A New Year (part III)

By Odon Bulamba (02.01.04)

Lets read in Exodus 14:19-25,

Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, 20 coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long.

21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, 22 and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

23 The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. 24 During the last watch of the night the LORD looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. 25 He jammed[a] the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The LORD is fighting for them against Egypt.”



So this is the time of fight now. This is the time that Pharaoh and his army are attacking the people of Israel saying that the way that they are walking, the way that they don’t have horses or chariots, we are able to catch them, this is our right time to kill them. And the Lord our God because He is a Lord who takes care of His people, He is the Lord who watches His people, He opened His eyes and looked on His children and saw that Pharaoh was following them. God knows that if He gives Pharaoh the chance to be next to His people, he will kill them so He decided to put Pharaoh in confusion.

The first thing that God did was the block of smoke and then God came through that smoke and He tried to disorganise Pharaoh’s army. Imagine we have an army which is really well organised, an army which is prepared to go and fight and just on their way, there is a disorder among them. Everything was ok but after a few seconds nothing works, the chariot that Pharaoh used was also blocked by God, God prevented them from moving anymore.

Pharaoh can represent our temptation, Pharaoh can represent satan, Pharaoh can represent our adversary or our enemy. He comes behind us every time, He is following us, he wants to hit us, he wants to kill us and by our own force we can’t overcome, we can’t win but we have to remember that God sees, God is watching, God is looking on us, God is there for us, God has never slept, He watches His people. So that is the first thing that you have to remember for this year, God is watching over you, although I am going through difficulties, although satan is fighting my faith, although I’m losing my position, although I am going through a hard situation, God’s eyes are watching over me and I know that if God is watching over me nothing can touch me. My heart will never be broken because God’s eyes are watching over me.

Secondly you have to know that God is able to disorganise your enemies, if my enemy is anger, God is able to disorganise anger in me. If my enemy is stealing, God is able to disorganise that character in me. If my weakness is fighting other people or abusing others, God is able to disorganise that army of satan in me and whenever it will be disorganised, it will not follow me anymore.

Sometimes we can feel pressure of life on us and sometimes we can feel our lives are becoming heavy, we don’t know what to do, we are blocked somewhere but remember that God knows our situation and if you forget about God and you think that first I have to contact X or Y person, God will not be happy with that.

The people of Israel crossed the sea and when they reached the other side, God didn’t leave that sea like that but said, you will never see that Pharaoh and his army again. God said that through Moses. Moses said, you saw that Pharaoh, forget about him because today is the last day that you will see him. Your eyes will never see Pharaoh anymore, your ears will never hear about him anymore, that’s all. So your problems, your situations, whatever you had known this year, you must know that it has gone. You will never see it anymore, it will disappear. If you have any problem with you or in your life, commit it between God’s hands and tell God, ‘God I don’t want to see it anymore, the way that you made Pharaoh disappear I want you to make this problem disappear for ever. The way that you made the army of Pharaoh disappear I want this problem to disappear forever and in all of that, let me become a victorious person. I need to be the victorious man’. And God will do that.

So when these people reached the point now of crossing, Pharaoh saw, ‘oh we are in danger now, this is our time to run away because the Lord of Israel, the God of this people intervenes, we have to run away’. Have you ever thought in your life, that your problems can run away from you? I think not, most of the time we try to run away from our problems. Whenever I have got a problem I have to find a solution right away and then run away saying that I don’t want this problem because…...

But there is something new here, Pharaoh decided to run away. The same way our problems can also run away from us. God is able to make our problems flee. And wherever they will flee they will not find a destination, they will be destroyed. So what do we need so that problems can flee from us? We need only to ask God for His intervention, that is all, we have to tell Him, ‘God intervene now, I want my problems to flee, I want my problems to go away from me, I’m tired, I’m not able to fight against them, I’m not able to resist, make them flee.’ God will look at your problem and your problem will start to shake and then your problems will run away.

So if problems will run away from you, how can you say that you don’t have peace or joy or that you are not strong or that you don’t practise justice and other fruit of the Holy Spirit? I think that the only thing that makes us sin is our problems. If I don’t have something to eat I will start to think, o God what shall I eat today. Problems will raise up, if I don’t have money I will start to think, if my son or daughter will start to do something wrong I will start to think, if my parents or whoever will do something wrong against me, I will start to think, whenever there will be a mistake at work or wherever I am I will start to think, this is a new problem. If you have a car accident, it’s a problem, whatever you do is a problem but we are called to live in peace and we are called to be the light of this world. How will we become the light if we are fleeing our problems? So we have to ask God to make our problems flee from us.

I remember what Jesus used to do; when Jesus was walking, evil spirits were running away. Whenever evil spirits would see Jesus, they will start to cry, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Son of God forgive us, give us the chance to live somewhere else,’ they were running, they were really fearing Jesus. Jesus told us that we would do more than Him. Whoever will follow me will do greater things than me. You will be given miracles, you be given whatever you want but make sure that you have to do more than me.

For the evil spirits to runaway from us, for all our hard situations to runaway from us, we need only one thing and that is to knock on God’s door and say, ‘God here I am, I know that you are the same God yesterday, today and forever, the same God who led the people of Israel, the same God who lead Elijah so here I am before you, lead me to. I want my problems to flee from me, I want to be the victory of my family and my life, I want to be the light in my life and in my family, I want to become the force or the strength of my family, of my church, of my friends. So lead me’. You will see what God will do for you but if you keep quiet, God will not answer.

The Bible says that whoever will knock, the door will be opened for him and if you do not knock, no one will open the door, no one will know that you are in front of the door, so you have to knock first. Knocking will not take you 10 seconds, to knock on a door is only a matter of one second. Even a child like Kennedy can knock on the door. Knocking doesn’t really require power as people think, ‘o to get this from God I will need really power and I’ll need really enough time for this’, no, just tell God I need this. With your faith it will be done.

So this new year that we are starting, I know that it will be a year of victory but we have to be ready for that victory. We don’t have to complain like the people of Israel, whenever they faced a problem, whenever they faced a hard situation they started to complain against Moses. Let’s put complaining aside, lets put our cries aside, lets put our hard situation aside and let us look upon God. God will do something, God will help us, God will lead us. If you had some problems with some people last year, or in the past this is the time to forget because that block of smoke is now between us and last year’s problems. Don’t look back on those problems forget about them.