Beyond The Ordinary: Inspiration For Our Time

By Francella Daniels- Baker

Beyond the Ordinary is written for believers and nonbelievers around the world who will gain courage and strength as a result of reading this inspired book. The book entails the extraordinary acts of God and His dealing in the lives of those who trust Him. Each chapter concentrates on circumstances that initiates God supernatural intervention to protect, to provide, to comfort, and to deliver His people. All who call upon Him and seek His guidance will find that He is a present help in times of trouble. In addition, this book will also enlighten the readers of things that are obscure from mortal eyes, yet there are spiritual forces working behind the scenes for our good or for our demise. A very good example is Peter's miraculous deliverance from prison, written in the chapter "Eaten Alive by Worms" or "What Money Can Do to a Prophet." All these and other exciting chapters are written for enlightenments and to encourage depth in readers' faith in God. As mortals, we have fallacy and limitations, but faith gives us an anchor in God who is the source of limitless possibilities and is truly beyond the ordinary.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888322925

Book preview

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Beyond The Ordinary

Inspiration For Our Time

Francella Daniels- Baker

ISBN 979-8-88832-291-8 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88832-293-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88832-292-5 (digital)

Registration Number: TXu 2-341-944

Copyright © 2023 by Francella Daniels-Baker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Poem: The Master Artists by Francella Daniels-Baker

In the Fire but Not Consumed

A Dried Stick Turned to a Serpent

Blood and Bitter Herbs

Poem: Still Need You Now by Francella Daniels-Baker

Splitting Waters

The Song of Moses and the Hebrew Children

Medicine on a Pole

Healing of the Waters

Arguing with Animals

What Money Can Do to a Prophet

The Promise of a Deliverer

Is Four Days Too Late?

The Glory of the Cross

Poem: The Messiah by Francella Daniels-Baker

The Joy of Salvation

Eaten Alive by Worms

Triumph at Last

My Personal Experience

References

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Ithank God and the Holy Spirit for guiding me throughout this process. I also want to say special thanks to Judith Knutson for her hard work in editing my manuscript. I proudly acknowledge her as my editor and appreciate her relentless effort in helping me to achieve this accomplishment. Thanks to my family for their kind support and to Annika for her encouragement and advised. Thanks also to my publisher and all the courteous staff members whose expertise bring this book to realization.

Introduction

May all who read this book be blessed in the Lord Jesus Christ and grow more loving and trustworthy to their families and friends and endeavor to keep the peace of God abiding in their hearts. This book is written with the intention to strengthen your faith in God, encourage your hope, and stabilize your trust for a brighter future. The stories selected point to a loving and amazing God who goes beyond the ordinary to get our attention and to empower us to be the agent of transformation in the lives of many people. The spiritual world is as real as that of the physical, but only a few may be privileged to go beyond the ordinary to experience the extraordinary. God is beyond the ordinary, yet His works are seen in the ordinary for humans to explore and enjoy.

The things that we can touch, feel, see, taste, hear, and smell are readily accepted because they are seen in the natural realm of life. But what about those things that cannot be seen by mortal eyes, yet they exist? For example, we can feel the breeze and hear the sound and witness its effect upon the trees in a normal way, but we cannot catch or hold a fist of that wind, neither can we identify any color that it may have. Also when the wind trumps up a storm or becomes a hurricane, who or what provoked its anger or caused it to destroy whatever is in its path. We could easily state the scientific facts that create a storm, but we have an extraordinary God who stills the storms that even the wind and the waves obey His commands. We also have learned that the Earth rotates around the sun and that the sun is ninety-three million miles away from our planet (Solarsystem.nasa.gov.news). Yet we wake up every morning in the same place that we call home, and many times, we have to hide ourselves from the heat of the sun, lest we would sustain damage to our skin or would die by heatstroke.

As mankind has explored the air, sea, and land, they have discovered more and more important things that have baffled them. Things that they cannot truly explain because it is beyond the ordinary.

If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you heavenly things?

Christ said this to those who were following Him (John 3:12 KJV). They could not understand because they were not following Him to learn. They claimed to be believers, but in essence, they were unbelievers. They wanted to be argumentative, and most of the time, they had a plot against Him. But His disciples followed Him to learn.

Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning. (Hosea 6:3 KJV)

As the morning progresses, the day gets brighter and brighter; so will our faith in God grow as we learn to trust His words. While God is beyond the ordinary, He is still operating in the ordinary for the blessing of all His creatures that we may love and trust Him. Moses, Elijah, Abraham, the Apostle Paul, and John the Revelator and many others experienced and bore witness to the extraordinary God. And I, the writer of this book, am also one who has experienced the love and mercy of the supreme God who works beyond the ordinary to bless those who trust Him.

Poem

Poem: The Master Artists by Francella Daniels-Baker

The eye of the Artist sees,

Exactly what he wants the picture to be.

Using his fingers he brings to life,

The painting of a picture

Most wonderful magnificently bright.

