We got five, you either going to A or B or C or D or E.
So you gotta know where you’re even headed first.
Then when you get there, there’s about 30 to 35 gates inside each terminal, you gotta know which gate, then some of the gates have a part A and part B.
So you might be going to terminal D Gate 22 A which we were on this occasion.
All five of us, my boys, me and Jerry, we normally traveled all together. We were traveling with Katie.
We got to the airport terminal d to catch our flight.
We went into the airport and began to take off all of our clothes so we could go through security.
Five of us were in one line, me and the in the family and Katie was in another line and we went through some reason, our line went through really fast and her line was having trouble, you know, it was just going kind of slow and stopping and starting.
So all five of us got through to the other side and Katie was still back there waiting to go through security.
So Jerry said, you know what, let’s just go ahead and go to the um go to our gate and we’ll just wait there for Katie.
And so he sent her a text over through security and said, we’ll meet you at gate 22 A.
She gave us the thumbs up. She got the message.
So gate 22 a was literally when you came through security, it was right to the left of security.
You could literally see the gate from the outside of security.
So we walked over, we sat down for a while waiting for Katie. She hadn’t shown up yet.
So we thought, you know, when, when they started boarding, we’ll go ahead and board and take our and we’ll wait for Katie on the plane.
We boarded, everybody boarded, the whole flight was boarded. Katie was still nowhere to be found.
We’re worried we’re texting her. We’re trying to figure out where she is. She’s not texting us back.
I mean, literally, they are getting ready to close the door of this plane.
They call her name over the loudspeaker.
You know, you’re late when they start calling your name, we cannot find Katie and we’re like, this girl’s gonna miss this flight finally right before they close the plane, close the door of the plane.
Katie rushes onto the plane. She rushes down that little aisleway. She’s sweating. Her hair is plastered to her face.
I mean, she has been through an ordeal.
She finally takes her seat and when she comes to herself and gets her composure, she looks up to find me and Jerry looking at her like this.
We said what happened?
She said, I saw when Jerry sent me a text that said gate 22 a but I just assumed he meant a 22.
So I got on the airport tram that takes you from one terminal to another terminal.
I went all the way around the entire airport from terminal d all the way to terminal A went down to gate 22 before I realized I’m at the wrong gate.
So I had to get back on the tram, go all the way around the entire airport to come back here.
I honestly didn’t think I was gonna make the flight. Jerry looked back at her and said something.
I’ll never forget. He said, ok, Katie, if you would have just believed that what I roped was exactly what I meant.
I would have saved you so much time and so much energy and so much effort and so much sweat.
If you would have just believed me, can I just say that some of us are too smart for our own good.
We read what God says and then rationalize ourselves out of believing that what he wrote is what he meant.
Would you take him at his word? If he says you’re free, you’re free.
If he says you’re forgiven, you’re forgiven. If he says there is no condemnation, there’s no condemnation.
If he says, let us go over to the other side, let us go over to the other side.
So my friends tend your feet on the promises of God and don’t allow yourself to be swayed to the left or the right.
Moses says, you want to get across this body of water, you want to go to the next level.
Well, then you be fearless and then you be still. And then he says, be watchful.
He put it this way.
He said, see the salvation of the Lord, see it, open your eyes and take all the details in.
Now, this is an interesting command that he gives them because I, I’ll tell you about myself and maybe some of you can relate to this when I have a Red Sea situation in front of me.
When I’ve got something I’m dealing with that is a difficulty in my life that I’ve got to traverse through.
Honestly, I don’t wanna look at it. I don’t wanna see it.
I want to close my eyes and sleep through it until God gets me out of here.
I don’t want to be engaged with it at all.
I want to distance myself from it and not see the details of it. Moses says, don’t do that.
Your natural tendency is gonna be want to ignore the problem. Hurry up, God, get me out of this.
He says that’s the wrong thing to do.
He says, open your eyes even before the whole Red Sea is divided. Park.
That’s a big miracle we’re gonna see later. We’ll see that too.
But don’t close your eyes every day until you get there.
Open your eyes up every single day because there are little miracles God’s performing right now.
You don’t wanna miss all the little details of how God is causing events to come together and people in the right place at the right time.
You don’t want to miss the fingerprints of God and the footprints of God working in your life and in your circumstances, we’ll see the big thing later.
But up until then keep your eyes open and be watchful. There’s stuff God is doing even right now.
And I don’t know about you. But if God is moving, I don’t want to miss any of it.
I want to see all of it.
So he says to the Children of Israel, keep your eyes open, keep your eyes open, keep your eyes open.
He knew that they needed to see when Moses lifted up that simple staff and stretched out his hand.
He didn’t want them to miss that.
They needed to see when the angel of the Lord that was a cloud in front of them all this time, moved behind them and became a rear guard between them and the Egyptians, they needed to remember what it felt like when that East wind started blowing across their cheeks slowly at first, but then began to build in intensity so much so that it was able to park that body of water.
They needed to see the look of awe and disbelief on the faces of their family members and loved ones as they saw this miracle occur.
He wanted them to look down and see that their sandals won’t collecting any mud because they weren’t on wet ground.
They were on dry ground. He wanted to make sure that they saw how, when Pharaoh and his army came after them, the waters were gonna collapse over them and swallow them up.
He said, listen, I don’t want you to just wait for the big thing to see what God is doing.
I want you every single day to keep your eyes open for all the little miracles.
God is weaving together on your behalf.
So listen, yes, you get down on your knees.
