On the last day of Passover week 2025, I found an e-column I wrote in 2010. And oh my. It reminded me where God has led me. What’s more, my own words cried out to me:

Never stop seeking
to know Christ,
to grow in Christ,
to echo his heart!

I will free you

See it in your mind’s eye.

• A people enslaved.
• A cruel ruler they cannot escape.
• The God who has come to tell them, “I am the LORD. I will free you” (Ex. 6:6).
• The man who dares to stand before that cruel ruler time and again.

Moses has long since lost any voice he ever had in that place. Now, he does not think he has it in him to do what God has asked. Yet a back-side-of-the-desert shepherd keeps telling a powerful king,

This is what the Lord says:
Let my people go
so that they can worship me.¹

Each time Moses utters that cry, God warns he will send a new plague if Pharaoh refuses. Pharaoh keeps refusing. The plagues keep coming. And Moses keeps walking into and out of that cruel king’s presence, alive.

Then at last, Pharaoh relents. But even before he does, the people get ready to leave. That is, they take the steps of faith the Lord requires:

• to separate themselves from the evil in the place they have lived all their lives;
• to choose against their own selfishness, doubt and fear;
• and to go out from bondage to worship God.

Together, as one, they observe Passover for the first time. That night, the death that visits Egypt passes over them. Then, they set out to pass through the Red Sea into a new life.²

Ask this first

Until 1994, I lived in the green hills of northeast Mississippi. As the year began, I was a wife, mom of two daughters, a Sunday School teacher and women’s missions leader. I wrote a weekly newspaper column and a monthly prayer guide for a missions magazine.

Then, Jesus pointed me to the prayer he taught in Matthew 6. When I began seeking the treasure there, the Spirit shined his light onto the very first petition, the one asking the Father:

Hallowed be your name.

That prayer may not sound earth-shattering, or life-changing, or practical. It may sound suspiciously like religious-speak. Yet Jesus looked into his disciples’ eyes – and urged all of us, “Ask this first.”

Responding to his urging, I answered: “Yes, Lord. But what does it mean? How does it look to hallow your name?”

All these years later, I’m still learning how much this prayer delights God and opens us to his trajectory for our lives.

As soon as the Spirit of Christ began teaching me, I began trying to tell what I was learning. To start, I wrote four newspaper columns. Each ran the week I wrote it. Each was published on a Friday in March 1994. At sundown, the day after the fourth article appeared, Passover began.

That year, I had no clue that Passover fell when it did. Even if I had known, I wouldn’t have connected the timing of the Jewish celebration with the new thing God was speaking into my spirit.

The Lord was calling forth from me a cry to know him and to reflect his character and his ways. I realized that.

I did not realize: He was also calling me out from bondage I didn’t yet see, to go with him where I had not yet gone.

I am bringing you to myself

Within two months, my husband accepted a job in the green flatlands of central Indiana. In July, our family moved north.

And thus, as I began praying from my spirit what my soul did not yet grasp, I passed over with God into a new season and a new place.

In the wilderness

In Moses’ day, God’s people passed out of slavery in Egypt, celebrated with great joy and began a new life … in the desert.

In Exodus 19, the Lord told his people why he led them there. Here’s a snippet from a post that explores the purpose of the wilderness:

God brings us into the wilderness to free us. Circumstances may scream at us – and we may scream at God – that he has brought us there to kill us.

Be blessed to stop screaming and really listen, really look.

In the wilderness, if we will listen, we can hear God saying,“I have moved heaven and earth to bring you to myself.”

In times of frustration and grief

In Indiana, I made friends, missed the hills, loved the seasons and enjoyed our daughters’ elementary years.

There, I also experienced surprising grief and great frustration.

The grief hit early and strong. It came from leaving behind family, lifelong friends and all things familiar. I embraced the grief, moved through it and eventually laid it naturally to rest.

The frustration started slowly and increased throughout my sojourn in Indiana. It came from trying to go forward and not knowing the way. It came from running, full tilt, into a lot of slammed doors. It came from misplaced expectations and unfulfilled dreams.

