Daily Verse: Exodus 7:17

This is what the LORD says: By this you will know that I am the LORD: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood.
 

In the book of Exodus, God commands that Pharaoh allow the Israelites to venture into the desert for a time of worship. He uses Moses to communicate this message to Pharaoh, and time after time, Pharaoh rejects the words spoken by Moses. So God performs many acts, like the one above, to show Pharaoh that He is God…and that as God, he means business. Along with turning the massive Nile river into a floating gulley of blood, God also brought a plague of thousands of frogs, surrounded the ;and with millions of gnats, covered floors to ceilings solid with flies, decimated the livestock with illness, covered both man and animal with painful sores, rained down a huge hail storm on the land, plagued them with locusts, covered night and day with total darkness, and even plagued the firstborn children of the land. After each of these devastating actions by the Lord, Pharaoh still refused to fall into line…he still refused to acknowledge the Lord and remained steadfast in refusing to let the Israelites leave. I think that at times in our lives, God has to “ring our bell” to get our attention…to get us to turn our gaze away from worldly things and fix it solely on him and his plan for our lives. He has to get our attention so that we see him as Lord. He may not do something as devastating as turning our tap water into blood or filling our houses with creaking, buzzing, flying pests…but I do believe there are ways that acts to get our attention. Not because he wants to punish us (that’s already been taken care of by Christ) or get a good laugh from watching us suffer…but rather because he wants what is best for each of us. And when our lives are focused on his plan and his commands and we acknowledge him as our Lord, we are in the arena of what is considered “best” for our lives. I pray that it would not take multiple “kicks to the forehead“ by the Lord to get our attention. I pray that we would be listening to the Lord’s subtle voice and follow his lead, trusting that his will is better than our will…that his needs, wants, and desires far outweigh our own. And that no matter how hard the world attempts to distract us, we remain committed and fixated to acknowledging and serving the Lord alone. To God be the glory!