Moses: Learning To Trust The God Who Leads - Part 3
Exodus 3:1-21
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
I am excited to bring us on to week three of our Moses series. The last couple of weeks, we kind of got a jump right into Moses. In the first week that Pastor Andre shared, Moses couldn't even talk. So by week three, Moses is about 40 years old. It is a big jump. But we are in our Moses series, and really what the title says is learning to trust God, the God Who Leads. The heart of this series and teaching time each week is to have us, through the lessons, leading, and teaching of Moses himself, glean some more on how we can walk more in the calling and passion that God has placed within us.
So we are going to be in Exodus chapter 3, the famous story of Moses and the burning bush. If you guys had maybe been around church, you have probably heard of the story of Moses before, but we are going to jump right into this this morning. Last week, Pastor Lauren kind of set the scene of where we are: Moses, growing up in Pharaoh's household, knew that he was a Hebrew. He knew he was not of Pharaoh's lineage. He knew he was not Egyptian. And yet, growing up in Pharaoh's house, he had these mixed emotions. I can see at times: "I am in the house of Pharaoh. Pharaoh has given to me, provided for me, and allowed me to live through his daughter, who rescued him from the Nile. And yet I know that I am not like the people that I live with. I know I am like those whom I would look out in Egypt and see under bondage and slavery."
And so as Moses was out, he had an interaction with an Egyptian soldier who was beating up on a Hebrew, and he ended up killing this Egyptian soldier. And he buried him. He tried to hide it, and it came out. And so he just fled. He just ran away. He ran to this place in the land we are going to be in today, called the land of Midian. And little did he know that God was building his story. That even in the midst of sin and murder and the taking of a life that God does not condone, God is in the redemption business. And God was going to take Moses to a place where he thought he was running away. That was actually a place where he is going to be built up and sent back into Egypt to ultimately change the trajectory of the future of the world and the Israelite people.
And so Moses here has been chilling. He is about 40 years old or so. He is just living his best life. And he is a shepherd working for his father-in-law. I don't know about you. Has anybody ever had to work for their father-in-law before? I have. It can be contentious at times, even with the best father-in-laws. I am blessed with an incredible father-in-law, and I am still thankful for him and his life, but I pastored under him, under his staff for a season. And there were times where the family got in the way. That is just how it was.
And so we come to Moses. He has literally changed his identity. He is now the lowest of the low, a bottom-rung shepherd working for his father-in-law. And we know this is being the lowest of the low because the Egyptians themselves actually loathed shepherds. They viewed it as the worst job that you could ever have on planet Earth. And Moses willingly takes this on. He is hiding. He is settled in life. He is just trying to probably live out his days, not having to do anything else. He meets a wife, gets married. But he is just out in the wilderness by himself, shepherding.
And so we come onto the scene. Exodus chapter 3, starting in verse 1. It says, "Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he had led the flock to the far side of the wilderness. So as he was shepherding by himself alone, he was trying to be away from everybody even further. And he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. But he did not know that. There, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that, though the bush was on fire, the fire did not consume it. So Moses thought, like probably every dude, fire—must go see. I will go over and see this strange sight, why the bush does not burn up."
So Moses here is no longer an Egyptian prince. He has run away. He is a shepherd, living his life of obscurity. He is working for his father-in-law, trying to live an isolated life in Midian, but even isolated more so, taking the sheep as far as he possibly could. And then all of a sudden, he comes across a bush that is on fire. Now, I don't know the setting of all of this. I would assume this was maybe a familiar sight, whether it was finding another fellow shepherd out cooking over a fire, providing light at night. I mean, Moses was no stranger to fire. He probably had a fire every single night. But when you begin to build fires, you begin to quickly learn that bushes are not good long-term fires. Bushes might be good to get a fire started because they burn hot, fast, and quick. But you soon need to put other denser, thicker wood on it to sustain a fire for the long term. And so for Moses to see this bush that is burning, and seeing it not being quickly consumed, he goes, "What is going on here? Have I found a magical bush that I can go sell to other people to make millions and millions of dollars?" No, God is doing something here. And what I love about this is I see an extraordinary God showing up in an ordinary scene with a divine appointment for Moses.
