“When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and they said, “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.” –Exodus 5:20-23
I can only imagine the despair and confusion that Moses felt in these moments. He didn’t even want to be there in the first place…between his fear of speech and his absence from Egypt for the past while, who was he to come and lead these people out of a life he had never even lived? But after every excuse in the book here he was, commissioned to lead God’s people out…and at this point hope of escape seemed slim. Instead of letting them go, Pharaoh increased their work even more, and now Moses’ own people were angry with him, wishing judgment on him and Aaron. As for Aaron, what was he feeling? He was totally dragged into this as Moses’ spokes man. How unfair was it that now he was being blamed for all of this when he wasn’t even the one originally called for the task? Where was God? Why was He allowing this to happen? He promised deliverance…why wasn’t it coming? These are all things I never thought about until I sat down and read through this passage tonight. It’s so easy to read Bible stories without letting myself get emotionally involved and placing myself in the shoes of the people that actually lived these moments out. But tonight I placed myself in their sandals, and was faced with one of the toughest questions yet: If Moses and Aaron had known all the oppression, all the heartache, all the complaining, all the hot days and freezing nights spent wandering in the desert that were to come, would they still have agreed to the task and gone to Egypt? I don’t know. I would like to think that they still would have followed, but I really couldn’t blame them if they didn’t. I couldn’t blame them if they plugged their ears and walked away from the burning bush, home to some nice hot soup with their families. To comfort. To stability. To the known. I couldn’t blame them because I see myself doing that a lot too. Yes, God hasn’t asked me to lead His people out of an oppressed country and through a desert to a promised land (at least not yet). But there are a lot of other things He has asked me to do, that I conveniently find excuses for. When He tells me to talk to the person that is standing alone I’m quick to find any other person to converse with, while completely ignoring the one person I know He wants me to invest in. When He calls I cover my ears, when He plops an opportunity in front of me I shut my eyes, and when He opens a door in the right direction I take a left turn. I have a never ending amount of pathetic excuses that I rotate through, and sometimes I don’t even give an excuse…I just say no. What are you saying no to? Is it a friendship, singleness, marriage, fostering, adoption, homeschooling, public-schooling, foreign mission, or local outreach? I know you have excuses that seem valid, like “That would be great but I/we just don’t have the time.”, or, “That sounds amazing but it’s just not for me/us”. But when we put our excuses aside we are left with the truth, that there is an entire world full of oppressed people and God has set a forest on fire to get our attention. Pick up your staff, and march back to Egypt. Yes, there will be opposition and persecution. Yes, there will be a sea in the way and a desert to cross before you reach rest. But He will be your cloud by day and pillar by night. He will be your manna from above. He will be your water from the rock. Let’s surrender our excuses. We don’t have to be something extraordinary for God to use us…the amazing thing about Him is that He doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called. So let Him qualify you. Let Him part the sea that stands in your way, let Him change the hearts of the people around you as you persist in prayer and action, and let God make a Moses out of you.
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