Dependence

Have you ever acted in faith and things turned out very differently than expected? Maybe you thought God was going to deliver you in an area and then the bottom dropped out. Instead of a deliverance you met failure. Are these seasons part of God’s plan? The thing I didn’t realize about faith is that sometimes the process isn’t a straight line to the goal. There are twists and turns along the way. That makes it faith. At least it allows for a deeper kind of faith.

When Moses found himself in exile for 40 years, that had to be a shock. How could he fulfill his purpose now? And for 40 years there simply was not a way for him to go back and rescue the Israelites. That’s a long time to go believing that he had failed his purpose. Now I have spent the past few posts going into that season for Moses, but it builds, and I think we need to understand that all the odds were against Moses actually leading Israel out of Egypt when God appears to him in the burning bush. If Moses would have been of the same frame of mind he was in at age 40, when God said to go, Moses might have jumped up and went-no questions asked.

That actually would have been a really big problem, because even though Moses experienced a great failure, he learned something really important. He was not going to be able to fulfill the plan God had for him on his own strength, wisdom, and ability. But he also wasn’t seeing what it took to succeed. So when God appeared to him at the burning bush telling him it is time, Moses starts telling God all his insecurities. Now this might sound to some like a bunch of excuses, but it is actually a really important step for Moses, because he is dealing with some things that he didn’t understand the first time.

If you read the encounter between Moses and God at the burning bush you will see Moses asking God some vital questions.

You see if Moses hadn’t asked these questions, he wouldn’t have known that he was not the focal part of the mission. Every one of the answers God gives is that God is sovereign, He is present, and He is leading Moses. When Moses attempted to help the Israelites at age 40, he went in based on his own understanding of what the situation required. But when you study the plagues what is evident is that Moses did not have the creativity or the power to do what was required to lead Israel out of Egypt. Moses didn’t know how to make the day sky dark as night, nor how to do any of the other plagues. That took the power and creative might of the Creator Himself.

So when Moses came before God, what he was telling God was that he was not capable of doing what was required to free the Israelites. God didn’t disagree with Moses inability. Instead He told Moses, “I Am.”

God was capable. God had the plan. God had the understanding of what the situation required. And God had the power to do what was necessary. God wasn’t asking Moses to put himself in God’s position. He wasn’t even asking Moses to depend on his own strength to do what God was calling him to do. When Moses said, “Lord, I am slow of speech and tongue.” God replied, “Who made your tongue?” God knew that His strength and might was sufficient for the task, and that what Moses needed to do here was to be fully dependent on Him. That’s still our job today. We may be weak and small, but the Lord is not. So as we face our battles, our job is to learn to be not more independent, but more dependent on God’s strength above our own.