God uses unusual circumstances to pique our curiosity and to bring us closer to Himself. I bet you Moses had no idea what he was walking into when he saw that bush on fire. His whole life was about to change in an instant. But God often interrupts our settled lives to redirect us toward His purpose. I think for some of us, we can get caught up easily in the quiet life, right? Go to work, do my job, go home, be with my family, do my thing, don't make a lot of noise, catch my paycheck, live my life out till retirement, live a quiet retirement, and then go be with you, Jesus. A lot of people have signed up for that. But I think the reality is that that is not the calling as a disciple of Jesus. See, when we accept Christ into our lives, into our hearts, and we become a disciple in the everyday stuff of life, there is a greater shift that happens within us. The one that Jesus Himself calls dying to yourself. See, for Moses, he had gone all in on this shepherd life. But God used this ordinary to draw him toward the extraordinary in him.
Continue on, verse 4. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses, Moses." And Moses said, "Here I am." "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." Then He said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." And at this, Moses hid his face because he was too afraid to look at God.
When I first read this story, and looking at it, I am going, "Man, man, God had to call to Moses twice." I mean, the reality is I would probably walk up to this thing and have tunnel vision because I would have like a thousand questions, like instantly: How is the bush burning? Who lit the fire? Are they around here? Am I in danger? Why is the fire not burning up? Why is the fire not getting bigger? What is happening right now? Is there a lightning storm? Do I need like a thousand questions? And so I thought this was like just Moses being tunnel vision, not hearing. You know, sometimes you get so fixated on something that the whole world around you tunes out, and you are just like, "But what?" Come to find out, in the culture and in the ancient world, this was a call of endearment. This was a way that someone who knew you, cared for you, and loved you would call you twice. And so God here is saying, even this, "Moses, Moses." God is calling him in a caring, loving way. And so Moses in turn replies with the same, "Here I am." And this was the correct answer to this divine call and a response and expression of Moses saying, "I am available, I am listening, you have my attention, God, I am here."
What I love is that Moses is receptive to this calling of God, even if his heart is still uncertain. And God says to him, "Take off your sandals." What does this mean? Well, in ancient culture, at places that are sacred, people would remove their sandals out of respect and honor to the place or the person. And so immediately when Moses is told, "Take off your sandals," he is understanding that he is not just hallucinating. He is not just out of water, just having a mirage in front of him, but that there is God who is speaking to him in this moment, in this place, and he is going, "Oh my goodness, something is happening here." And God's holiness requires a respectful response. And what we later come to know as Sinai is to be established as Yahweh's home, Yahweh's place. And God gives him the link to the lineage. Moses would have known through the caring and the teaching of his mother, even though he lived in Pharaoh's house. He would have known what it meant when God said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Moses would have instantly known that those three phrases there, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were the defining terms of who that God was. And God is identifying Himself to Moses in this moment.
And in these short few verses, we see the character of God. We see that God is personal and caring. "Moses. Moses." We see that God is holy and deserving of respect. "Take off your sandals. You are on holy ground." And we see that God is being faithful to His commitment. He is unwavering because He made a covenant with Abraham that said, "I will care for you and your descendants." And yet they have been in bondage for generation after generation in Egypt. And God goes, "I have not forgotten my commitment." See, the calls of God are rarely random. And they are often the fulfillment of promises made generations earlier. And Moses' initial response to God comes with a mix of obedience, understanding, reverence, and holiness toward who God is, the God that is speaking to him through this burning bush.
So the Lord keeps talking to Moses, verse 7. Then the Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of the land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 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."
God here uses this threefold awareness of what is going on. He says, as God, "I have seen their misery, I have heard their cries, and I am concerned about their suffering." This divine idiom is what God is saying: that He has seen and He has remembered and He has not forgotten, and that He is determined and that He will act. This is the character of God. God is not some big man upstairs that just kind of watches and throws lightning bolts every now and then and lets us suffer and just ha, ha, ha, "Look at those little horrible human-feeling people." But God is a personal God. He is a loving God. He is a relational God. And so maybe you are walking through it today. I don't know where you are at. Maybe the weight of life is just so much to bear. I want you to know that there is a God who loves you. There is a God who cares for you. There is a God who sees you in your tears, whether you share those tears with anybody else or not. He sees your pain. He sees your sorrow. He sees your anxiety and your worry. And He loves you. And He wants the very best for your life. And He wants to show up in powerful ways. And I want to pray for you that you would begin to listen for His still, small voice. I don't know how loud the bush was. I don't know if it was echoing or booming or what it was. But I know that in Scripture, sometimes there are moments where God's voice is very small and still. And there are times where it is booming and echoing. And there are times where it is every other thing in the middle of that. But I want to encourage you: you are not alone. You are not alone in this church family, and you are not alone with the Creator of the universe. He cares for you.