You close your eyes long enough to pray and ask God to divide your red seat.
But as soon as you pray that prayer make our request known to God.
He says, we can, as soon as you do that, you get up off your knees and then you open your eyes and you say, Lord, yeah, I wanna see that too.
But today I don’t wanna miss anything you’re gonna do on my behalf.
He says you open your eyes and you be watchful to see what God’s intention is.
One of our favorite restaurants in Dallas is called um Babes. Do y’all know babes?
Anybody ever been to babes? Ok. You, you, I got one hand that was raised here.
You need to go to babes. The anointing of God is at babes.
It’s the kind of place where they just bring hot biscuits fresh out of the oven and set it in front of you and not just with, you know, a cold pat of hard butter.
Mm. Mm. They bring it out with some honey so that you can drizzle that honey on that warm biscuit.
This is the kind of place where you order what, any kind of meat you want and they will fry it for you.
Just anything, you can get anything fried and they bring all the sides out family style.
It’s a great place where we take our family. We love it.
And when we were there several years ago, uh we’ve been lost since, but this particular occasion I remember because one of my boys ordered for his meal, a fried filet of catfish off the kids’ menu, fried catfish.
When our food came, she sat down that fried piece of catfish in front of my boy.
He sweetly innocently looked up at her to ask her a question, ma’am. Can I ask you a question?
Yes, young ma’am. What is it? He said innocently as he knew how ma’am.
Um Could you just tell me, is this made out of real cat?
As you can imagine?
We laughed and giggled and we’re completely stunned that he asked that question and he’s starting to get so frustrated.
He’s like, why is everybody laughing at me? I wanna know the answer to my question.
And I finally stopped giggling long enough to say, babe, I’m so sorry.
We don’t mean to laugh at you, but we can’t answer your question because you actually haven’t asked the right question.
Like it’s not even the ballpark of the right question to ask.
So we get frustrated with God because we’re praying and praying and praying and it seems like he’s not answering our question.
It seems like he’s not answering us.
Sometimes I think God is looking at us and said, I’m not answering you because you’re not asking the right thing.
You’re asking me to take you out of this situation.
Instead of saying, Lord, will you open my eyes while I’m in it?
Instead of saying Lord, while I’m here, I’m gonna quit. I’m gonna quit begging.
I’m gonna, I’m gonna ask you, yes. You say I can ask you to park this red sea.
I’m gonna ask you. But until you choose to, I’m gonna ask you Lord to make sure my spiritual eyes are open and my spiritual ears are keen that my spiritual senses that the radar is up so that every time you’re moving, I pick up on your presence, every time you’re speaking, I pick up on your voice every time you’re near.
I’m aware of the little miracles occurring in my life every single day.
Ask the Lord to give you the courage to be watchful, to open his eyes and celebrate everything he’s doing every single day.
And finally, Moses says to them, the most difficult of the four commands.
He says, be quiet.
He has to tell the Children of Israel to be quiet because these folks were just days from being delivered.
They were just celebrating the 10 incredible miracles that their Yahweh had done on their behalf.
Just days into the journey. At the first side of difficulty, the same mouths and other praises to God are the same mouths that are now complaining against God.
So he says to them exactly what my mama told me growing up.
If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.
Train yourself against complaining. Oh man, I’m talking to myself right now.
You have to make a decision of your will that if I do not have a positive comment to make about this scenario.
Yes, it is difficult. Yes, it is Trump troublesome.
Yes, I cannot figure out how I’m gonna get over this Red Sea.
But unless you have a positive statement to utter out of your mouth, it’s better to be quiet than to speak complaint while the Lord fights for you guard yourself against complaining.
It is our natural human tendency to get complacent with the blessings.
We were just overjoyed to receive and to begin to complain against the same God who gave us those blessings, train yourself to be quiet not to allow your mouth to open in arrogance or in complaint.
The Israelites trusted him for their deliverance, but not for them for their circumstances.
So here they are just a few days out of the journey onto the journey and they are all ready complaining.
You have to choose to be quiet.
I was talking to a friend of mine about a difficulty I was having in my life.
And as I just tried to tell her the details of the circumstances so she could pray with me, give me some wise counsel.
Apparently, some of what I was saying was coming across as complaining some of the statements I was using the word choice.
It, it sounded like complaining. And my friend Lisa wasn’t, wasn’t having none of that.
She stopped me in my tracks and said, oh oh oh, hold on, hold on, hold on.
We can keep talking. But I’m gonna need you to more carefully choose your words.
She said the words that you use are the substance that the enemy uses to form the weapons against you before you say that negative statement, he actually doesn’t have the artillery that he needs to bring you down.
When the words of negativity come out of your mouth, he grabs them right out of the atmosphere and he begins to construct a weapon to help demolish you.
So she says you got to watch your words because until you use those negative words, the enemy doesn’t even have anything to hang his head on guard yourself.
Stop yourself, silence yourself against complaining.
In fact, you should just ask for accountability, your spouse, your friends just tell them, listen, if you hear stuff coming out of my mouth.
That sounds like complaint. Would you stop me?
Because I don’t want the enemy to have anything to use against me.
And then a fearless steadfast, watchful, silent bunch of Hebrews saw the miracle of a lifetime.
They cross safely on dry ground. In the movie, the 10 commandments.
It took Hollywood 18 months to figure out how to simulate what God did in a split second and that same God can and will work, work miracles for you.
As you go to the next level, your part is to be fearless, be still, be watchful and be quiet.