How Often Do We Look Back?

Looking back didn’t do Lot’s wife much good, did it?

Looking back to things that God has done in the past, past glories, the past successes when things seemed to be different.

The Children of Israel could look back to the many times when God had either brought them out of or overcome some impossible situation that they found themselves in. They had a faithful God even though at times they were not faithful themselves. So many times they turned their backs on God and went their own way, but God was always waiting for that moment when they would call on Him.

Those of us who have been Christians for a number of years, will at times look back and say “it was better then” or maybe “it was different then “ or “we remember when God was doing………. “ and so I could go on.

We cannot live in the past; eventually it gets stale and repetitive.

Isaiah 43:18-19 (NASB):

‘“Do not call to mind the former things,
or ponder things of the past.
“Behold, I will do something new,
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.’

This is God speaking!

Sorry to be boring and repetitive. This Is God speaking, sometimes we read the word of God as if it applies to other people in another time, for their situation, for their circumstances. But God wants to speak to us now!

“Behold I will do something new.”

Something new, something different, by definition something we have not experienced or seen before, it will be a new thing. It may be outside our experience, but it is does not mean that it is not God. History is full of examples where groups of people missed what God wanted to do because they were so sure that the revelation they had was it; there could be no more, or there could not be a “new thing.”

The verse goes on to say “now it will spring forth“ there is an immanency about it, it was going to come soon. God was going to do something new with them, it was going to be outside their box, God had not done this before.

With any new move of God there is always an opportunity that it will be missed because people will not be expecting it, they may even resist it because they have not seen God work like this before. We need to keep our hearts and minds open to hearing from God.

The next thing God says to them and us is “will you not be aware of it.”

God is saying, come on get yourself ready, start to expect it. “Expect the Unexpected.” God wants us to be expectant, to be ready, and to be prepared. We are not to be caught out by God doing something new. He is telling us that it is going to happen.

It’s like looking at the weather forecast in the morning and being told it is going to pour down and then when it does happen saying I wish I had brought my umbrella with me. You knew it was going to happen but you were not prepared for it. Whose fault is it, the weather presenters or yours?

God is saying be ready!

What God said He was going to do was unexpected. He was going to “make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.”

Who makes a roadway in the wilderness, and rivers in the dessert? It was totally unexpected, but then that is God. Think about it.

A road in the middle of a sea
Manna from heaven
Water from a Rock
Wine from water

Do I need to go on; I bet the people of the day were not expecting that!

“Behold I do something new”

We have been talking about it and we are living in the expectancy of it. How God will do it may well be outside our field of reference, but God will never be put in a box.

I don’t want us to miss out on what God wants to do, or quench the move of God, but to be expectant that God is going to do a new thing, and yes it will be different why, because it would not be new if it was the same as before!

I came across this quote to finish with…

‘When God begins to do a NEW THING in a NEW WAY the greatest opposition comes from the OLD THING with its OLD WAYS!’ (Lisa Bevere)

Don’t be an old thing with it’s old ways! Be ready for the New!