So Moses is getting a new job. He is getting reassigned. And Moses is being told: "Hey, you are going to go, and you are going to face Pharaoh, and you are going to pull my people out of slavery, and I am going to take them to their new home through you." And I think maybe at this point the weight of what is happening and what the words he is receiving are starting to settle on him. And Moses is being called to lead a nation in defiance of the most powerful man on planet Earth in this moment. We do not know exactly who the new pharaoh was. It says that the pharaoh had died and a new one had come into place while he had been away in Midian. But what we do know is there is a high probability that Moses knew who this new Pharaoh was. I would think maybe word had spread that there was a new Pharaoh, maybe it had not. But how lineages are passed on, the reality was when Moses grew up in the house of Pharaoh, he probably had interactions with this new Pharaoh. Could have been a brother, could have been an uncle, maybe it was a cousin, but probably somebody familial. And so not only is Moses being asked to go in and take on this insurmountable task, but at the same time, there is going to be a whole family dynamic that is going to be wrapped up inside of this whole thing. And if Moses' brain is not spinning at like a thousand miles an hour right now, he probably cannot even think.
But this call of God is rooted in compassion. Moses knew exactly what was happening to his family. He knew the oppression. He saw it firsthand. He knew how Pharaoh and the Egyptians were treating them in their slavery. And he knew that this was not just going to be an errand that he needed to run. God was not like, "Hey, I just need you to go pick up my dry cleaning for me, bud, and just come on back, grab a coffee for me on the way home." But this was going to change Moses' life. Either he was going to fail the moment he walked in to talk to this Pharaoh, bro, or, if it was true that Jesus and God were calling him to do what He was saying, he was going to be the leader of millions of people. And he was just a shepherd out there, just chilling moments ago.
And so Moses responds, finally finds some words to say back to God. But Moses says 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, and this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." Moses just thought he was just taking the sheep for a stroll. But God was giving Moses this picture of this place to say, "You are going to go, and you are going to come back here. This is where you will be, and my people will be able to worship freely."
But what does Moses say? He is like, "Who am I? I am just a shepherd, bro. Like, God, do you realize who you are talking to right here? Is there another bro on this mountain that this burning bush was meant for? It was not, certainly was not me. There is no way. You have me confused with another Moses out there. Like, there is another dude running around, big beard, scraggly hair, robe, staff. Yeah, that is the Moses that you want." And one might argue that Moses was being humble here. Okay, sure. But this also is a reflection on Moses' past failures. He is like, "God, do you not remember when I tried to do this 40 years ago and I killed the dude? And then I tried to cover it up, and then it came out, and then that is why I am here. Like, do you not remember that?" But here is the wonderful thing about all this. God does not promise to tell Moses that he is enough. Instead, God says to Moses, "I will be with you. I am going to be there every step of the way." And this focus shifts. It is less about the messenger's ability and more about the sender's presence with Moses.
And this is a fulfillment of a future sign: that Moses, "You are going to go. You are going to have success. And you are going to bring my people back here, and we are going to do an old show-and-tell at this burning bush spot. And I am here to tell you in that place, the location, because that is the God I am. And we are going to take you to a land, to your own land, a place where you can call home, a land flowing with milk and honey, richness in the fullness of all of life." But the process is going to take time. Trust does not happen overnight, right? Trust is a process. And it requires vulnerability and insecurity to be a part of the journey. It takes time. And this pushes back against our world, right? Our life. We want it like now. But like now now is too late. Like we wanted it the first now, right? You guys started to see the drones doing Amazon deliveries and Walmart deliveries now? Like, the thing that we thought, "Oh, that would be, like, now. Like, delivery within 30 minutes. Like, are you kidding me? This is nuts." That is why drive-throughs are so prominent. How fast can I mobile order my coffee, walk in, grab it, get out, and go on with my life? This is not the walk and the way of trusting in God. Now, God sometimes comes into our lives and just does a miracle in a moment. I have seen it happen. But most of the time it takes showing up Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, praying the same prayer over and over, going, "God, I do not understand how you are doing this, but I trust you. You did something cool with Moses, and I am talking to the same God. You guys realize that? Like, the same dude that we have been singing to and praying this morning is the same God that showed up with Moses in a burning bush on Mount Sinai."
Moses got more questions. As would I. Verse 13. Moses said to God, "Okay, suppose I go and do this. Suppose, hypothetically, I go to Egypt and I talk to the Israelites, and I say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is His name?' Then what should I tell them?" God said to Moses, "I am who I am." Not the most earth-shattering words, right? Get into that a little bit. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: "I AM has sent me to you." God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The Lord of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.'"
