He Always Has Made a Way
Last week we looked at a bunch of “I Will” statements to start the year, but this week let's think about how “God will” in 2023.
And in particular I want to look at a passage in Isaiah 43 where we see God making a way. As I look back on the last year of my life I can say for sure that God is a God who makes a way where there seems to be no way.
God Makes a Way
Maybe you've heard that song by Don Moen - “God will make a way where there seems to be no way”. That's certainly true for me. I think many of you know that my own to the ministry was a little bit bumpy. It's had its twists and turns and after all of that I've ended up at a church two minutes from the home I grew up in. It really didn't seem like that would happen! In my own estimation I thought something very different was in store for my ministry - but God makes a way with it doesn't seem to be a way.
You know, that's been true throughout the ages or throughout history. God has been making a way for His people. God's people often find themselves in difficult situations, and in the midst of these God promised that he would make a way for them to be delivered, and then he did it time and time again, and He's still doing it today.
Trust in Deliverance
In fact a few hundred years before Jesus came, and a few hundred years after Moses led the Israelite people out of Egypt, God's people the Israelites had been captured by the Babylonians. They were being oppressed. They were essentially living the slaves again and one of their prophets Isaiah hears these words from God and writes them down Isaiah 43 from verse 16. “This is what the LORD says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
Those are words that must have given the people great hope. God is saying “I made a way in the past and I will make a way now!”
And I wonder if we can hold on to that this year, because if we look back we can see how God has made a way for us throughout our lives can't we?
Let's trust that He's making a way today planning to deliver us just as He always does.
