One of the most wonderful miracles in the Bible was the crossing of the Red Sea. One dimension to this wonderful miracle was that the Egyptians were so dumb as to follow the Israelites into the Red Sea. They felt that since the Israelites were their servants they could still surpass them in anything. They did not for once consider who parted the Red Sea, and the fact that the same person could decide to change his mind when they went in. It was a very big mistake. So shall your enemies make mistakes, in the name of Jesus.
This account is recorded in Exodus 15:19 - 21: “For the horse of Pharaoh went in with his chariots and with his horsemen into the sea, and the Lord brought again the waters of the sea upon them; but the children of Israel went on dry land in the midst of the sea. And Marian the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dances. And Marian answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.”
That was a miraculous deliverance. But what happened immediately afterwards? The Israelites were not prepared for the next shocker. Verses 22 - 24 say, “So Moses brought Israel from the Red sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter, therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink?”
The Israelites travelled three days to the water of Marah after the wonderful miracle at the Red Sea. They must have been excited to see that river in front after three days of having nothing to drink. But what a disappointment when they got to it and found that it was bitter. They were unprepared for what they saw but God was prepared because He never has an emergency. It is only human beings who talk about emergency but as far as God is concerned there is no emergency. As far as God is concerned too, once you are born again, there is nothing like luck or being fortunate, your life is teleguided from above. Your life is in the outline that God has laid. God is never confronted with a situation which He does not have an answer. Businessmen, pastors, doctors, etc, could sit down and deliberate on a situation without coming up with a solution but God is never confronted with any situation that He cannot solve no matter how terrible it may be.
A woman suddenly discovered that her husband was acting strangely. He stopped talking to her and eating her food. Then it took another turn. One day, he invited two girls who sat in their sitting room and watched video film with him till day break while she was inside the room. The situation got so bad that she ran to an herbalist, who after consulting with his oracles, told her that when her husband was born he was handed over to his village idol, which happened to be a woman. Therefore, her husband was already married before he married her. The herbalist advised that in her own interest, she should move out before the man cut off her head with a cutlass when she was asleep and nobody would know what happened to her because the man would throw away her body. She went home in fear and after some time, she became born-again, and started attending a living church. One day, she attended a crusade where the man of God made an altar call for those who wanted to give their lives to Christ. As those who gave their lives to Christ were going back to their seats, there was another altar call for those who wanted to grow spiritually. As the woman came out for the second call, she saw her husband among those who came to give their lives to Christ. She hid her face and went for her own altar call. When she got home from the crusade that night she found him in the sitting room tapping the table with a biro pen. Then suddenly, he said, “Madam, I am sorry for all I have been doing to you. Please, forgive me.” That night, everything was sorted out by God who is never confronted with a situation for which He does not have an answer. And they started living happily again as husband and wife. You may say the man would never change again with all his girl friends. But when the God who does not know emergency arose, he gave up the girl friends and reconciled with his wife.
The Israelites came to their own emergency and started to grumble like many of us. Some of them would have said, “I have been coming to church for years, and praying all the prayers but nothing is happening so I decided to stop coming.” That was exactly what the devil wanted. They grumbled but one man among them called Moses had the wisdom to pray instead of grumbling. He alone did the sensible thing. He prayed and what happened? Verse 25 says, “And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them.”
God is interested in quality and not in quantity. If God has quality people, they will turn nations upside down. The apostles in the upper room were just one hundred and twenty people and they turned the city upside down. Beloved, if you and I were on fire for God, we would be sufficient to turn the world upside down. Moses prayed and God gave him the key to the problem. The Lord will throw trees into every Marah in your life, in the name of Jesus. Not that there is any power in the tree. It was just an act to release the power of God. It is like the woman who touched the helm of Jesus’ garment. Not that the garment carried any power but the faith of the woman released the miracle working power of the Lord. We find this principle of faith being applied both in the Old and the New Testaments. In the story of Elisha and Jericho, we see how Elisha put salt into the bad water of the city and the water became sweet. These were acts of faith in God.
Although the above story of the Israelites goes to back thousands of years, there are some lessons hidden therein that I want to make known to you:
1. Everyone at one time or the other gets to the valley of decision with God. But the decision you take at that time will determine whether you will get positive or negative results.
