Last chapter, God comes down and reveals to Moses that He will be using him to deliver the Israelites.
God has come prepared. He has a plan, and He's waiting for Moses to co-sign on the execution.
However, Moses wants nothing to do with it and tries to dissuade God from using him; but He doesn't budge. Moses' excuses did not matter because like He said in the beginning, "I will be with you."
The Great I AM said, "I will be with you," and all Moses could focus on was his resume, his failures, his shortcomings.
Moses was pretty self-centered and couldn't see beyond himself to realize that God could and would take care of everything that would trip him up.
What if they don't believe me? "Here are three signs that you can show them."
What if the pharaoh doesn't listen? "I know he won't, and I'll show him to obey."
What if the words fail me? "Who gave you your mouth? Was it not I?"
God remains patient through Moses' babbling because none of it mattered.
His reputation didn't matter.
His rap sheet didn't matter.
His stutter didn't matter.
God knows who He calls. He's unsurprised by our hang-ups and short-comings. He knows and still chooses us, still wants us.
There is nothing in us too broken that cannot be redeemed by God. There is nothing in us too broken that can stop God's power from working through us. Nothing.
But Moses doesn't know that. All he sees is himself, which obscures his vision of the living God. So God sends Aaron his brother to shield Moses from confronting his fears and insecurities upfront.
With his comfort zone intact, Moses goes back to Egypt with his family, and his wife saves him from the wrath of God by circumcising her son. Afterwards, he meets with Aaron in the desert to rehearse the plan.
And the fourth chapter ends with God's plan unfolding the way He planned.
Exodus 3
Sunday, December 23, 2018
I've written on Exodus 3 and heard about Exodus 3 many times that I can regurgitate something without rereading the passage. And sometimes that can happen to us, where we become familiar with something that we don't expect to learn or experience anything new. We rely on the old, but God is always going to the next, doing something new.
It takes humility and a working sense of wonder or expectation to be surprised; to let go of the old and lean into the unknown. To say, "Here I am," with an open and willing heart. To not get sucked into the comfort of yesterday.
I could go on with the analogies, but I'll stop to say that the word, God's word is alive and well. It's been approached a hundred billion times and it's as fresh as when God first spoke, "Let there be light." If you allow it, the bible won't become a routine. It's too sharp for that.
Talking about routine, Moses is stuck in one. He tends to his father-in-law's sheep until he sees a burning bush. And not one to mind his own business, Moses draws close to the phenomenon because the bush is on fire but not burning up.
Nosy man!
When he draws close, God calls out and orders him to remove his sandals because he just entered a holy space; he just entered the Holies of Holy.
(Because of the cross, I pray that we all realize that because God chooses to rest in us, we are holy; we are set apart not because of anything we do or anything we are but because He is here in us. We are not ordinary humans taking up space. We are His home.)
Then God shares with Moses that He's heard and seen what His people have gone through, and He plans on sending Moses down there to set everything straight.
Next, Moses says what anyone in their "right" mind would say when the Creator extends an invitation to join Him on a thrilling (horrifying) adventure: "Who me?"
And God says, "I will be with you," but He also says the best line I think He has ever said when Moses asks for a calling card. With these next few words, I see God speaking into a mega phone and dropping it because what else needs to be said when He says this: "I AM WHO I AM."
Chills. every. single. time.
It's a full explanation even when it feels like it's not.
He is who He is.
He's the one that has seen that and has heard this and still chose to send His Son to the cross to die for a sinner like me and you.
He's the one who does exceedingly and abundantly all that we can ask or think. He is better than we've imagined too.
He's the one who spoke the world into existence, and at the mention of His name, all knees will bow down and all tongues will confess that He is Lord because there is no one like Him anywhere else in the universe.
And so much more. His name holds all that, all of His story, His being, His power.
Yahweh: I AM WHO I AM.
And He comes in the form of a burning bush to meet with a man who, as we will see next chapter, has written himself off.
But we'll see that God has a plan.
Remember that the next time He asks you to come along with Him on a journey you don't feel quite equipped to do.
It takes humility and a working sense of wonder or expectation to be surprised; to let go of the old and lean into the unknown. To say, "Here I am," with an open and willing heart. To not get sucked into the comfort of yesterday.
