20 October 2013

The Burning Bush (Moses' Story, Day 20)



 Next time you're feeling tempted to worry about your finances?  Just think about Jochabed.  One morning, she hides her baby in a basket in the river to save his life.  That afternoon, she's getting paid by Pharaoh's daughter to nurse her own son.  God always has a way.

God chose Moses, this slave-boy turned royalty who knows the air of freedom as well as oppression, to lead His people out of their bondage.  

Moses must have known his calling, but with all his royal education behind him, he forgot to wait on God's timing and be strong in God's strength.  In a few short verses, we learn two things:  Moses is loyal to the people of God rather than the Egyptians, and he's willing to kill to protect a mistreated slave.  

He'll have to learn to value human life before he can accomplish what God set him apart to do.  God's work can't be done by breaking God's law.

It's the self-trusting Moses who runs away, perhaps realizing it would be better for him to be out of the picture completely than to be in danger of taking matters into his own hands again.  And just like that, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob makes room for him in a priest's house, where he can still worship the true God and learn at His feet.

(Jethro is the priest of the Midianites, who are also descendants of Abraham through Keturah, the wife he married after Sarah died.  We know he must be a godly man; later when the Israelites are traveling through the wilderness, Jethro visits Moses, and gives good counsel to help Moses manage the large group of people.)

While watching the sheep one day, a burning bush catches Moses' eye.  Not so much because it's burning, but because it isn't burning up.  Approaching the scene, Moses comes in direct contact with the God of the universe, and this once self-trusting, Egyptian trained man now has so little trust in himself that he cannot dare to trust himself to the command of the Lord.

He has drawn closer to the Creator than ever before out in this wilderness.  Now instead of worrying over the wrath of a Pharaoh or devising his own schemes to start an impressive slave revolt, Moses is more worried he will get so much in the way of God's purposes that the people will never agree to follow him out of slavery.

And maybe that's the place we all need to be?  So drawn to the Savior during our seemingly empty desert lives that we cannot imagine anything great from ourselves.  So completely reliant upon the arm of His strength that finally He has something useful in us.

Yet I don't think we should try to argue with the Lord about it when He directs us out of our comfortable deserts and back into front line service.  If we have trusted Him through the deserts, we can trust Him just as much at the desert's edge, the place of daring for Jesus.

Moses' years of tending sheep in the wilderness prepared him for leading the children of Israel.  God accomplished more through those years of seeming emptiness than the plenty of Egypt could ever have done, and when the desert years were over for Moses as a lone man, he came forth as a leader strong in the ways of God and fulfilled one of the greatest callings ever entrusted to a human being.

Perhaps it's time we let God manage our desert training, content as we learn to trust ourselves less, yet willing to move forward in His service whenever and however He may indicate.

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1 comment:

  1. I've been in that desert place and still there - although I don't feel as deep in it any more- learning to trust God more and more. God bless, Lisa :O)

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