The Most Qualified Talent-Scout in the Universe
One of the themes that is hidden just below the surface of the lives of the people of faith in the Bible, which is clearly apparent once you see it, is that God wants to write the scripts and screenplays of our lives (Phil. 2:13). People like Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and David in the Old Testament, and Peter and Paul in the New Testament, put all of their hopes, dreams, aspirations, and even their lives on the line to follow the plans of God for them.
God is able to write and direct real-world life-scripts that are in most cases above and beyond fictional motion picture screenplays. God wants to write the scripts for our lives because He is simply better at it than we are, and He has an overall message He wants to get across. He wants the entire universe and all of creation to know that He is a trustworthy, capable, and loving God.
The reading of the Bible and our own present-day Christian lives become more understandable once we grasp and embrace this concept.
All of us want our lives here on earth to count for something positive. Like our interest in a good adventure movie, we want the events and circumstances of our lives to be channeled toward some good conclusion.
But like motion picture actors who are not screenwriters, we are incapable of coming up with plot-lines that also include trust, reliance, and faith in a supernatural God. To add these elements to our life-script, we need the great Screenwriter, the God of the Bible, to compose imaginative lives for us like those of the people of faith in the Old and New Testaments.
This is one reason why God inspired the writing of the Bible (2 Tim. 3:15-17). The Bible gives us an accurate pattern and template of what He accomplished in other people’s lives so that we can also release our faith and have confidence in what He can do in our own lives.
Only God has the divinely creative imagination to compose life-scripts for us that contain eternal purpose, meaning, and truth.
When people plan and manage their lives while pushing God away, they opt for the default screenplay for life. This default screenplay calls for the typical need for security, material possessions, the approval of friends and family, conformity to the conventional worldly pleasures of life, and usually putting as much distance as possible between ourselves and anything unpleasant in terms of character building.
The problem with this approach is that the typical 60, 70, or 80 year old life here on earth is like a vapor of smoke (Jas 4:14) that is gone in what seems like no time at all. Before we know it, we can regretfully look back upon a life lived without purpose, meaning, or eternally beneficial impact upon others.
Sometimes a few exceptional people do manage to pursue exciting lives that have the outward appearance of challenge and adventure, but it is nonetheless on their terms and within the limits they set for themselves.
Because we cannot live two parallel lives at the same time, the self-led and self-directed life, no matter how attractive according to outward appearances, is by definition a God-less life.
There can only be a single plot-line for our character in the movie script of our lives. If self-absorption and self-centeredness is the storyline of our lives, then God’s plan for us is pushed off the pages.
We choose who writes our life-script…ourselves or God.
To have eternal satisfaction, purpose, and meaning…our lives must include God.
A much higher purpose for life exists, which is described and recorded for us through the examples of the people of faith in the Bible. That purpose is to live-out the fulfilling role that God has individually pre-written just for us in the great screenplay of human experience. If we do not allow God full participation in our lives to lead us into that divinely inspired role, because of timidity, fear, unbelief, self-centeredness, being too worldly busy, or thinking we know better than God…in the end we will be the person most disappointed.
After the ten plagues in Egypt forced Pharaoh to release the Israelites from bondage as slaves, it was God, through Moses, who led the Israelites to set up temporary camp on the shore of the Red Sea. When Pharaoh and the Egyptians changed their minds, and pursued the Israelites with their chariot army, the Israelites were trapped by the Red Sea.
This was God’s doing. Moses had not made a mistake. He was listening correctly in the Spirit to God’s voice.
When the Israelites saw the Egyptian army, they panicked. The Egyptian chariot army was not going to pull up to the crowd of Israelites and calmly discuss the terms of their return to Egypt as slaves. The Egyptians were going to massacre a large number of Israelites, in retaliation for what had recently occurred in Egypt, and then force the survivors back to Egypt.
Although their lives were hard and bitter in Egypt, they still had had wives, children, enough food to eat, and a roof over their heads.
At that moment the Israelites were wondering why they had given up their hard but secure existence in Egypt for the promise of freedom through faith and hope in a leader named Moses and in a God they barely knew. The circumstances were real, immediate, and they did not look good. The Egyptian soldiers had spears and swords they would soon thrust through the Israelite men, women, and children, without a second thought. Yet they were trapped by the Red Sea.
Unlike the fictional stories of Robin Hood, A Tale of Two Cities, or Star Wars, this author believes that God actually did place a real pillar of fire to temporarily block the Egyptian chariot army, and that God did open up an actual dry land passage through the Red Sea.
I was not there. I did not see it happen. But I believe these were actual historical events.
If God can create the physical universe out of nothing through the Big Bang…bringing into existence all of the material particles and fields of energy in just the right quantities and proportions…along with all of the accompanying laws of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the dimensions of time…it should be relatively easy for Him to supernaturally open up the Red Sea and hold back the waters long enough for people to pass safely through.
I know from the transformation that happened inside me when I accepted Jesus Christ into my life, and through several supernatural experiences of God’s faithfulness in my life since then, that this is just the type of thing that God would do with the Israelites at the beginning of their history-making exodus from Egypt (Isa. 14:24).
If Christians have experienced being spiritually reborn (Jn 3:3), then they personally know that God can supernaturally intervene in the affairs of mankind.
Something extraordinary like the parting the Red Sea for the Israelites simply falls somewhere along the sliding scale of the differing magnitudes of the various works of God.
The Cross in the Christian Life 