I could go on with the analogies, but I'll stop to say that the word, God's word is alive and well. It's been approached a hundred billion times and it's as fresh as when God first spoke, "Let there be light." If you allow it, the bible won't become a routine. It's too sharp for that.
Talking about routine, Moses is stuck in one. He tends to his father-in-law's sheep until he sees a burning bush. And not one to mind his own business, Moses draws close to the phenomenon because the bush is on fire but not burning up.
Nosy man!
When he draws close, God calls out and orders him to remove his sandals because he just entered a holy space; he just entered the Holies of Holy.
(Because of the cross, I pray that we all realize that because God chooses to rest in us, we are holy; we are set apart not because of anything we do or anything we are but because He is here in us. We are not ordinary humans taking up space. We are His home.)
Then God shares with Moses that He's heard and seen what His people have gone through, and He plans on sending Moses down there to set everything straight.
Next, Moses says what anyone in their "right" mind would say when the Creator extends an invitation to join Him on a thrilling (horrifying) adventure: "Who me?"
And God says, "I will be with you," but He also says the best line I think He has ever said when Moses asks for a calling card. With these next few words, I see God speaking into a mega phone and dropping it because what else needs to be said when He says this: "I AM WHO I AM."
Chills. every. single. time.
It's a full explanation even when it feels like it's not.
He is who He is.
He's the one that has seen that and has heard this and still chose to send His Son to the cross to die for a sinner like me and you.
He's the one who does exceedingly and abundantly all that we can ask or think. He is better than we've imagined too.
He's the one who spoke the world into existence, and at the mention of His name, all knees will bow down and all tongues will confess that He is Lord because there is no one like Him anywhere else in the universe.
And so much more. His name holds all that, all of His story, His being, His power.
Yahweh: I AM WHO I AM.
And He comes in the form of a burning bush to meet with a man who, as we will see next chapter, has written himself off.
But we'll see that God has a plan.
Remember that the next time He asks you to come along with Him on a journey you don't feel quite equipped to do.
Exodus 2:11-25
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Moses, the adopted son of the pharaoh's daughter, grows up. And he goes through quite a bit of growing pains in this part of his story.
He peeps on an Egyptian beating on a fellow Hebrew, and he kills the offender when it seems as though no one sees. But someone did. The very next day, he sees a pair of Hebrews fighting. He tries to intervene, but the offending one turns on Moses and accuses, "Are you gonna kill me like you killed the Egyptian?"
That statement shakes Moses to the core, but not as much as what happens next.
The pharaoh finds out and wants to kill Moses, but Moses runs into the desert because he is no fool.
But he doesn't stop with the intervening. Luckily this time is a charm. When he helps the women water their flock, they bring him to their father's home for some hospitality and a wife (and a little while later, a son too)!
Cut back to Egypt: the Israelites are miserable under the yoke of slavery imposed by the Egyptians, and they cry out to God.
God hears, He sees and He remembers His covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's about to make moves in Exodus 3.
God is literally the God of promises, and He's a keeper of promises. He's the God of fulfilled promises. But in this chapter, when I read "His covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," I see that He's willing to go the distance with His promises. In Genesis 15, He told Abraham, "I'll make you the father of nations," which in and of itself is a huge promise. So huge that He said it again to Isaac, then again to Jacob.
(What mantle does He want to fulfill in you? In your family? In your generation?)
He doesn't mind reminding us of what He wants to do in us and through us. He doesn't want us to forget that what He has planned for us is so much bigger than us, and it doesn't start or end with us. It begins with Him. It also ends with Him.
We just get to be a part of the story.
He peeps on an Egyptian beating on a fellow Hebrew, and he kills the offender when it seems as though no one sees. But someone did. The very next day, he sees a pair of Hebrews fighting. He tries to intervene, but the offending one turns on Moses and accuses, "Are you gonna kill me like you killed the Egyptian?"
That statement shakes Moses to the core, but not as much as what happens next.
The pharaoh finds out and wants to kill Moses, but Moses runs into the desert because he is no fool.