2. Great victories prepare us for great testings. The fact that God has given you a great deliverance does not mean that for the rest of your life there will be no trials again. This is what happened to the Israelites. Immediately after a great deliverance, they were faced with another problem and they grumbled instead of praying to God.
Are you a grumbling Christian? Are you a crying Christian? Are you a weeping Christian? Are you a worrying Christian or an anxious Christian?
The Israelites eventually got to their own Marah but that Marah was God’s programme for them. It was God who led them there. As you are reading this message, you may have arrived at your own Marah or your bitter pool. You got to a situation you thought would be sweet but instead, it was bitter. What do you do? Your Marah may be your health, marriage, business, or your children. It may be disappointment with people you do not expect could disappoint you. It may be that you find it difficult to have peace even though you have many things that should make you happy. What do you do?
The purpose of your arriving at the bitter pool or Marah is for God to expose an area in your life which He wants to deal with. Immediately the people of Israel got to their own Marah it exposed them. It was clear that they were ungrateful to God. When God carries out His tests, a lot of people begin to grumble and to complain. One brother was deported from England and immediately he got to Nigeria he locked himself up in a room and never came out to speak to anybody. Why? Because he was deported from England. That is a wrong reaction to the bitter pool. Isolation, worry and crying are wrong reactions to the bitter pool. There is no life that has no problem, the important thing is for the problem not to have you.
There was a man who was doing very well in business. After 15 years of success, things began to go wrong. He took his wife and five children to his village idol to swear one by one if they were not the cause of his problem. It was a wrong reaction at the bitter pool. The question is, How are you reacting to your own bitter water? What do you do when you come to this valley of decision? Do you react in anger?
There was a brother who was always angry with everyone. It was so bad that his workers knew him for that. One day, I went to see him in his office but he was not in, so I decided to wait. The junior members of his staff, who did not know that I knew him, planned to upset him because they knew he would fall for it. As he came in, they said, “Good morning, sir.” He answered, “Good morning.” One of them said, “Sorry, sir, that file you said we should look for yesterday we could not find it.” Immediately, he flared up and started ranting. Then they said, “But, sir, we found it before the close of the day.” The boys turned to themselves and started laughing. Are you like that? When you see somebody who has over-painted her body, know that the person is covering up something. When you see somebody who has a walkman attached to his ear banging music into his ears, he is covering up something. He is trying to use the music to suppress the noise in his heart. If you have a neighbour who is always playing loud music, know that something is making noise in his heart and he is looking for a louder noise to calm it. It is a wrong reaction at the pool of bitterness. Some people grow lean and ugly because they are at their bitter pool.
God wants to deal with the defect in our characters. Some will say, “I’m human, it is natural to worry.” They would say, “Who can that happen to and he won’t be sad?” Jesus said it is unbelief to worry and the Bible says that God has a way of escape and the battle is His.
One day, a certain man was at his veranda relaxing when a man drove in in a Mercedes Benz car and his wife said, “Daddy, I’ve suffered enough. I like to enjoy my life a little bit so I am moving out.” She packed her things into the Mercedes Benz car and the driver took off. That was how she moved out of her matrimonial home. The man was dumbfounded and wanted to commit suicide but some friends counselled him to take it easy. Several years later, the woman came back begging. The man told her: “When you left this house, there was no money and there is still no money so you better go back to where you are coming from.” He was no longer disturbed. Many sisters like to have rich men as husbands, but unfortunately, many of the rich men are not very good people and most of the fine brothers don’t have too much money.
WHAT TO DO AT THE POOL OF DECISION?
1. Recognise that God is able to make the situation sweet no matter how bitter it may be.
2. Let the living God deal with any defect the situation has exposed in your life.
3. Accept by faith, God’s provision for your life.
4. Begin to thank God for what He has done on your behalf. It is then God will begin to reveal Himself to you.
5. Don’t limit God when you get to the valley of decision. As far as God is concerned, He can do anything at any time without being queried or challenged.
The children of Israel forgot what God has done. They limited God for whom no man can draw a boundary. The same people who saw the Red Sea parted and they walked through it, and also saw the Egyptians smitten with plagues, and so many other things, began to grumble when they came to the bitter water, and God got angry with them.
