I Will Fight For You

In the last 15 years, I’ve repeated the verse over and over in my mind. “The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.” Exodus 14:14 (NIV) was dear to me as I fought for my life through medical trauma, and then through my journey of redemption. The promise that the Lord fought for me was precious when we lost our daughter, and even through my father’s diagnosis and death because of ALS.

I was so overcome with life’s impossibilities, I heard the truth I needed most at the time: I was weak, but my almighty Jehovah God would fight in my stead. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. That’s all I needed to hear. Though that Truth was biblical and accurate, I always felt I was missing the mark—even if only slightly.

Recently, my Bible training sent me back to look for context, and I found the missing piece. In Exodus 14, Moses is leading the Israelites out of Egypt, and they come to the impossibility of crossing the Red Sea. Moses looks back at his weak, frightened-but-obedient people and says the powerful line, “The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.”

The people still had to stand at the ready. They still had to be willing to trust Yahweh’s direction. The people still had to stand in front of the Red Sea and not back down. They had to trust God would fight for them, but they weren’t to lay down their possessions and stop waiting with active and expectant hearts.

The Lord fights for us when we face impossibilities—yes! But may we always be ready to join him in making his name known and be ready to glorify him even in—especially in—our weaknesses.