Exodus 13:14
“And it shall be when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the LORD brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage:”
The verse above is a commentary of what God said would happen one day when the Israelites inhabited the Promised Land. He said that one day they would observe the Passover, and a son would ask the father, “What is this?” That father was to tell his son, “By strength of hand the LORD brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage:” In other words, that father was to keep the history of the LORD’s strength before his children. However, I believe there is something missed in this verse. I believe that God wanted the father to tell his son about what the LORD had done so that it would motivate the next generation to allow the LORD to make history through them. It was not good enough for the son to just hear the history, but it was a motivator for the son to make his own history.
I’m afraid many Christians have based their Christianity upon history instead of making history. God didn’t write His Word just so that we can study it and do nothing with it; He wrote it to encourage us to do more for Him. There are three thoughts of which the verse above can remind us.
First, don’t let your history be your history. There are many Christians who can tell you about the LORD working through them in the past, but they have nothing to share when talking about what the LORD is doing in the present. Sadly, their history is their history. If we are going to motivate the next generation to do something for God, we are going to have to make history with God today. You have spiritually died if the only history you have with God is in history.
Second, let history motivate your history. In other words, instead of just quoting history, let it be the catalyst to see God do something through you. One of the things that has stirred me to strive for the LORD is a desire to see God do something through my life and ministry as He has for others. I am not going to sit idly by and simply talk about history; I want to be a part of letting the LORD show His strength through me. When you hear about what the LORD has done through someone else in history, let it stir your heart to see God do something through you. History should be a motivator, not just a lesson.
Third, your history will be the stimulus of the next generation’s future. Either they will serve God because of what He did through you, or they will go to the world because of a lack of seeing God’s power today. The verse above was all about stirring the next generation with a desire for God to do something through them. If you want to keep the next generation from going to the world, you must step out by faith and let God perform the miraculous through you. When the next generation sees the power of God working, they will desire it for themselves.
Let me ask you, is your history already written because you are no longer doing anything for God? Don’t let your history be a finished book, but continue to step out by faith so that the power of God can continue to be seen by the present generation. Don’t let the only stories you have about God working be in the past. I challenge you to be a history maker with God instead of a historian so that the power of God is a reality and not just history.