Delivered

If you are reading this today then you have made it into the year 2012 and may I say welcome and Happy New Year. You and I have a new start, there’s nothing we can do about the mistakes of 2011 they are gone even though the fruit may still exist. What will you do in this New Year? If you did what you did in 2011 then don’t expect different results for they will be the same. No matter where you find yourself today I want to encourage you with the Word of our Lord and what He has already told us. The difficulties we find ourselves in sometimes are that we get our eyes on ourselves and our problems and not on the Lord and His Power. There were a group of people in the Old Testament that found themselves in the poor oh me category all because God answered their prayer. We find God bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt as an answer to their prayers, but also along with answering their prayers He also had a plan that He set before them.

Exodus 13:17  And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:

Exodus 13:18  But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.

Out of bondage and free at last God has heard and answered their prayers. All is good, all is well and no more worries. That is what we would all like to think as we start this New Year off but may I remind you that there will be some problems ahead of each of us. How will we handle them? Will we try to handle them ourselves or will we pray and ask God to handle them? When God answers will we take Him at His word or will we complain? I want us to see what happened to this group of people that God delivered from Egypt and see if we find ourselves doing some of the same things. We may learn from their mistakes for as we see in:

1Corinthain 10:6  Now these things were our examples. Webster tells us that an “example” is A pattern; a copy; a mode; that which is proposed to be imitated. Here are some examples that we are not to imitate, copy or pattern. We should not  live by the examples that they set for they were plain; I’ll show you tomorrow why.