the hand of the Lord

I’ve been reading in the book of Exodus this week, and something jumped out at me in a new way. (Don’t you love how God’s word never gets old?)  I saw the movement of God’s hand — His literal hand — over and over again in these chapters.  I am learning more about Him as I read.

• God’s hand is powerful enough to radically change your circumstances, no matter how impossible that seems. Then the LORD said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.” Exodus 6:1

• God’s loving arm is mighty to save, to redeem, to free you from the things that are choking the life out of you. “I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke…”   Exodus 6:6-7

• God’s faithful hand has sworn that He will keep His promises to you.  Any delay you are experiencing is a part of His plan. “And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.”  Exodus 6:8

• God’s powerful hand is set against your enemy, so you need not fear. “Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.” Exodus 7:4-5

• God works in your life in order to reveal His mighty hand to the world. Then the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your staff and strike the dust of the ground,’ and throughout the land of Egypt the dust will become gnats.”  They did this, and when Aaron stretched out his hand with the staff and struck the dust of the ground, gnats came upon men and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became gnats.  But when the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, they could not. And the gnats were on men and animals.  The magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.”   Exodus 8:16-19

• God’s righteous hand shows power, as well as restraint, according to His plans. This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says:  Let my people go, so that they may worship me,  or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up  for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. Exodus 9:13-16

May we learn to trust His hand in all things. The enemy often talks us into fearing God’s hand, and we become anxious about His delays or worried that the current movement of His hand is some kind of punishment. However, these verses have convinced me that His hand is simultaneously uplifted in solemn promise to answer me and outstretched to carry me in all things.

Are you trusting His hand today?