Today’s Reflection: Deut. 17:16 But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way.
In today’s selected text, we walk into a set of instructions that God has for Israel’s future king. Among other things, he is not to look to Egypt for the purpose of multiplying horses. To do so would be to cause God’s people to return to the place that He delivered them from. This was forbidden. God brought them out so that they could stay out! But isn’t it true that often, when we leave a dark place in our lives, it is human nature for us to be attached to some things, no matter how dark that place of bondage is? It seems as if the devil always wants us to remember the things we think we might need, or might not want to give up, to either keep us bound or to pull us back into bondage after we have been delivered. However, the truth is, for whatever we have lost in our pursuit of following God, we have gained all the more with our Heavenly Father. What God wants us to learn is, just as He didn’t want Israel to start trusting in the provisions of Egypt for their survival and success, so He doesn’t want us to trust in anything linked to our past that would prohibit us from letting go and moving forward in faith. God wants to do a new thing; a peculiar thing; a unique thing with us, and this requires faith on our part in order to cooperate with God’s plan. It would be so tempting to try to draw from “Egypt’s” way of life as a guideline for our success, since that’s all we had known up to meeting Christ. However, God has His own NEW plan for us, and we are simply to follow Him, and not fall into the trap of going back to our past to make a withdrawal for our future. Learn this today; the last and only withdrawal God was interested in taking from your past was YOU. You ARE the withdrawal. There is nothing else back there for you; if there were, God would have taken it with you when He pulled you out. But, because there is not, if you were to try to go back to make a withdrawal, yesterday’s ATM machine would return a slip reading “Insufficient Funds”. I’m telling you; yesterday has nothing else to offer you. Look to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith! Today will start a brand new day for us, when we decide that instead of spending our time looking back, we choose rather to look forward, anticipating that whatever comes our way, God will make a way to overcome every obstacle and achieve every objective He has for us!
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Floodgates of Heaven, Volume 2, Entry 71 of 365
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copyright © by Gary D. Caudill
