Sovereign foundations - seeing the hand of God

After reading the psalms during the month of March, I recently returned to the account of early Bible history and began reading daily in the Old Testament book of Exodus. Exodus picks up where the book of Genesis left off, except that almost four hundred years have passed since Jacob and his sons settled in Egypt to avoid a famine in their own country. The ruling Pharaoh has no memory of the crucial role that Joseph once played in saving Egypt from the famine, and he feels threatened by the sheer size of the Hebrew people. Afraid that they might one day rise up and wage war against Egypt, he keeps them in oppression and slavery, and even reaches the point where he tries to limit their numbers by killing off all the baby boys that are born.

The first two chapters of Exodus are the exhilerating account of how God protects and prepares the generation that is going to experience one of the greatest rescue operations of all time. Perhaps many Hebrew babies were drowned in the Nile river at that terrible time, but perhaps many others were saved, like Moses, by parents and midwives who respected God more than they respected the cruel directives of the Egyptian King. Not only was Moses’ life spared in an amazing way, God also engineered his circumstances to give him the very best training and equipping for the special role he would play in Israel’s history. Raised by his own parents from earliest childhood, Moses would have grown up learning about the amazing God of Israel. Then, given back to Pharaoh’s daughter and raised for the rest of his childhood and adolescence in the Egyptian palace, Moses would have learned everything he needed to know about Egyptian language and culture. The end result was a young man uniquely equipped to serve God by leading the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

Have you ever taken time to look back and consider the unique ways that God prepared you for the things He was calling you to in life? It can be a fascinating experience that really opens your eyes to the amazing providence of God.

I remember, in the late 1980s, when I was working with teams of young people that used music and choreography to worship God and share the gospel, that I looked back at my life one day and was amazed to realise that my childhood experiences (even before I knew the Lord) of going to dancing lessons and working with youth theatre companies had given me a unique foundation of skills on which to build this area of ministry involvement.

When I moved to Spain some years ago, I was thankful that my youthful decision to study languages, linguistics and phonetics at university had prepared me to learn various different languages throughout my lifetime, and to actually enjoy adding Spanish as a sixth language in my later years of life.

More recently, when the University of the Nations asked me to be part of the faculty committee of the College of Education, I realised that my choice (in the early 1980s) to do post graduate studies in education had not only equipped me for various teaching related activites throughout my lifetime, but had also given me the qualifications needed to embrace this university role with integrity.

What about your life? What are the “sovereign foundations” that God built into your journey during childhood, adolescence or early adult years? Taking time to look back and see His hand in our lives will perhaps surprise us... and will hopefully fill us with thankfulness for His faithfulness from our earliest years.