Beloved, God gets angry when people put a limit on Him. And it has been observed that the sin of limiting God is the commonest sin of the saints. When the devil sees that he is only about a quarter to get out of a person’s life, he will put in his last effort pretending to be tough. If then the person gives up and starts complaining and grumbling, he goes back fully into the problem. A lot of people will be useless without any pressure on them. Any child who does whatsoever he is asked to do would not be beaten. But when you find that your child does not take to your instructions, you would have no option but to discipline such a child. God too, cannot allow His children to behave any how. No good father will allow his children to be unruly. This is why God has to be hard on some of us sometimes.
God called a certain friend of mine to go and preach. But my friend said, “I’m a manager in a big bank, how can I become a preacher and be waiting for members to collect kobo- kobo for me before I eat. No way.” So, he refused to answer the call of God. One day, he had an accident and lost his left hand. When he got to the hospital the Spirit of God came to him and said, “Are you ready to preach the gospel now or I cut off the second hand?” He said he was ready. So he is now preaching with one hand. God knows how to deal with us when we are stubborn. The best thing is to be broken so that God will not push you here and there to get you listen to His instructions. When you tell some people to go for deliverance, they will refuse until God allows some witches to visit them at night, then they will run back to say they are ready. I once read about a Prime minister who was known as a dunce in his school. Eventually, this same man changed and became intelligent. All those who were beating him in the class was now going to him to say “His Excellency.”
Perhaps there has been predictions about your life that you cannot make it, know that those who are giving the predictions are not God. I felt sorry for a little boy. On his naming day, he was taken to a place where they prophesied names. I hope you were not named through such prophecies. If you were, you need deliverance because whatever evil prophecy is pronounced on a person on the day of his naming ceremony remains permanent unless Jesus cancels it.
The reason many Christians have problems when they get to the bitter pool is because they engage in conversation with the devil. The devil has no right to ask you and I any question. All the “why” and “why me” questions are from the devil. If you do not know how to ignore satanic questions or to answer the devil with “back to sender,” you may lose your miracle. The devil will ask you questions like, “Do you think God has answered your prayer?” “Do you think you have been healed?” “What if the problem comes back?” “Do you think you are going to prosper?” “Can’t you see that you are following your father’s footsteps?” “Can’t you see that your father-in-law is a lodge member?” The devil will ask you series of questions and then give you satanic answers.
Beloved, this year is a year of divine possibilities. My prayer is that God will change your name as He changed the name of Abraham. Before God could work well on Abraham, He changed his name from Abram to Abraham. Perhaps, your name has been hindering God. As God removed Abram and instituted Abraham, so will He remove every Abram in your life and replace it with Abraham, in the name of Jesus.
Whatever is standing in your way, I want you to believe that the heavenly bulldozer will bulldoze it out of the way. He will bulldoze the enemy, those standing at the back of the enemy, and those around him, in Jesus’ name.
A lot of people fail at the valley of decision while others succeed but our God is a God of success. If you have not surrendered your life to the Lord, do so before you pray these bulldozing prayers because you cannot bulldoze the enemy if you have not accepted Christ as your Lord and personal Saviour. When God decides to bulldoze the enemy, even all the supporters of the enemy will be in trouble. Perhaps you are about to give up and the enemy is persuading you to give up by recounting all the failures and showing you the impossibilities. You must say no to the powers of the enemy today.
PRAYER POINTS
1. I disgrace every assignment of the enemy against me, in the name of Jesus.
2. Let my enemies make mistakes that will advance my course, in the name of Jesus.
3. The key to the solution of my problem, Father, in the name of Jesus, give it to me.
4. I refuse to permit any evil tenant in the house of my life, in the name of Jesus.
5. I come against every spirit of limitation, in the name of Jesus.
6. I come against any carry-over from Egypt making me to limit God, in the name of Jesus.
7. I forbid any satanic arrow from being part of my life, in the name of Jesus.
8. I release myself from every curse of failure, in the name of Jesus.
9. I release myself from any satanic predictions, in the name of Jesus.
10. I break the power of any rituals aimed at me, in the name of Jesus.
11. I move from bondage to liberty, in Jesus' name.
12. I command the pool of tribulation to dry up, in the name of Jesus.
13. Every evil bird flying for my sake, receive the arrow of fire, in the name of Jesus.
14. I refuse to be the candidate of eaters of flesh and drinkers of blood, in the name of Jesus.
15. Thank God for answered prayers.
