Keep sharing good news without ads.
A brief bit of encouragement for the journey from God's Word. Today's Scripture reading: Exodus 3-4 / Matthew 19 / Psalm 19
To support this devotional ministry: https://www.faithbaptiststerling.com/give/
Music: "Awaken the Dawn" by Stanton Lanier https://www.stantonlanier.com CCLI #20109360
Well, good morning to you. I'd like to encourage you today with a few thoughts from Exodus chapters 3 and 4, and specifically this.
God can do anything. God can do whatever he wants to do to deliver his people, to solve insurmountable problems, and so on and so forth.
When you think about what the people of Israel are going through in the book of Exodus, and they have been going through for quite some time.
They're in bondage in Egypt. The Egyptians, Pharaoh and the Egyptians, are just ruthless, and they're brutal.
They've been actively trying to kill Jewish babies,
Israeli babies, and they've just been harsh and cruel, and the bondage is bitter.
God could just speak a word and the Egyptians be disintegrated, and the people of Israel totally free.
But God doesn't normally work that way. He doesn't normally just perform these miraculous things independent of man's involvement.
Rarely does he do so. Typically, normally what he does is he raises up people to take leadership positions and to lead his people in certain ways that bring about their deliverance, and this is the case with Moses.
Notice also that God uses flawed people. Moses is not like pristine, perfect character.
Moses was guilty of taking a man's life.
He was defending somebody in the process, but he knew he was guilty, he knew he did wrong, and he had to flee, and this was a long time ago, decades ago.
Now Moses is 80 years old, and he's taking care of some sheep backside of a desert, and he sees this burning bush, and out of this burning bush,
God calls this man, who he knows, Moses himself knows, he's not qualified to do this.
He can't handle this. He can't do this. Here's another important point to note, that whom
God calls to a task, he equips for that task, and that's very clear when you get to chapter 4 and verses 1 to 12.
Moses has raised all kinds of objections as to why he's not the guy to do this. I can't do this,
I can't do this, I can't do this. God says, look, take that staff that's in your hand, throw it to the ground, throws it to the ground, it becomes a serpent.
Moses is scared. The Lord says, grab ahold of the serpent. He grabs ahold of the serpent, and it becomes a staff in his hand.
What's the point? What is God communicating to Moses? He says to Moses, I'll be with you.
I will equip you for the task to which I've called you, and so God does.
God takes flawed people, nobody's perfect, God does not use perfect people, there aren't any, so God uses flawed people, and he molds them and shapes them and equips them for the task to which he calls them.
Take encouragement in that for your calling, whatever that might happen to be, as a dad, as a husband, as a businessman, as a laborer, whatever your calling is,
God's equipped you for that calling to care for others, to provide for others, to meet the needs of others.
Maybe you're a housewife, maybe you're a mom, maybe you're a grandparent, whatever lot you find yourself in life,
God has equipped you for that, and he will use you as you yield yourself to him to that end.
Our Father and our God, I pray that you would help us to realize that those whom you call, you equip, and as you have placed us in our various areas of responsibilities, you will equip us to be the people that you want us to be, to accomplish the purposes that you have for us to do.
I pray that we'd be faithful in doing that which you've given us to do, and this we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.