Go Forward

“And the LORD said unto Moses, wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward.” Exodus 14:15. The people of Israel went into the wilderness and began to go back and forth. God told Moses to tell the people that they should go forward. God didn’t tell them to go back and forth. God wanted them to go forward steadily, steadfastly. God wanted them to advance and make progress. He wanted them to reach their Canaan of rest.
However they were going back and forth. He wanted them to go from glory to glory and from strength to strength. But their experience was totally different. They were in a situation where they will take three steps backwards, and one step forward, back and forth; they were not making progress, and that is the state of many believers.
There are people who ought to have finished their houses and even build another one, they are still tenants because of moving back and forth. God never said, move back and forth, he said go forward.
The Israelites were moving back and forth until God Himself was tired. One critical factor is that they were God’s people, the people of His covenant, the people of His inheritance; God has given them a promise that He will never leave them nor forsake them, so wherever they were going He had to go with them. When they moved backward, God could not afford to leave them, because if he left them and His glory was not there with them, they will be consumed in the wilderness. They were His people, so He had to move backward with them. As a result, they delayed the plan of God. They delayed the program of God. Each time God wanted to move them forward, it was too much for them. Ten of them will revolt only two will believe. In many assembly of God’s people it is democratic dispensation where majority carry the vote, and as a result many projects have been aborted when majority carry the vote against God’s voice. At another time God will tell the Israelites something, they will say ‘No’ we know better, so they kept moving back and forth, running on the same spot, dancing around the same problem; moving around the same mountain. God had to send a strong word of direction to them.
NO MORE BACK AND FORTH
“The Lord our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, ye have dwelt long enough in this mount: turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the vales, and in the south and by the sea side, to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon unto the great river, the river Euphrates. Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and their seed after them.” Deuteronomy 1:6-8.
You are going round and round with the same problem, same challenge, same difficulty, same story, nothing new, no new ground is being broken, no new testimony, no new success, no new achievements, it’s the same old story. The will of God for you as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, saved and sanctified is stated in God’s word. God wants you to go from strength to strength.
“They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.” Psalm 84:7.
God wants your light to shine brighter. “But the path of the just is as a shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” Prov.4: 18
God wants you to experience a higher glory and be more like Christ Jesus. “But we all, with open faces behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the spirit of the lord.” II Cor.3: 18
You should experience new mercies daily. “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the lord’s mercies that we are not consumed because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.”Lam.3: 21-23
We are talking of a situation you enjoy the freshness of God’s mercies, new testimonies, new breakthrough, new success, new advancement. When you break new ground and you are moving forward. Not going back and forth.
God wants the church to stop going back and forth; God wants His people to begin to move steadily towards His plan and purpose for their lives.
The people were going back and forth until they all died in the wilderness and they didn’t realize the purpose of God except Joshua and Caleb. Num.14: 26-30. You will reach your goal. You will not wander in the wilderness. You will not die in the wilderness. You are going forward.