Your Red Sea Will Part

By Kathi Pelton

No matter where I turn I am hearing or finding another person who is walking through a journey of being set free from chains that have bound them. And, most often this new awareness has definitely caught them by surprise.

Not all of the chains that people wear look the same but nevertheless, Christ came to set us free— completely free— therefore chains of captivity are illegal. God is not tolerating anything that bringing chains, control or bondage to remain on his people and he is going to great lengths to make a way for our freedom.

I keep saying to myself, “It feels like the Church and God’s people are once again at a Red Sea moment where a made is being made for us to cross over from a land of captivity to a land of promise.”

Remember— that was a journey as well— but this journey will not take 40 years!

When I was a young believer I went through an extensive and intensive time of healing from deep pain. It was also a time of deliverance from the chains that bound me to a spirt of death. It was a journey that can be likened to being set free from a prison and unshackled from chains that bound my soul.

That healing journey was now decades ago and now (suddenly), after nearly thirty years of ministry and raising a family, I find myself in another healing journey. Its a very different one but I think that along the way (especially as church leaders and parents) I was often too busy caring for others to realize that I had picked up new chains of captivity along the way. So, God, in his vast kindness, got my attention and has put me upon another pathway to greater freedom.

I must admit that it has been quite unsettling and very unfamiliar (and uncomfortable) because a lot of the chains that God is revealing are not things that I would have identified as chains even six months ago. But I am having to allow myself to slow down and stop in order to allow my eyes to see and allow my mind to comprehend how certain things have affected my soul and my freedom in Christ— specifically my intimacy with him.

Again, I know that I am not alone in this process.

Yet, if you’re at all like me— there is an emence amount of pressure that you’re putting on yourself to carry on with all that has surrounded your life. Commitments, meetings, events, dates, appointments, etc. God is not putting pressure on you— but slowing down (and at times even stopping) feels like pressure. Why? Because performance and pressure is one of those chains that have kept us from freedom.

They aren’t bad things and often they are even necessary things— but when they become the bigger thing and you wake up one day to the realization that the demands that you’ve put on yourself are more real then your connection with God— it becomes your wake up call.

I am not blaming anyone for how I ended up here— quite honestly, I am not even blaming myself. Because you don’t know what you don’t know until you suddenly become aware of it. And now I am aware of it. So I find myself at my own personal Red Sea with an army of voices behind me in my head saying that I cannot leave where I’ve been and a Red Sea before me that says, “There’s no way forward.”

NEITHER OF THOSE VOICES ARE THE VOICE OF TRUTH THAT WILL LEAD US INTO FREEDOM!

There is no way forward in my own strength or in my own understanding but God will open the way before me and lead me onto a straight path where chains of captivity are left behind. And that is true for you too!

“Surrender your anxiety. Be still and realize that I am God. I am God above all the nations, and I am exalted throughout the whole earth. Here he stands! The Commander! The mighty Lord of Angel Armies is on our side! The God of Jacob fights for us! Pause in his presence” Psalms‬ ‭46‬:‭10‬-‭11‬ ‭TPT‬‬

Pause in his presence! He stands with you, he’s on your side and he fights for you.

God speaks of a rest that we must enter into— even he rested on the seventh day of creation. People must rest, land must rest— otherwise it will not continue to bear fruit.

““For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow…“

“Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed.” Exodus‬ ‭23‬:‭10‬-‭12‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Rest refreshes— it heals, it restores and it renourishes the land of our lives so that we can once again bear fruit and have health. Rest reconnects us to God.

I long to fulfill all that God has commissioned me to do. But prisoners cannot set captives free and blind men cannot lead the blind to sight. Often our driveness to accomplish the commision of Christ has led us away from taking his hand and into taking the hand of Pharaoh. I am not speaking of a man but a spirit that desires to lead you into slavery.

Here is what the Lord says,

“I, Yahweh, have commissioned you in righteousness to succeed. I will take your hand in love and watch over you. I will give you as a covenant for the people, a walking-light to the nations.

Your mission is to open blind eyes, to set prisoners free from dark dwellings, and to open prison doors to those who are held by darkness.

I am Yahweh; that is my name. I will not give my glory to another god nor my renown to idols.” Isaiah‬ ‭42‬:‭6‬-‭8‬ ‭

He is opening our eyes to see places of blindness, darkness and captivity. And he will heal us so that we can take his hand of love and under his watchful care, lead nations to the light.

We are seeing the Red Sea part before our eyes and journeying from captivity into freedom. But first we have had to stop at that sea in order to allow him to part it and make a way for what he has ahead for us. Yes, the pressure to turn back is great— or to jump into the sea and try to swim across— but watch what God will do as he does the impossible.

There is a crossing over corporately (for families, people groups and communities) and there is a crossing over for each of us individually. God is dealing with our captivity and healing our broken places. He is exposing, protecting, revealing, restoring, reforming and he will cause his church to succeed in all that he has commissioned us to do! But we will take his hand and walk in his light as healed sons and daughters that give him all of the glory and do not build up idols at Pharaoh’s demand.

“It was for this freedom that Christ set us free [completely liberating us]; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery [which you once removed].” Galatians 5:1