By Chris WittsSunday 1 Jul 2018Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 4 minutes
Sometimes we can think we have nothing much to offer God. If a survey was to be taken asking the question, Do you know what purpose God has for your life? I have a feeling there would be a big answer saying, I’m not sure.
One of the most important questions to answer in this life is, Do you know what God wants you to do? It would be a very sad thing, I think, to get to the end of your life having never discovered your purpose. Yet I suspect there are many just like that. We need to discover and fulfil God’s purpose for our own lives.
Did you know that we serve God by serving others? He has given us natural gifts and abilities to use for his honour—not our selfish ambitions. It was Theodore Roosevelt who once said: “Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though chequered by failure, than to take rank with those who neither suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat”. The words are a bit old-fashioned, but it’s clear to me he means it’s best to achieve something positive in life, even though risks are involved, than to try nothing. It’s always safer to do nothing, isn’t it?
No matter what your life purpose is, if it is God’s will for you, God will always help you accomplish that plan. But we have to do our part in finding the plan and acting on it. Life is a journey of changing scenes, like a pilgrimage. We need to move on. I’m reminded of the well-known story from the Old Testament of Moses, who was God’s man for the time.
Moses Felt Not Up to the Job
He knew what it meant to suffer and experience the highs of life. He was a Hebrew raised in Pharaoh’s household, who one day killed an Egyptian. He ran for his life and took refuge in Midian. He settled there quietly away from the public gaze aged 80 years. He was a husband and a father with important responsibilities, but God had other plans.
His peaceful life was suddenly interrupted when God spoke to him from a burning bush in the desert: “I am sending you to lead my people out of slavery”. It was no dream—God had heard the distress calls from his people (the Israelites) in Egypt, and he had a divine plan. And it needed Moses. But Moses was not about to agree to this huge request and spoke three words—’Who am I?’—that reveal his utter reluctance to get involved: “Who am I to go to the King and lead your people out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11).
How could Moses be called back into this dangerous situation to bring the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt? There must be some other way, but not this. But God wasn’t about to give up: You’re asking the wrong questions and approaching this issue from the wrong direction. Don’t focus on yourself, but on the One who calls you. I, the Lord Almighty, will be with you. Here was Moses first mistake. He assumed God would leave everything to him, and that he was on his own in this awesome and frightening project.
Moses Tried Many Excuses
His next excuse was a good one: I have never been a good speaker. I wasn’t one before You spoke to me, and I’m not one now. I am slow at speaking, and I can never think of what to say. But the Lord answered: “What makes people able to speak or makes them deaf or unable to speak? Don’t you know that I am the one who does these things? Now go! When you speak, I will be with you and give you the words to say” (Exodus 4:10-12). But Moses was still shaking in his boots, “Lord, please send someone else to do it” (Exodus 4:13).
Moses still had trouble realising this was God’s mission, not his. Its success was not based on Moses, but the assurance that God would work through Moses, and the mission was God’s mission. This task of freeing the Hebrew slaves from Egypt was God’s task, not Moses. Only when he learned that lesson would he be prepared to go back to Egypt to carry out his commission.
What About Us?
Sometimes like Moses we respond to God by saying, Who am I? What happens if he were to ask us to undertake a specific job for him? Would we be glad to obey, or would we like Moses make one excuse after the other. We must remember that God assures us he will go with us, and the mission—whatever it may be—is his, not ours. We may focus on the abilities—or lack of—and how inadequate we feel; he keeps bringing us back to his resources, guidance and strength.
When he says, I am the Lord and, I will be with you, we need to remember they are his pledge—the task remains his, even though he has chosen to share it with us.