But he doesn't stop with the intervening. Luckily this time is a charm. When he helps the women water their flock, they bring him to their father's home for some hospitality and a wife (and a little while later, a son too)!
Cut back to Egypt: the Israelites are miserable under the yoke of slavery imposed by the Egyptians, and they cry out to God.
God hears, He sees and He remembers His covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's about to make moves in Exodus 3.
God is literally the God of promises, and He's a keeper of promises. He's the God of fulfilled promises. But in this chapter, when I read "His covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," I see that He's willing to go the distance with His promises. In Genesis 15, He told Abraham, "I'll make you the father of nations," which in and of itself is a huge promise. So huge that He said it again to Isaac, then again to Jacob.
(What mantle does He want to fulfill in you? In your family? In your generation?)
He doesn't mind reminding us of what He wants to do in us and through us. He doesn't want us to forget that what He has planned for us is so much bigger than us, and it doesn't start or end with us. It begins with Him. It also ends with Him.
We just get to be a part of the story.
Exodus 2:1-10
Friday, December 21, 2018
Second day of this journey, and when I opened up the bible this morning, I wondered what if I don't get anything today like I did yesterday, should I still come here and write, and I think I should.
Discipline doesn't come with feelings or revelations; it comes through the grueling ordinary, through normal's mundane.
So here we go!
In the beginning of Exodus 2, a boy met a girl and married her. Their second child was a boy, and remember that they were under the mandate of killing all the Hebrew boys. But the mother couldn't cast him off into the Nile to die. Instead she kept him for three months, and when she couldn't hide him anymore, she hid him among the reeds in a sturdy basket.
His sister, however, couldn't let him go. She stayed nearby and came in close when the pharaoh's daughter found the baby boy among the reed. The sister then proposed that she find a nurse for the child, and the pharaoh's daughter agreed, and the mother and the baby are united again for a little while.
In the Daily Grace Co. devotional, she wrote that the pharaoh set out to kill the sons but underestimated the daughters, and that truth just warms my heart. And not only that, but there's nothing that can take us out; there will always be a way out for us. In this case, the women were the way out of the pharaoh's cruelty.
However, I want to land on the incredible sacrifice of the mother: she had to let go of Moses twice in hopes that he would have a better life away from her. She couldn't envision what would come of her baby boy; who would have thought that her son would be adopted into royalty, into the same royal family that demanded his death?
No, in her reality was certain misery if Moses would have stayed with her, that's what she knew for sure. But the rest was faith and hope.
To let go is to be filled with faith and hope that on the other side of the unknown is better than the known and even the imagined that's in our heads.
Discipline doesn't come with feelings or revelations; it comes through the grueling ordinary, through normal's mundane.
So here we go!
In the beginning of Exodus 2, a boy met a girl and married her. Their second child was a boy, and remember that they were under the mandate of killing all the Hebrew boys. But the mother couldn't cast him off into the Nile to die. Instead she kept him for three months, and when she couldn't hide him anymore, she hid him among the reeds in a sturdy basket.
His sister, however, couldn't let him go. She stayed nearby and came in close when the pharaoh's daughter found the baby boy among the reed. The sister then proposed that she find a nurse for the child, and the pharaoh's daughter agreed, and the mother and the baby are united again for a little while.
In the Daily Grace Co. devotional, she wrote that the pharaoh set out to kill the sons but underestimated the daughters, and that truth just warms my heart. And not only that, but there's nothing that can take us out; there will always be a way out for us. In this case, the women were the way out of the pharaoh's cruelty.
However, I want to land on the incredible sacrifice of the mother: she had to let go of Moses twice in hopes that he would have a better life away from her. She couldn't envision what would come of her baby boy; who would have thought that her son would be adopted into royalty, into the same royal family that demanded his death?
No, in her reality was certain misery if Moses would have stayed with her, that's what she knew for sure. But the rest was faith and hope.
To let go is to be filled with faith and hope that on the other side of the unknown is better than the known and even the imagined that's in our heads.
Exodus 1
Thursday, December 20, 2018
I'm doing a bible study from Daily Daily Co., and I thought that sharing on here what I'm learning will help me be consistent in both my devotional and my blog.