(2)

The mind of the Artist knows,

How wonderful, creative the blessings he bestows.

To brighten the lives of others,

He is interested to do, each neighbor as a friend

Our sisters and brothers too.

(3)

The heart of the Artist feels,

His obligation to the human need.

Each learns to appreciate in different ways,

Our beautiful life as the sun's shining rays.

(4)

God, the master artist of creation,

In splendor He makes everything to shine.

Humans have a touch of creative power as our Maker,

Desiring that which is beautiful,

Only a pity for some, the mind is so blind.

Chapter 1

In the Fire but Not Consumed

The experience of life has many ways of teaching us important lessons, showing us our human limitations and causing us to search for answers. We are ordinary people living ordinary everyday lives. But what do we do when we embark upon situations that challenge us or threaten our very existence? We search for answers in the ordinary, and when that fails, we try to look outside ourselves, to beyond the ordinary, where some supernatural being may come to our rescue. Of course, we do not want just a supernatural being, but we want one who can help, one who has our best interest at heart and has the power to deliver us from our problems. As I read the story of Moses in the Book of Exodus, his birth and personal development, it makes me think about the what-if. The birth of Moses was ordinary, but it demanded his mother to take extraordinary measures to save his life.

Moses was born at a time when the monarch of Egypt felt threatened by the Hebrew men, who were many. And fear of them overthrowing his government became a concern, since a lot of the Hebrew women were giving birth to male children. This fear led the Pharaoh to enslave the Hebrews and decree the death of all the male children born to Hebrew mothers. The Pharaoh was the religious leader of Egypt and was the divine intermediary between the gods and the Egyptians (https//www.nationalgeogragphic.org). While the Egyptians worshipped many gods, like Osiris, Isis, and Horus, their greatest god was Amun-Ra, which was a combination of the gods. They believed Ra brought sun, light, and creation daily to the world and was the protector of the Pharaoh and that the Pharaoh also embodied Ra in the flesh (https://www.the collector.com).

However, the Hebrews worshipped only one God, the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who created the heaven and the earth. The Egyptian midwives were told to kill the male babies to keep the population of the Hebrew men low. However, when this strategy failed, the Egyptian king made an order to throw all male babies in the Nile River. What is most interesting about this order is, while we do not know how the Hebrew mothers must have felt at the time the decree was passed, we can infer that all the women complied with the order and painfully gave up their male babies to be killed or were forced to throw the babies in the river themselves.

However, despite the king's command, Moses's mother decided that she was going to keep her baby. In her arms was a mighty deliverer, but she did not know that. All she knew at the time was that she was not going to dispose of her child. Her faith in God sustained her and gave her the wisdom that she needed for the preservation of the life of her child. While it is good to obey the law of the kings, not all the time are those laws always right, especially when they are designed to cause destruction to a group or a race of people. Moses's mother had the faith to believe, and God supplied the wisdom for the extraordinary event that was about to follow. Her idea to make a basket using bulrushes, which she daubed with slime and pitch, was her way of keeping her child alive when she could hide him no longer. Her next extraordinary move of faith was timing. She noted the time when Pharaoh's daughter would come to the Nile with her maidens. And she strategically wanted to make sure that Moses was placed at a spot for his safety and that he could be easily recognized, so she placed him among the flags by the riverbank. Then she placed Miriam to watch her baby brother and taught her how to approach the princess when they discovered the child.

Moses's mother exercised faith; she made the effort to save her child, and God was about to take her beyond the ordinary. The Egyptian princess did not only fall in love with this baby boy, but she called him her son. This allowed Moses to be raised by his own mother and very well cared for by the Egyptian princess. All his needs were supplied, not only in food, clothing, and shelter, but his education and training to gain the secular aspect of leadership. Moses knew who he was because God showed him favor in preserving his life and allowed him to grow up with his own mother until he was old enough to stand on his own. Amid the fire of persecution and threat, faith shone, and Moses's life was preserved to deliver the Hebrews from the bondage of slavery. But not even Moses knew that he was the chosen one whom God would use to deliver His people. He acquired all the education and training that was available in Egypt, but God was about to take him beyond the ordinary.

According to the biblical account, Moses was about forty years old when he saw one of his Hebrew brethren being beaten by an Egyptian. In a moment of anger, he was filled with righteous indignation because of the suffering of his people and the unfair treatment they had to endure, and he killed the Egyptian. The wrongful act was later exposed when he tried to correct one of the Hebrews who was at war with his own fellowmen. Moses had to flee Egypt to spare his life and was now in a land where his employment was to tend sheep. Moses had to learn how to tenderly care for the sheep in order to gather the patience and sympathy that he would need to care for God's people, as Psalm 100:3 says, We are…the sheep of his pasture.

Here Moses was now in the school of Christ, and nature was his lesson book. In this lesson book, the sky spoke to him at night, drawing his attention away from the ordinary. Leaving the then-modern society to tend sheep could not