Time and again, I prayed and pled and groveled, longing for breakthrough. God did not answer the way I had hoped. Instead, he began showing me things I desperately needed to see – things about myself and things about the church culture in which I had lived all my life.

Grief and frustration kept me from seeing all I was seeing. But God wasn’t alarmed.

He knew: The journey into knowing and echoing his heart takes time. It requires stripping off and throwing down what I may think essential, but instead keeps me bound.

Thus, undaunted, the Lord kept answering the cry he himself had stirred within me and continued to draw from me: “Father in heaven, may I bring honor to your holy Name!”

Patiently, persistently, he was working to bring me to himself.

Do not be afraid

See it in your mind’s eye.

• A people freed for a year – and still camped at a barren mountain in a barren desert.
• The humble God-seeker who has brought them there.

Seven times, that 80-year-old has climbed that mountain to meet with God. Sometimes gone a few hours; twice, gone for six weeks, he has returned each time to tell them what God has said. And each time, he has come back reflecting his Lord a little more fully.

See the tabernacle, newly built as God has directed. Two weeks ago, God’s glory filled that tent. Now the glory cloud remains on it, for the Lord their God has made a way to dwell in their midst.

And now, at the foot of Sinai on the one-year-anniversary of the Exodus, God’s people celebrate Passover for the second time.

Within a month, the Lord will tell them to set out for the land he has promised them. They will set out. He himself will lead the way.

But they will not pass over. At the edge of change, God’s people will refuse to go with God – because they still do not trust him, and what he has asked seems much too hard.³

As a result, they will wander for four decades in the wilderness where they were supposed to camp for one year.

Humble your soul, release your spirit

In 1998, my family moved to the windy flatlands of central Oklahoma.

For me, the move brought another very different season – and yet an extension of the preceding one. It looked like I had received a promotion. It felt like a seven-year fast.

During those years, God worked even more intensely to rid me of things that needed to go and to show me things I needed to see. At first, I objected even more fiercely than before.

But as I pressed in to know Christ, he began teaching me to act on my spirit’s yes, even when my soul was screaming no. I began learning how God’s life can flow in and through you, as you humble your soul, release your spirit.

Together, as one

I spent those years challenging women in our denomination “to know Christ, to grow in Christ and to echo his heart for the world.” Five years in, God was moving, working. Women were coming together, seeking him, delighted at the new places he was leading.

Ah, but the system was not set up to help the women work together and go with God. And some who wanted to maintain the status quo were not delighted. In early 2004, all hell broke loose.

For 15 months, everything that happened stunned, grieved and utterly decimated me. At last, I was ordered to fragment what Jesus died and rose again to make one.

I could not. I would not. As my last official duty, I led a statewide women’s retreat. The theme echoed Jesus’ prayer to the Father in John 17.

His cry for all people?

To know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent. (v. 3 CEB)

And for those who believe in Christ?

Holy Father, watch over them in your name, the name you gave me, that they will be one just as we are one.

So that they can share completely in my joy.

Make them holy in the truth.

I pray they will be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. I pray that they also will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. (vv. 11, 13, 17, 21 CEB)

Keeping the feast

Friday evening, April 22, 2005, I stood to begin the retreat. I introduced myself, not as a denominational leader, but as “a bondslave of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Then, I lost my voice. I squeaked through, literally, until the retreat ended the following afternoon. As we finished the cleanup and drove away from the retreat site, the sun set, and Passover started.

I spent that Passover week sick in bed. Two mornings, I made myself get up and go into work briefly – Tuesday, to clean out the few personal belongings left in my office, and Friday, for my exit interview.

Saturday, April 30, my final official day in that position ended. So did Passover.

Pressing in to see

And did I ever pass over. I catapulted to a new place – of healing and rest, joy and life, freedom and identity.

After a year in that new, spacious place, the Lord stirred me to start researching the roots of what I had encountered. The search lasted four years.

Everything in my life had prepared me for what I began to uncover – and nothing had prepared me for it. Suddenly, I recognized the significance of things I’d seen in Indiana, experienced in Oklahoma, lived with all my life.

Throughout the search, I would press in for a few months, then back off for a few months. I had to allow time to process and to grieve the stunning things God was uncovering.

