Don't Look Back

Often we do not move forward because we are looking back to the way things used to be and are trying to reproduce it or at least have it happen again.  God wants to do a new thing and we are trying to enter into an old thing.  There are new paradigms of functioning in the Spirit that God wants us to move into. They are not new to God.  They are just new to us, because we have not passed this way before.  It is uncharted water.  This can be scary.  This is the water to swim in, where we are no longer in control. 

First Abraham was led out of the land of his family into the land of his inheritance.  Later the Israelites were led out of Egypt back into that land of promise.

The Israelites were always wanting to go back to the familiarity of the slavery in Egypt, when God had the land flowing with milk and honey waiting for them.  How often am I like that?  I would venture a guess that it happens way too often. 

Like the wilderness God has purpose in the journey.  And He has new things waiting for us as we press on into the land of milk and honey.

As they were passing into the Promised Land they entered into a new way of being led.  Up until this point they had been led by the pillar of fire and the cloud.  They had also had food provided daily in the form of many, now they were going to have to grow their own food and there were enemies to be driven off of the land that was promised to them.  They were transitioning into a new way of being led and provided for, as they moved into the Promised Land. Those transition points can be uncomfortable as we learn to function in a new place and a new way.

Genesis 15:7  And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

Deut. 4:37-38 And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight with his mighty power out of Egypt; ³⁸ To drive out nations from before thee greater and mightier than thou art, to bring thee in, to give thee their land for an inheritance, as it is this day.

Isaiah 42:9 Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.

Isaiah 43:18-19 Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. ¹⁹ Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

Joshua 3:4 Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore  --

Luke 9:62 And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.