It was May of 1998 and I was on a plane heading for Eastern Europe. It was my first trip outside of the continental United States. I was so excited! I had joined a team of 6 others who were participating on a short term mission trip to Romania. The flight from Columbia, SC to Atlanta, GA was only about 56 minutes. The flight from Atlanta, GA to Zürich, Switzerland was around 10.5 hours. The remaining leg of the journey to Bucharest, Romania was about 3.5 hours. Calculating all of the layovers, the entire journey took us around 28 hours of travel time. I found myself constantly thinking; "Are we there yet??" This became even more intense when I got sick in Switzerland. I had never traveled like this before and certainly getting sick on a plane was not what I had in mind. It is miserable to get sick; even more miserable to be 6,000 miles from your personal toilet. Not only do you have to deal with the planes turbulence, but also blue toilet water and a space to move around equal to the size of a shoe box. I wanted to be home again. The excitement of the journey all of a sudden began to wane.
God reminded me of this experience as I was reading about the Red Sea parting for the Children of Israel in Exodus chapter 14. You may recall the story. The Children of Israel had been taken into Egyptian captivity. God had raised up Moses as the redeemer of the people to plea with Pharaoh to let the people go. Pharaoh refused and God sent plagues upon the land. Long story short, the Israelites were eventually set free. But, Pharaoh had a change of mind and decided to have them recaptured and brought back to Egypt as slaves. While in pursuit of the Israelites, the Egyptians cornered them at the Red Sea. It appeared that the Children of Israel had nowhere to go. But, God did what only God could do; He parted the waters. "The sons of Israel went through the midst of the sea on dry land, and the waters were like a wall to them on their right hand and on their left," (Ex. 14: 22).
How do these two stories relate? My dear friends, we are on a journey. While we may see the destination of Romania or the Promised Land, there is a journey that must be traveled. I could not blink and suddenly appear in Romania; the Children of Israel could not blink and suddenly appear in the Land of Canaan; and you cannot blink and suddenly arrive where God is taking you.
Often when I am planning to take a road trip I will enter the destination to my GPS. In an instant, it will calculate the route and even tell me the distance and estimated time of arrival. While I may be able to drive faster and reduce the estimated time of arrival, I cannot change the distance. Regardless of the speed I travel, I still have to travel the required distance. While God has various destinations for us in life, there is a required distance that must be traveled. With each mile that we travel, God is teaching us more about who He is and who we are in Christ.
My encouragement to you, regardless of where you are in life right now (graduating, seeking a career, serving in ministry, going back to school, getting married, raising a family...), don't overlook the journey for the destination. I would submit that by studying God's Word we see that the journey is just as important, if not more, than the destination. Why? Because it's in the journey that we experience God. It's in the journey that we come to know the goodness of His character. If the Children of Israel had not been on the journey they would not have experienced the awesomeness of God as He parted the waters! Just imagine seeing a wall of water on your right and on your left...
While the Children of Israel got irritated and even complained wanting to go back to Egypt; returning to that former way of life was not an option. God closed the waters making it impossible for them to return. Why? Because God never intended for them to return. Similarly, as God moves in your life and molds you into the image of Christ, He never intends for you to return to how you once lived. The journey is designed to sand off the rough edges of our life and pull up the weeds that are choking the good seeds. This process is not designed to be reversed. As you walk with God, never look back. While you remember God's activity in the past and cling to His faithfulness, may you also cling to the words of the Apostle Paul; "Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus," (Phil. 3:13-14).
The next time life begins to weigh you down or you feel like turning back; don't do it. God is in the business of creating dry ground for His children to walk across. Remain faithful to God and He will do things in your life that you could never ask, think, or imagine. Living for Jesus is the greatest thing you could ever do. There is absolutely nothing else that will last for eternity. The question, "Are we there yet?" is a valid question, but the answer is NO. We strive toward the day when we will see the Savior face to face - then we can say, "YES, we are there!"