[Exodus Experience Series] Exodus Experience DevotionsSample

Step by Step

As a leader, this next lesson may be the hardest to actually implement, because leaders want to solve problems and issues fully and they want to do it right now! However, with the foundation of what we have learned so far underneath us, the direction God gives is to take the next clear step forward. Not multiple steps or leaps, but the next clear step. God says to Moses, “Tell the children of Israel to go forward.”

Remember several things: first, God is the One who is speaking here, and He has made a promise to Israel to never leave them nor forsake them. The prophet Isaiah reminds us of this when God tells the nation that He will guide them, lead them, make their paths straight, and not forsake them. God’s promise to us, even in an Exodus Experience, is that He will not leave us.

Knowing that He is with them, He then tells them to take the next step—to go forward. In telling them this, He was commanding them to break camp, round up the animals, pack up their belongings, and prepare to leave. This was a task of considerable time, more than likely a full day and night. God’s plan for the nation was to go forward following Him. How many times do we jump ahead of God by leaps and bounds when He is asking us to simply take the next clear step? Even the Lord’s Prayer gives us this direction when we pray for our daily bread. What we are literally asking God for is our bread, day by day. God did this with manna in the wilderness, with Abraham in the command to go, and with Jesus in His daily prayers to be doing what the Father instructed Him to do.

God’s promise to be with us, and His plan to take the next clear step, are given to His people—those intent on following Him in dependent trust. Moses, Abraham, David, Ruth, Mordecai, Nehemiah, Paul, and Peter all came to a point where, by faith, they took the next clear step as God showed it to them. Sir William Osler, founder of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said it best when he stated, “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” God’s people in their Exodus Experiences are to prayerfully take the next clear step.