Start swimming!

“Grab your water wings and start swimming!”
There they were. Before them, a giant body of water waiting to engulf them. Behind them, a giant body of people waiting to engulf them. I can only imagine the anger and frustration. I can only imagine the comments and one liners that were being said. They followed God and this is what they get. Egypt’s army was closing in on them, they had reached the edge of the Red Sea, what in the world was God doing, and more, what wasn’t He doing!
We have all been there, or we are going there, and some of us are there right now. This is God’s normal way of dealing with His people. The Bible, from cover to cover, shows us that God brings His people to hopeless situations. What do I mean by hopeless? I mean, no visible, material possibility of positive outcome that we can comprehend. Hopeless, without hope, but not without God.
Abraham was promised a son but it wasn’t till he and Sarah were of an age that child bearing was an impossibility that they became pregnant.
Israel was promised deliverance from Egypt and slavery but it wasn’t till they were caught between a sea and an army that God delivered them once and for all.
David was promised to be king but it wasn’t till after he had been hunted by Saul that his kingship could begin.
We have been promised life in Jesus but it isn’t till we die that we live that life. Now, I don’t mean that life in Christ doesn’t start till our earthly, physical death. And I am not placing conditions on salvation: works. I am simply saying what Jesus said, “If any man would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Death is the condition of the promise, but we seem to forget this almost immediately and regularly.
We like to follow God only so far as we understand God, or more, only so far as we understand how we can make something work. If I can use a couple illustrations. We are the kid on the bike (God) with training wheels, one training wheel is perhaps money and the other job security. Or we are the tight rope walker with his long balancing rod and as long as we have a firm grip on that rod of back up plans we are ok on the tight rope of God. We never only want to have God as the option. We like to have God and our back up plan. But, that’s not really having God at all. And if you are God’s child, He wont leave you there. I’m not talking about salvation, I’m talking about sanctification.
Abraham against hope in hope believed. We try to avoid situations like that at all costs and when we near them or see them approaching we panic and start making plans to avoid them. But we need them. We need to see that God is our only hope, our only provider, and God is gracious enough to teach us this. We like to kid ourselves and believe that we can trust God absolutely even with a healthy bank account and a prosperous secure job, but when those things start dwindling and disappearing we start seeing just how much we trusted in those things instead. It is easy to trust God when we have everything figured out, but then, are we really trusting God. We are much more wicked than we like to admit and our sin is much more dominating than we realize, because of our sin we will cling to everything material before we cling to God.
Jobs and money and things and security are not inherently bad, they are not bad at all, they are not the problem, and at times we may have those things in abundance, those things are not the problem. We are. We have the opposite problem of King Midas, everything he touched turned to gold, everything we touch turns to sin. We pervert the good and make idols out of blessings. We are wicked. God is gracious to empty our hands of what we cling to, it feels mean and wrong to us, we gripe and complain and doubt and wonder how God could do this to us, and we question His love. We are like little children playing with knives or putting plastic bags on our heads and then complaining when our parents take away our new found play thing.
God brings us to hopeless situations that we can hope only in Him, this is not mean but reality. The truth is that God is our only hope. God provides for us everyday, everything we need. We think our jobs provide but it is God that provides through our jobs. We place hope and faith in everything before God, this is idolatry at its roots. We trust what we see and understand before we trust God.
God likes impossible odds for His children. Look at the history of deliverance in the Bible. Look at Joshua and Jericho. Gideon and his 300 men. David and Goliath. Daniel and the lions. Jesus and the cross. He brought Jesus to a giant wooden instrument of death and nailed Him to it and left Him in the grave three days, and then rose Him from the dead. Look at man kind lost in sin with no hope, no ability to change, nothing to offer God, what does God do? He promises a Savior born of a virgin. He offers Himself. He offers a Savior nailed to a cross for your sin. He offers a Savior risen from the grave for your justification. He says, “you are without hope, hope in Jesus.” Do not hope in morality. Do not hope in change. Do not hope in religion. Hope in Jesus. And God is still teaching us this lesson today because He loves us.
We define love as being made much of, God defines love rightly as making much of Him in us. I do not want to make light of your burden or act as if difficulty is easy. It isn’t, it hurts. I want you to trust God against all odds. This is not a self determination to get on with life or a stoic indifference. It is simple submission and trust. As God’s child by faith in Jesus Christ you can know with certainty that God has brought you to this situation and kept you in this situation.
It is when you have been delivered against all odds that we see God most clearly, when we cannot contribute our deliverance to money or man or chance or self, then we know God has delivered us. I am reminded of Abraham not accepting any money for fear that it would lessen the glory of God in His life by making God (apparently) share his deliverance (Gen 14:23). This should be our attitude as well. That the world would look in at out lives and know that there is no explanation but God, but sadly, we will avoid that circumstance at all cost, not because we want to dishonor God, but because we want to make sure we honor ourselves first. God can have His great glory in delivering us as long as we share the honor and glory.
What we need to see is this. God has brought you to this exact situation and this exact trial that you can learn to trust Him. God has already delivered you when you had no hope nor were even aware that you were without hope. God has in Jesus shown you that you can trust Him when the odds seem impossible. There was a day when the only Savior and hope for the world hung on a cross and everything seemed to be without hope or reason. There were three days that the Savior and Hope of the world lay in the grave and everything seemed to be without hope or reason. But on the third day God revealed His power and glory by raising Christ, not only alive, but victorious. So it is with us as we trust Christ, we come to situations of hopelessness and despair but it is there that Jesus moves most mightily and powerfully. It is there in the darkness of despair and frustration that Jesus meets our greatest needs. Don’t lose hope but against hope in hope believe (Rom 4:18). Jesus loves you.