YouTube: Three Steps to Freedom
Audio: Three Steps to Freedom
One of my favorite Moses stories occurs in the fourteenth chapter of Exodus. Pharaoh has finally let Israel go, but then he has a change of heart and decides to wipe them out. Israel’s escape is blocked by the Red Sea. They see the Egyptian army thundering down on them and they are terrified. Moses issues a set of three instructions that can help any of us under much lesser extremes. “And Moses said to the people, ‘Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again.’”
Fear not: Get control of your emotions. Fear squelches the creative imagination and is by far the most unproductive, debilitating emotion we can harbor. Moses simply says, stop doing that. You have a choice. Take the first step and stop your out-of-control habit of fearing. This advice, fear not, is repeated at least 33 times in the Bible.
Stand firm: Just watch where your mind goes when you are challenged. What if this happens? What if that happens? What if nothing happens? It’s all over the place, not firm at all. To stand firm means to center yourself. Stand firm in the idea that greater good is working out through this situation. What spiritual principles do you accept as true? Are you standing firm with them, or are you waiting to see what happens before you will trust them? This is your opportunity to take the high road, to demonstrate the power of your new insights.
See the salvation of the Lord: Now you are to visualize a successful outcome, and not necessarily the one you think is best. Do you suppose Israel had a collective visualization and imagined the Red Sea opening? I doubt they ever would have imagined that. How can you visualize an answer you cannot imagine? You see yourself happy, content, filled with the peace of knowing the storm is over. Does it matter how it ends? No, it doesn’t. It only matters that you learn to hold your peace and continue to live your life successfully in spite of appearances.
Practice applying these three simple instructions in any situation that arises and see how quickly those pursuing Egyptians become a non-issue.
J Douglas Bottorff 
“Does it matter how it ends? No, it doesn’t…” The key here is to visualize a SUCCESSFUL ending. Death and disaster are certainly not successful endings from one’s own point of view, so one should not even entertain that sort of outcome: that would lead to nothing good. What we want is an outcome that we can be conscious of, at least, and has possibilities for improvement. That is certainly better than fearing the worst.
Exactly. We don’t affirm, “This or something worse.” We affirm, “This or something better.”