God is Really Real

(The above photo summarizes perfectly the problem among many Christians in the context of the reality of God, which we will be discussing in length today)

Exodus 14:

 ¹ Then the LORD said to Moses, ² "Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. They are to encamp by the sea, directly opposite Baal Zephon. ³Pharaoh will think, 'The Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert.' ⁴ And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD." So the Israelites did this.
 ⁵ When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, "What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!" ⁶ So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him. ⁷ He took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them. ⁸ The LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, so that he pursued the Israelites, who were marching out boldly. ⁹ The Egyptians—all Pharaoh's horses and chariots, horsemen and troops—pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near Pi Hahiroth, opposite Baal Zephon.
 ¹⁰ As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD. ¹¹ They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"
 ¹³ Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. ¹⁴ The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still."
 ¹⁵ Then the LORD said to Moses, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. ¹⁶Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. ¹⁷ I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. ¹⁸ The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen."
 ¹⁹ 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 made the wheels of their chariots come off 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."
 ²⁶ Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen." ²⁷ Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the LORD swept them into the sea. ²⁸ The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.
 ²⁹ But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. ³⁰ That day the LORD saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. ³¹And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.


One of the greatest miracles God performed in the Old Testament was the parting of the Red Sea, but so often we forget that the God that performed this powerful miracle for Moses and the Israelites is the same God that we serve today. We hesitate to discover God, and in result we neglect the opportunity to experience His power, which causes us to forfeit the real reality of who He is for an illusion we have pieced together over time that sits more comfortably with our flesh. Reading about how God was experienced in Exodus 14, almost contradicts the way we experience God today. There was no passivity in the way people interacted with God, rather it was intensely active, and since God never changes, He is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow, then why do we not experience Him like the Israelites did in Exodus 14? As I read this scripture with the mindset that this really took place, I am completely blown away: 1). Because God literally parted the sea!!!! and 2). Because of the provision God made for and through His people! And it is in these two areas that we find our answer.
1.) Because God literally parted the sea!!!
In this day and age we put God in a box. We limit how far the power of God can go by means of excluding what is deemed by this world as ridiculous as impossible for God too. We don't expect God to literally part the sea for us anytime soon; none of us go to a mountain and ask God to literally move it. But why not? Is God not God? This story in Exodus was no passage of poetry filled with metaphors- God literally performed this miracle! Recently, God has been teaching me the reality of Himself in which began after I ran into a good friend at Target the other day. She explained to me the temperature of her spiritual life lately and how she has been deeply searching for more. I asked her what she meant and she explained she had been digging for the depth she was looking for at this new church that was practicing tapping into the power of the Holy Spirit. She warned me prior to explaining to me how many Christians react negatively when hearing about it because it sounds like magic, but reassured me it was not. She explained she wanted to really experience God's power by tapping into the Holy Spirit within her, like that of going up to a mountain and asking God to literally move it, and then expecting it to literally move. As the words left her mouth, it was like the Holy Spirit within me nodding yes, and I slowly became consumed with the realization that this God I am serving is real. As I left Target, it was like something came over me, like the scales had been taken off my perception of reality, and as I looked at the sky and the leaves on the trees as the wind ruffled them, it hit me like a flood rushing in, that this God is real, that He is massive, undeniable, and right before me right now. I felt like for the first time I was being introduced to the real God, the same one that parted the sea in the Bible, who raised Jesus from the dead, who rescued Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendago from the fire, who could move mountains, and destroy nations- the One true and Holy God, and just writing about Him write now makes my knees weak and my Spirit tremble because ladies, He is so huge! He is majesty! He is Holy! He is God! But so many of us have missed it! Please do not miss this! To have never perceived the reality of God is a tragedy that sits like a haze upon so many of us, and it is this reality: that so many of us settle for this superficial god we have idealized and compartmentalized within our minds that we live according to- the one who is okay with us not having our quiet times and does not provoke our deepest parts to be in awe of him, the one who is fine with us not sharing the Gospel, and the one who is understanding when we just feel like doing it our way- is a sad but real reality worth taking the time to ball your eyes out over because that god in your head and the God in that sky outside your window are not the same! I truly believe that the majority of people today who profess to follow Christ do not even know God at all, and I do not say this to you in condemnation, but in the context of revelation- that this God that is described in the Bible cannot be this watered down, fix your life in 4 easy steps, hippie, neutral god that has diluted many Christians today. It is no wonder our expectations of Him have grown dim and real faith has become almost absent, for our perception of Him is distorted and does not provoke us to do anything more than check Christian on our facebook's religious views and attend church. Ladies, God is so much more!   The God that is described in the Bible, who literally parted the red sea, is the same One outside your window right now, and even more amazing- the same One inside you right now! Do you not realize the intensity of who and what we are dealing with right here?! I said, the same God who created the heavens and the earth, who LITERALLY parted the sea, who is the ALPHA and the OMEGA, who is with His own power sustaining your very life right now while holding all things together with no effort whatsoever, and who is un-comprehensively massive IS IN YOU, BEFORE YOU, AROUND YOU, AND COMPLETELY AND FULLY REAL!!!!! This reality is worth taking the time to pause reading this and step outside to see the sky all spread out and encompassing just to get an idea and a sense of this reality of God that you are existing within right now. And I realize that my words can do no such truth justice, but it is my hope that God shatters the ideals you have been spoon fed your whole life and provokes you to go outside, do whatever it takes to drink this reality in, and let the weight of its' intensity push you to your knees and ultimately to your face, while humiliating every inch of your pre-conceived notion of what you thought He was, for when you decide to be willing to take in the reality of His existence, His Holiness and grandness will change everything. All of this proceeded from this one conversation at Target where God spoke to me through a friend and provoked me to a revolutionary realization: I am allowed to ask God to literally move a mountain, and that realization helped me to see that I am allowed to ask such because He has the power to literally do it, because He is real. It is the illusion of God we have chosen to settle for that we live for in our minds, like some type of virtual reality we live out everyday that doesn't really feel like it is really real, that limits our faith because we let it limit our perception of God. Therefore, in result we never really learn who the real God is and what the real God can do because we're constantly only permitting that which is condensible into our "box" to frame the reality we see Him in, the reality that we can handle, the reality that is safe. But ladies, this is the problem. The reality of God is not safe, rather it requires you to be dangerously vulnerable; it is not convenient to your day, in fact it will cause you to stop dead in your tracks, to stop and be still; it will provoke you to be in awe, and all of it will take a chunk of your time- time that requires your hands to cease working, and your feet to stop going. Why? Because He is real. And if it is a burden to partake in this daily, then that is an indication that you have yet to realize Him, for it is impossible to realize Him and not be addicted to realizing Him. It comes down to this question: Why are we scared to discover God?  We are just like the Israelites when God put everything in place to reveal Himself in Exodus. We run to doubt, and allow our reason to override our faith, but look what God said: 
"As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!" Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still." Then the LORD said to Moses, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground."  God is basically saying to them: Why are you freaking out? Get going. There is the water, go split it. Which is the same thing He is speaking to us: Why don't you just go split the water already? Ladies, God was not speaking metaphorically to Moses then, thus we are not to expect anything less of God now. One might say that this miracle was limited to the context of the situation Moses and the Israelites were in, but if God's power is limited only to crisis, then God would not really be God because He is not limited, plus if you read the scripture carefully, you would see that God's purpose in parting the sea was not just to make a way for the Israelites to escape the Egyptians at a last minute resort- God led them to the sea on purpose- it was to exhibit God's power to His people and the Egyptians so that they would know He was God. God performed this miracle for the soul purpose of His glory so it would serve as a demonstration that proved He was truly God, which in turn, increased His people's faith! The same intensions are ours- to seek to discover God in faith because we know He is real and will demonstrate Himself in a real way to those who look for Him in a real way. It will be a risk, but realize that risk is about defeating fear, and defeating fear is about increasing faith. 
2). Because of the provision God made for and through His people. 

