Then the LORD said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent. And you shall say to him, ‘The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, ‘Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.’ But so far, you have not obeyed. Thus says the LORD, ‘By this you shall know that I am the LORD: behold, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood. The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile.’ ‘ “
And the LORD said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all their pools of water, so that they may become blood, and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’ ”
Exodus 7:14–19
It is possible that some of y’all have considered this but I will share it on the chance there is someone who has not.
The only thing the L-rd was doing here was revealing the nature of the Nile River and what was in it.
If you recall earlier in Exodus (1:22), the Nile was the scene of numerous infanticide. The Nile was also, ironically, a source of life to the land of Egypt. The Egyptian drowning of young men in the river would have defiled the river, and the L-rd was showing the Egyptians what they had done in their usage of the River as a tool of death to so many Israelite children.
Thus, not only was the L-rd conducting warfare against the god of the Nile, but He was also revealing to the Egyptians, especially those with the depth of memory to recall, the reality of what they had done to their river in executing premeditated bloodshed. He was revealing reality
It behooves us, and especially those of us with the Redemptive Gift of Exhorter, to recall that the L-rd knows reality and is capable of showing us things as the really are and not just as we wish them to be.
It does us all good to hunt for reality, gang, especially with the G-d Who Reveals Reality.
The Exhorter who hunts for reality in private with the L-rd, is the Exhorter who has much positive earned authority in the realm of the Redemptive Gift. And the chances are high they will avoid many public embarassments that are completely avoidable.
As the Prophet is designed to hunt for Design, the Exhorter is designed to hunt for Reality and to have a disproportionate harvest when they do hunt for Reality. Father is willing to reveal reality as is truly is and not merely as we want it. The question is, like Yeshua the Exhorter, are you willing to go through what it takes to develop the chops necessary to handle Reality as it is progressively revealed?
That is the work of the earlier manifestations of Reality. That is the work of intimately knowing Sowing and Reaping, and Pain and Suffering.
And in that suffering, pain, and knowing Reality, there is a capacity to know G-d in an intimacy that few will ever want. This dynamic and type of intimacy is something that the Prophet and the Mercy and the Teacher cannot easily grasp.
I would contend the Exhorter was designed more deeply than the other gifts to know the G-d Who Moves In Suffering and Pain. They were designed to fellowship with Him in suffering, and to find a joy in suffering that many others would find absolutely perverse.
It takes two to make a community, and Exhorters are designed for community. And their chiefest community, the community that will NOT abandon them, is the community of the Trinity. And given joy is what strengthens the believer, and joy is the emotion of community, the easiest community for an Exhorter to form, if they want it, is community with the Trinity.
Moses, who was abandoned at birth, though not willingly, was a baby in the bulrushes. Who knows how long he remained in that basket until he encountered another human? For any Exhorter that first test of abandonment or separation from humanity is often the most keenly painful and rough.
This is why being able to form community with G-d is the most critical early on in the life of the young Exhorter.