I repeatedly asked, “Lord, why are you showing me this?” And he kept reminding me that his purposes are always redemptive. He continually brought me back to the cry: Hallowed be your name.

Let my people go, that they may worship me

Here’s how I ended the e-column that first told this story:

As I write, it is March 29, 2010. The sun is setting, and another Passover is beginning. For three months now, the Spirit of God has been preparing me to cross over into a new place. I do not know what the next season will look like. But I know what needs to be said. It’s the same message that accompanied the first Passover:

“The Lord says, Let my people go, that they may worship me.”

And today, at his appointed time, God has restored my voice.

Be strong and courageous

See it in your mind’s eye.

• The generation that grew up in the wilderness – preparing at last to cross into the Promised Land.
• Their new leader, Joshua – preparing to lead them there.
• The Lord urging, “Be strong and courageous!”⁴

Then, the waters of the Jordan River part for the ark of the covenant and the Presence of the Lord. Together, as one, Joshua and the people cross the Jordan on dry ground. Egypt’s army dies trying to follow them.

Just inside that fertile land, with enemies all around, the people of God stop – and celebrate Passover for the first time in 39 years.

Joyfully, they welcome a new season in a new place. Courageously, they face reality: This season will have challenges too. Some of them, huge.

Choose to treasure God

Something in us tends to hope each next season will offer us all gain, no pain. Ah, but the Exodus story affirms:

In this life,
even the best of times includes pain.
Even the worst of times offers us choices.

And in every season,
we choose what we will seek above all else.

In the process, we choose what pain we will count as “worth it,” and what pain we will do almost anything to avoid. And thus, season to season, our choices expose us. They show what we value enough to spend ourselves for.

What’s more, each new season reminds us: We can adjust course. By grace, through faith, we can go further than we have before. We can even go a different way.

He is so worth it

From its inception, Passover has met God’s people at the intersection of pain and gain, and urged, “Go with God. He is so worth it.”

Remember!

• The Israelites left Egypt after the pain of their bondage became so great, for so long, that they were willing to leave the only place they had ever known.
• They left, believing their greatest gains would be freedom from oppression, in a fertile land where they were in charge.

Few of them valued most what the Lord God offered them when he told them, “I have brought you to myself.”

Yet the Lord kept pursuing them. And he kept calling them to pause annually, to ponder the wonder of knowing and going with him.

Remember, too: Some people in every generation have treasured the Lord. He has seen each one, and has showed himself strong in their behalf. Please, Lord, may we be among them!⁵

Rejoice!

Christ, our Passover,
was sacrificed for us.

He is risen!

He ascended on high.⁶

In other words: The Lord Jesus has moved heaven and earth to bring us to himself.

As we choose him, he shows us his character and his ways. He transforms our hearts to echo his. He gives us grace to live abundant lives, even through hardship and loss.

*

On the last day of Passover week 2025, I found an e-column I wrote in 2010. And oh my. It reminded me where God has led me, before and since. I had tears in my eyes as I read – tears of joy for the overwhelming gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.⁷

Dear one!

Say yes to, and press into,
each new place your Lord wants to take you.

---

This post is based on, and quotes from, an e-column titled, “Passing Over,” published April 1, 2010.

Image by Pascal Bondis 💙💛 💙💛💙💛 from Pixabay

See also

• Celebrating God at his appointed times
• Glory and intimacy – Treasuring time with God
• Darkness, betrayal and the heartbeat of God
• The purpose of the wilderness
• A spirit like Caleb’s – fully following God
• The blessing of mourning
• Humble your soul, release your spirit

Footnotes

1. Exodus 9:13. See also Exodus 5:1; 7:16; 8:1, 20; 9:1; 10:3. ↩︎
2. See Exodus 12-14. ↩︎
3. See Exodus 40; Numbers 9–10; 13–14. ↩︎
4. See the whole story in Joshua 1-5. ↩︎
5. See 2 Chronicles 16:9. ↩︎
6. See 1 Corinthians 5:7; Mark 16:6; Ephesians 4:8 NKJV. ↩︎
7. See 2 Corinthians 4:17; Philippians 3:8. ↩︎