Today, I delved into Exodus 1, where the Israelites settled into Egypt after a famine nearly wiped them out. In this next phase, they grew into the promise of God, fruitful and multiplying in a land that was not their own.
And the pharaoh, who did not know the Joseph who saved the nation, nor the God who blessed the Israelites, peeped this progress, noticed the fulfillment of the promise, and grew fearful. Because he did not know God, he became afraid of what God was doing in the Israelites and was convinced that their growth would be detrimental to Egypt, not realizing that he took a step towards completing the self-fulfilling prophecy when he enslaved the foreigners.
Yet, they just grew even more under the oppression. As the Egyptians watched the Israelites' multiply, the pharaoh came up with a more sinister plan to cripple the Israelites: kill off their baby boys.
All this because he saw their potential, he saw God's blessing although he knew nothing about God or His plan.
And this moment in their history wasn't the only time that the enemy had a better gauge on what the Israelites could do, or what God could do in them.
In Numbers 13, the spies were convinced that they were like grasshoppers to the giants that occupied Canaan.
Yet a few chapters later, the Moabites looked over the cliff and in every direction, the Israelites camped out on every inch of the sand that the land could not be seen by the Moabites.
In Joshua 2, the two spies went into the fortified city, Jericho, and found that they were terrified of the Israelites; God wasn't telling a lie: Jericho was theirs for the taking.
There are many instances where the Israelites underestimated what God could do through them; but not their enemies.
The enemies saw clearly; they sometimes had a better vantage point than the Israelites and tried their hardest to throw them off track. The Egyptians threw everything at the Israelites, and God still blessed them through the hardship, through the oppression.
The king of Moab paid someone to curse them, and God gave the man words of blessings to speak over the Israelites.
God can still bless you in the unexpected place and in the hard place. Your oppression and difficulties do not and cannot stop Him from doing a work in you.
When it's hard, it is not silly to believe that He can still do exceedingly, abundantly more than you can ask or imagine.
Yes, in the impossible place, in the discomfort between the rock and a hard place, God will meet you here, guide you here, help you here. He'll save you here.
Today, I delved into Exodus 1, where the Israelites settled into Egypt after a famine nearly wiped them out. In this next phase, they grew into the promise of God, fruitful and multiplying in a land that was not their own.
And the pharaoh, who did not know the Joseph who saved the nation, nor the God who blessed the Israelites, peeped this progress, noticed the fulfillment of the promise, and grew fearful. Because he did not know God, he became afraid of what God was doing in the Israelites and was convinced that their growth would be detrimental to Egypt, not realizing that he took a step towards completing the self-fulfilling prophecy when he enslaved the foreigners.
Yet, they just grew even more under the oppression. As the Egyptians watched the Israelites' multiply, the pharaoh came up with a more sinister plan to cripple the Israelites: kill off their baby boys.
All this because he saw their potential, he saw God's blessing although he knew nothing about God or His plan.
And this moment in their history wasn't the only time that the enemy had a better gauge on what the Israelites could do, or what God could do in them.
In Numbers 13, the spies were convinced that they were like grasshoppers to the giants that occupied Canaan.
Yet a few chapters later, the Moabites looked over the cliff and in every direction, the Israelites camped out on every inch of the sand that the land could not be seen by the Moabites.
In Joshua 2, the two spies went into the fortified city, Jericho, and found that they were terrified of the Israelites; God wasn't telling a lie: Jericho was theirs for the taking.
There are many instances where the Israelites underestimated what God could do through them; but not their enemies.
The enemies saw clearly; they sometimes had a better vantage point than the Israelites and tried their hardest to throw them off track. The Egyptians threw everything at the Israelites, and God still blessed them through the hardship, through the oppression.
The king of Moab paid someone to curse them, and God gave the man words of blessings to speak over the Israelites.
God can still bless you in the unexpected place and in the hard place. Your oppression and difficulties do not and cannot stop Him from doing a work in you.
When it's hard, it is not silly to believe that He can still do exceedingly, abundantly more than you can ask or imagine.
Yes, in the impossible place, in the discomfort between the rock and a hard place, God will meet you here, guide you here, help you here. He'll save you here.
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