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Scripture for the day: Exodus 3:10 “Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
Thought for the day: Forty years! That’s how long it had been since Moses had heard from the Lord. Forty years he’d spent tending someone else’s sheep, in someone else’s land, for someone else’s profit. For forty years Moses had watched as one day slipped into another, year after year passed with no relief from the boredom and misery. But those forty years paled in comparison to the 400 years the children of Israel had spent in slavery with no deliverance even on the horizon.
Suddenly, when Moses had become convinced that he’d wasted his entire life waiting on the God who didn’t come, as he made his way around an outcropping of stone in the desert, there was a bush, ablaze with a fire that was not consumed. He stopped to see this strange occurrence and was immediately confronted by the Lord Himself. Look at their conversation for a moment.
In verse seven, God said, “I have seen the misery of My people in Egypt.” Again in verse 7; “I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers.” Verse 8: “I am concerned about their suffering.” Verse 9: “I have come down to rescue them.” Verse 10: “So now go, I am sending you to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.”
“Wait! Stop! What happened to all those things You were going to do? If you’re going to rescue all those lost souls, Lord, then You do it.” I can almost hear the great prophet Moses arguing within himself as he begins to grasp the magnitude of the commission he’s just been given. We can see it in his answer, “Who am I?”
Who am I? That response was the result of 40 years of humility lessons. Moses was brought up in the house of Pharaoh, educated in the best schools, given every privilege that association with royalty could provide. When he was in Egypt, his attitude was “Look who I am!” Now, after all those years spent listening to bleating sheep and working for someone else, his response has become, “I’ve lost any influence I might have had. I’ve been stripped of my royalty, my image, and my self-respect. Who am I?”
The story of Moses is, or should be, the story of us all. Only when we’ve come to the end of ourselves, when we’ve realized how little we have to offer, how helpless we are to do as He’s asked us to do, can we become useful in His Kingdom plan. Once Moses had come to that place, God said, “I will be with you … you shall serve God on this mountain.” Once we come to the place of utter helplessness, God will provide the same assurance; we will become the empty vessel through which the Lord can pour out His power and His love.
I don’t know what God may have put on your heart. Most of us never find ourselves in a Moses type position, where we’re called upon to lead an entire nation of people from slavery to the Promised Land. At the same time, all of us are called to share the freedom that comes from deliverance from the slavery of sin.
Wherever God has you, whatever He has you doing right now, remember that the only way to be truly effective is to accept the fact of your own inability to fulfill the smallest task in the Kingdom. As Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing.” He also said, “With God, all things are possible.”
Now go take on your world. - Bill