(Guest Post by: Kamryn Green) Blogmas Day Fourteen
June 14th, 2022.
Every season must change into a new one, must undertake the joy, the pain, the beauty, and struggle of transforming into something different. This was the day that those colors of the current season were making their last fade. The new ones were officially settling in, brushing over what was, on an eight hour drive from central Texas to Hot Springs, Arkansas. This change would remind me that to love Him is to obey Him. No matter the cost.
In fact, the joy just keeps increasing with the cost.
My brother Rhett and I had just graduated from a Christian program in Arkansas, and the Lord called us both to officially move there to partner with what He was doing in the community. After graduation, we came home and stayed with our family in TX for a while, then it was time to leave. To let one door close and walk through a new one. It was not what we had expected at all. It was exciting and harder than I ever thought it would be.
I know the pain of leaving family and all you knew growing up is so small compared to pains that others go through. But what is hard is hard, no matter the intensity. The Lord uses it all. He is close, and He is enough through it all.
I share this because it has planted deeply in my heart that the Lord is in the business of bringing what is sweet out of what is bitter.
In Exodus 15, the Israelites are traveling through the wilderness. It is a season that looks different from the one before, except the previous one was even harder, I would think. They were deep in slavery in Egypt. Now they were in a wilderness, but they were FREE. The Lord has just led them through the Red Sea and defeated their enemies, showering His faithfulness, His triumph, goodness, and mercy upon an undeserving people.
Exodus 15:22-27 says, “Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter . . . And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’ And he cried to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the LORD made for them a statute and a rule, and there He tested them, saying, ‘If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in His eyes, and give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer. Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.”
Before the water was sweet, couldn’t they see that He is the LORD? Couldn’t they see that He sustained them in Egypt, and He would sustain them now? Why were they so quick to forget?
I wonder if they came to expect only that which is sweet. Just expecting that life would no longer be difficult, or that there would only be ease and comfort found in the Lord from here on out.
Please understand, we are to rely 100% on His never-changing character, knowing that He is good and all He does is good. But we will experience things that are initially bitter in this life. We will have trouble in this world. But He has overcome, and He works all things for the good of those who love Him (John 16:33 & Romans 8:28). Our walk with the Lord is one of endurance and sacrifice, not ease and comfortability (Hebrews 10:32-39, Romans 12:1, Psalm 23:4).
NOTE: This is just part one of Kamryn’s powerful post! Check back tomorrow to read part two!
If you’re interested, you can check out what Kamryn and her family are doing here: https://www.patriotacademy.com/
The Few 
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