Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 76. God Goes Before Me in Silence (speaking the language of His sovereignty)

Hello human.

During my Witness99Journey I took on a Bible read-through, something I have been wanting to do for a couple of years—from the perspective of reading about God’s story. Not as a student, or scholar, or spiritual leader, but as a human, a woman on the journey.

I wanted to be the woman who sees into the future of when Jesus returns again from the perspective of having made the journey through God’s story with His people.

I wanted to feel the power of being deeply immersed in God’s Story.

I started the Old Testament on Friday, December 15, in Genesis and completed Revelation on Friday, February 16. I had a timeline and some maps. I was focused on taking 100% responsibility for it, on my own. Why? Because ultimately, we are each responsible for wrapping our free will around His story.

God’s story has an epic main character of eternal proportion and a plot with a blockbuster ending we must wait for. God’s story has the WHY of everything. His Son. The reason for His story.

In episode 75 I shared the first of three insights I am sharing with you.  

In review if you are jumpin’ on just today:

Insight No. 1:  The Covenant comes from the Creator.

Jesus Christ is the mediator of the New Covenant, and His death on the cross is the basis of the promise. His blood is the seal. God first announced and defined the new covenant in the Old Testament through His prophet, Jeremiah.

Hebrews 8:7-12

10 This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel

    after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my laws in their minds

    and write them on their hearts.

I will be their God,

    and they will be my people.

The Covenant Maker Himself came from heaven to earth to shed His “blood of the everlasting covenant” to make this possible for everyone. Whatever relationship I have with God, begins with Him.

What a powerful way to stay in His presence. To walk in His covenant means to be willing and obedient to His words. And God gave His most precious gift, His beloved Son. So, I seek to give everything that is precious to me back to God, for Him to protect, nurture, grow, and prosper. Sealed in the blood of His Son.

In 432 BC, Nehemiah led the efforts to restore the wall surrounding the second temple. That’s where God’s story leaves us for four centuries without one known prophetic word. For 400 years God appeared silent to His chosen nation.

During that time Palestine was ruled by the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Maccabeans and the Romans. Yet God was preparing for the cornerstone of our eternal redemption with an earthly embrace.

This brings me to insight # 2 for today: God goes before me in silence.

Throughout the Old Testament God directed the hearts of the opposition to the nation of Israel, giving the Israelites victory, and also enslavement. He did so with full knowledge of the Promised Land of Canaan that He would give them.

Through 42 generations—beginning with His covenant to Abraham—He brought His only Begotten Son to redeem His chosen nation from 2,000 years of worship and disobedience. For 400 years He appeared silent, but He was not. Two of several amazing ways He went before His nation, and His beloved Son. 

First, Alexander the Great conquered the known world.  He was tutored in Greek philosophy and language as a boy by the philosopher, Aristotle. He brought a common universal language to everyone, the Greek language. Even in Egypt, where Jesus spent part of his childhood, Greek had become the official language of the land. In the Gospel records Jesus can be seen quoting from both the Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew Old Testament.

And three centuries before Christ, Rome built The Appian Way, a Roman road used as a main route for military supplies for its conquest of southern Italy in 312 BC and for improvements in communication. 29 major highways from Rome, 370 great roads from the vast empire, 250,000 miles of roadway including over 80,000 miles of paved roads.

Through this road system, the apostles and other disciples of Jesus spread the Gospel message with a universal language throughout most of the known world in less than 70 years.

This is such a graphic visual of how God works beyond our silence. Imagine the language He is building in our souls to reach out to others. Imagine the roads he is building in your life? My life?

God’s story is about how He goes before His chosen people. We are given 300+ stories in the lives of those who came in and out of His journey, all those generations, with a God who sees all, hears all, speaks all in the language of His sovereignty.

No one goes before God.

There’s a whole lot of warrior-grade mightiness to that.

I am going to bookend some examples of how God is going before me right now with a few scriptural references, The reason?  You, human. Because if you honor God’s presence in your every moment, with every step, you will be motivated by the length of His stride.

When God Goes Before

So, for starters, think about the words of our prophet Isaiah about how God would use Cyrus, the King of Persia to release God’s people from captivity in Babylon to return to Jerusalem to build the second temple. A prophecy that was one hundred years before it happened.

Isaiah 45: 1-3

45 “This is what the Lord says to his anointed,

    to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of

to subdue nations before him

    and to strip kings of their armor,

to open doors before him

    so that gates will not be shut:

2 I will go before you

    and will level the mountains[a];

I will break down gates of bronze

    and cut through bars of iron.

3 I will give you hidden treasures,

    riches stored in secret places,

so that you may know that I am the Lord,

    the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

God goes before.

Our Covenant God Summons Us By Name

We are summoned into the present by a Covenant God that is waiting for us.

Isaiah 45 from the mouth of the prophet Isaiah. He wasn’t the first prophet. So did Moses.

Deuteronomy 9:3

3 But be assured today that the Lord your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

Then Moses says…

Deuteronomy 31:8

The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

Moses wasn’t the first, and Isaiah wasn’t the last. So did King David.

Psalm 139:5

5 You hem me in behind and before,

    and you lay your hand upon me.

The Length of My God’s Stride

God is going before me in so many ways. Here are ways He fills my life for what is to come.

• conversations with my spouse that bring our walks with Him closer together
• A new Spiritual Warfare series I am reading with my Connect Group – divinely timed
• Intentional, timely connection to two people I share the Holy Spirit’s presence deeply with
• A Bible Project classroom series in Ephesians, shared with a dear longtime friend – mind-blowing
• my Bible journey revelations that show up every day in new God-breathed ways
• 76 witnesses to you, human… what a blessing and comfort you are
• Watching my brook trickle with “enoughness”
• preparation of my heart for change with comfort insights
• moments, conversations with closure on what is ok to leave behind

God is going before me in so many ways.

Sometimes it feels lonely. Like I am lagging behind. King David felt deeply the taunting of our human nature when we feel emotionally, mentally, psychologically left alone to fight our battles. When God seems silent.

Psalm 22:2

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

    Why are you so far from saving me,

    so far from my cries of anguish?

2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,

    by night, but I find no rest.

So many examples, like when God told Elijah to drink from the isolated brook of Cherith and let the ravens bring him food. Huh? Yes, eat the remnants mouthed by scavenger birds. And drink daily while watching a brook in the middle of nowhere run dry. Yup. For three years.

God let Elijah rest in the drying up of that brook before He spoke again. God nudges our obedience through physical things we can understand. While He prepares, protects, and profits our way forward.

Always for the greater spiritual good.

Jesus Goes Before and Beyond

An amazing example from the life of Jesus was when He healed a man on the Sabbath. He defended the healed man who was being targeted for breaking the law by the disgruntled Jewish leaders of the day:

John 15:17

My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.

The new covenant we have with God through His Son, lives in every moment.

I love that God’s nature is timeless. That His presence doesn’t require a special day or a particular moment to do what He plans to do. He is always, constantly, going before me. Clearing a Psalm 139 path for my earthly ascent to a heavenly home.

Jesus always “goes before and beyond” what we see, hear, or could imagine. Because we are not omnipresent, nor omniscient.

Ephesians 3:20

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,

His Power at Work within Us

“His power that is at work within us” is the power of how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies, the law of Moses, and the fall of humanity through the serpent, the woman, the apple, the man, the fall.

Throughout the Old Testament the Jewish people took God’s image, the one we are all made in the image of and compromised His divine nature.

But Jesus fulfilled God’s image on earth. That is the work within us.

Jesus is the Alpha and Omega of God’s story. He is my beginning and end. Insight #3.

Episode 77.