"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, 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. 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, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh's horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. 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. He made the wheels of their chariots come off 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." 

Not only did God part the sea for the Israelites, but He sent the angel of God to go before them and initially lead them to the sea, and then as they were walking through, it took position behind them to cover their backs as they walked between the two walls of the sea. Notice, the same occurs with us- that when we have the faith to literally experience God's power, He will make sure our backs are covered and will keep the walls of the literal journey separated by the power of His provision so that we can continue through to the other side safely. Can you imagine how scary it would be to walk through the red sea? How hesitant you would be for fear that the colossal water walls would collapse on you, killing you on impact? The same intensity will be familiar when choosing to realize the reality that God exists and  having the faith to seek to discover the reality we are permitted and privileged to discover. Moses was willing and ready to raise his staff, knowing God would part the sea. And even despite all the doubts and persecution from the crowd of people before him, Moses remained without doubt that God would deliver them. He knew God was real, and we know this because he raised his staff and struck the water. He was faithful and willing to see God do the impossible, and in result God worked through Him to bring about His provision. May we also be literally willing and ready, whatever that real context may look like in our lives, to raise our staffs and strike the water. May we destroy the "box" we have compartmentalized God in and stand still in faith so that we may discover that God is real when He parts the sea right before us, for when we do, we will obtain a faith that can not be shaken, a faith that can not be compartmentalized, a faith that is real. Ladies, nothing else is more worth your time or energy. 

"And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant."- Exodus 14:31

May we realize the reality of God. Ladies, this is both my challenge and devotional to you this week. Keep up your running routines, as well as the witnessing, and continue prayer walking every night after you run. Don't be scared to discover God. If there is any risk worth taking in your life, I promise this is it! Ask God for a miracle- challenge Him, not because you need to see Him to believe in Him, but because you believe in Him, you have faith that He will show Himself to you in a real and tangible way right before your eyes because He is that real. Go outside, do it right now. He is big, He is powerful, and greatest of all, He is real. Go find out for yourselves... God is really real.