“…and now the cry of the Israelites has reached Me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to
bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt”
And God said, “I will be with you…”
We usually think of Moses as someone in the top league of spiritual greats. In terms of what God did through him, he was a profoundly significant character. Yet, ironically, he was very much a reluctant leader. He would have preferred anybody but himself to have been chosen for this momentous role. Inside, he felt insecure, timid and fearful – does that ring any bells in your life? If so, then you’re probably just the sort of person God wants to use!
We know from other verses in the Bible that proud people don’t get to be first pick – for example see Proverbs 16:18-19, Luke 14:7-11 and 1 Corinthians 1:26-29. Why not? Well, they’re usually people who want to be in control of everything and who may manipulate others to get what they want. They usually want the credit or glory for an achievement to go to themselves. They find it difficult to trust others to do things. They tend to be very opinionated and take their opinion as being the right one. They may look down on others who are different in some way to themselves. The characteristics of the proud person make it difficult (but not impossible) to be used by God.
But why choose Moses for the job? He’d never done anything like this before, he was scared to bits of Pharaoh the king, he doubted whether his own people would follow him and, to cap it all, he had a speech impediment! Not a great CV. It’s interesting also to note that God didn’t disagree that his credentials were poor – His answer to Moses’ objections was a simple: “I will be with you…”. So it wasn’t that God was just going to butter him up and pretend he was something special – He was all too well aware of Moses’ shortcomings and did nothing to try and convince him otherwise. In His wisdom, God knew that Moses would have to simply trust Him step-by-step, situation-by-situation until all had been fulfilled. In that place of trust and weakness, he would have to stay open, flexible and responsive to all that God wanted to do through him. Indeed, he cried out to God on numerous occasions.
Over the years, I’ve found myself in many situations where I’ve felt completely inadequate and asked God – “why me?”. I’ve known many troubled days and sleepless nights. I’m sure some of you have gone through similar experiences. At times like this, we can look to a guy like Moses who achieved great things by the end of his life, not because he ‘had the goods’; in fact, quite the opposite. But God, nevertheless, used him in amazing ways and He wants to use you too!
DetailsLarry
June 19th, 2007
One Response to “Down2Earth: 4. Why me?”
Leave a Reply
June 24th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Think we often forget about the weaknesses of some of the characters of the bible, quite refreshing to remind ourselves they were not too different from us.