Category: Testimony

Originally posted on August 20, 2013

God gives us a paradigm for dealing with addiction and enslavement to unhealthy habits and relationships in the form of the primary story of His chosen people, those who choose to believe He exists and to live for Him, following His commandments and His Word through All His Prophets.

The Exodus story, followed by the Sinai Covenant relates the great tale of how the first Hebrews were enslaved 400 years by the Egyptians.  It wasn’t just any enslavement, it was a difficult and harsh reality with which they had to contend.  Baking the bricks, and building all the great structures for Pharaoh in the hot desert sun nearly every day of the week took its toll.  Yet they were helpless to see a way out for themselves.

Then Moses came along.  An orphaned Hebrew boy who was raised in Pharaoh’s court, Moses came to be acquainted with His people’s plight, and God spoke to him, giving him a special mission to deliver his own people out of captivity, and into an unlikely and miraculous freedom.  They followed the Word of God by following Moses’ leadership, even though there was no rational reason for ever thinking they would be able to come out of the yoke of their centuries-long bondage.

After many amazing signs and wonders, they believed God really was their sovereign LORD and Master, and out of Egypt they went.  As they left, Warrior God smited final attempts made by their captors to seize them again, and afterwards the Chosen Ones fell down on their knees and made music and danced and praised His Holy Name!  The Songs of Moses and Miriam are recorded forever in history for all to regard:

Song of Moses

“I will sing to the LORD,

For He has triumphed

gloriously!

The horse and its rider

He has thrown into the sea!

The LORD is my strength and 

song,

And He has become my salvation;

He is my God, and I will

praise Him;

My father’s God, and I will

exalt Him.

The LORD is a man of war;

The LORD is His name.

Pharaoh’s chariots and his 

army He has cast into the sea;

His chosen captains also 

are drowned in the Red Sea.

The depths have covered them;

They sank to the bottom like a 

stone….”~Exodus 15 1-5

God then made a covenant with them on Mount Sinai, promising them, if they obeyed his commandments, He would lead them on into the Promise Land “flowing with milk and honey,” as He had also promised their forebears, since Abraham.  However, the Promise Land was currently being inhabited by The Canaanites, who worshiped idols and practiced pagan rituals, like child sacrifice; and it was necessary for the Hebrews to camp in the wilderness until such time as they could enter it.

It turns out they had to wander in the wilderness 40 years.  That is a long time.  This time in the wilderness meant they were free, but they were fraught with other perils, like starvation and lack of water and shelter, and battles with rogue enemies.  They were basically nomads, traveling around on foot, a motley caravan that moved in the formation of a cross with the central group consisting of the priests, the Levites, who carried the most holy of their treasures, The Ark of the Covenant of God, which housed the Ten Commandments which had been given to Moses by God on the mountain.

God’s Chosen People grumbled much on this journey, as it is told in the bible.  Historians have marveled at the honesty of this recount because usually a people do not like to put to paper any of the negative aspects of their development, but prefer to focus on the positive aspects, flowing from a natural bias.  They often complained to Moses that they wanted to go back to Egypt, that life in Egypt was hard, yes, but at least they had seasoned food!  Undoubtedly they had some amnesia about how hard life had been there and how merciless Pharaoh had treated them.  But in the wilderness, as the years went by, they sometimes only remembered how difficult today was, as yesterday became numbed by time and growing older.  At one point, they even lapsed into idol worship, God’s worst crime for man, because Moses had disappeared for longer than they expected him to, and, without their holy leader, they became lost again.

Finally, even though it is debatable how well they kept loyal to the commandments and statutes overall, God delivered on His promise and they came into their long sought after Promise Land.  Did that end all their problems?  No, they then had foreign battles to contend with along with civil feuds.  However, they were finally their own people with their own place to call home.

It occurred to me that God is giving us a message in this epic story.  He is telling us that He understands we are in captivity.  Captivity is a human phenomenon, one that most of us understand, whether we have been enslaved by taskmasters at some point in history, or whether we have made our own shackles out of addiction or unhealthy habits.  Most of us have our own private Egypt with which to contend.  God wants us to know that He understands:

And the LORD said:  ”I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows…”~Exodus 3:7

And if we will only listen to His Word and Holy Spirit–called ‘angels’ in the old testament–(His insight may occur at church, or through a friend, or come as a sign to us personally), He will, with many signs and wonders which we could never conceive nor accomplish on our own, show us the way out.  It may be likely in such a way that no one else can see or hear or understand, but what is important is that each of us understands.

But once we come out of captivity, we still are not delivered yet.  This is the part I think that we as humans do not fully understand.  We expect it to get easier once we do the hard work of breaking that yoke of bondage.  And it seems like it should get easier!  But it just really gets harder in a different way.  Usually humans do not do very well with change, so it can feel even harder because at least we knew what to expect in our captivity!  Like the ancient Hebrews, we can easily slip back into our Egypt, our familiar patterns and vices that have come to not only be a part of us, but have likely been a part of our families for many generations.

The good news is that God is telling us it will only last a fraction of what our captivity lasted.  If we choose to break our bond of slavery sooner, we will heal sooner.  The longer we let our captivity take us over, the longer we will be wandering in the wilderness before we can finally be delivered into our homeland, where we can fully be ourselves.

God is telling us it will get harder, in a different way.  We will want to return to our captivity.  We will not feel at home.  We will fight battles and go hungry and thirsty and our desires will not be met very well.  But He guarantees to us repetitively in His Word, and He will show us with His Spirit, that we will someday finally be free, and we will enter the Promise Land, if we but honor Him and trust Him and obey Him and all his commandments.

I know this to be true.

God’s Peace and Love,

~Mary