Moses wanted a little bit of clarification here. Because the culture and the world in which the Israelites lived within the overarching world of the pharaohs was a massively polytheistic world. What does that mean? That means there were gods for everything. Every single little thing, there was a God to. And so Moses rolls in and says, "God sent me to you." They are going to say, "Which one? Because we got like 300 over here. Pick your choice." And God here is saying, "I am the God. I am the one. I am." And we could spend months breaking this thing down into the history of it and the background, and God is literally in a moment almost redeeming all of humanity up to this point when He says this, and He says, "My name is Yahweh. I am. I am the one that was before. I am the one that sustained. I am the one that holds it all together, and I am the one who will be your only one going forward." And this was a re-revelation of the generations that had lost a measure of the knowledge of the true God. God. Remember, the Israelites are living in captivity. They do not have their own personal freedoms to be like, "Oh, hey, we are going to go have church on Sunday." No, the Egyptians are like, "Uh-uh, get back to building that pyramid now." They are living in the homes of the Egyptians as servants, and there is influence over them. There is persuasion on them. They do not have the freedom to teach freely and to pass down from generation to generation these purposes and these covenants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are being divided, all without any freedom to worship the God that they knew, and yet still God is hearing their cries, working in redemption, and leading them to their freedom. God is still moving, and He has not forgotten them. And Moses here is being called to be their rescuer and the physical representative of the Almighty Yahweh in their presence.
Moses has his doubts. I would have my doubts. Really, God? You are calling the wayward, fleeing, murderer shepherd to be the one to lead? Like, surely there has got to be somebody better. Surely there is somebody else out there. But God here is saying, "Moses, all the authority is given to you. And I am calling you to let my people go. Your identity no longer resides with Moses. Your identity resides with Yahweh. And that is the calling that you are going to live out and move forward in." Moses needed more than a promise from God. He needed some holy credentials. And so God lays it out here, verse 16: "Go assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, appeared to me and said, I have watched over you, and I have seen what has been done to you in Egypt, and I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.' The elders of Israel will listen to you, and then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, 'The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.' But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him, through the Egyptians and all the wonders that I will perform among them. I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in the house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which will be put on your sons and daughters, and so you will plunder the Egyptians."
Moses said, "Hey, gather everybody up. Bring the elders together, the Israelites, talk to them, let them know, and then you are to go before Pharaoh and ask for this three-day journey." And what is funny about this is this was not just a staycation or a quick three-day holiday getaway. Like, Pharaoh was no dummy. Like, he knew exactly what this meant. That if he was to let them go for their so-called three days, they were not coming back. They were going to be gone and gone forever. And Pharaohs are not soft. You did not get to become a pharaoh by being cuddly and loving as a pharaoh. We read in Scripture that they were vicious, they were ruthless, and they were evil. But that was no match for the Creator of the universe. God Almighty Himself was going to make this happen. And He was, God was giving Moses the play-by-play even before it happened. I could only imagine Moses in the moment going, "Okay, I am going to do this. Okay, wow, the Israelite elders did listen to me. Okay, cool. Okay, so I guess I go to Pharaoh, and oh yeah, yeah, Pharaoh, he is mad. He is not going to let this happen." And then things start playing out. He is like, "God said that it was going to happen like that. And then God said it was going to happen like that. And then God said it was going to happen like that, like the wheels must have been just spinning in Moses' brain as things were happening, of like, maybe, maybe we are going to be leaving Egypt together. Maybe, maybe this is actually going to happen. God, you got the craziest plan, bro. And it is going to actually happen." And God says, "I will have this not through human persuasion, but it is going to be through a mighty hand, through God's wonders. Spoiler alert, we are going to talk about ten plagues. And they are going to be vicious. These are what the wonders are going to be. Also, did you know that all the ten plagues actually lined up with like their gods in their world? And God was also at the same time just letting them know, like, hey, your God, he is puny, he is false, he does not exist. Like, I am who I am. I am Yahweh, by the way. So cool." And in the midst of all of this, I love that last part of the scripture. God says, "Okay, by the way, like you are going to go through this. It is going to be hard. I am going to get you through it. And then you guys are going to have freedom. You are going to get to go. Oh, and by the way, get your bags ready because they are going to be loaded down with the goods. Not only are you going to have freedom, but I am also going to take the fortune and plunder from the Egyptians and just give it to you guys to just take care of your travels. Like, only God does that, right? Like, only God would be the one that, oh, by the way, yeah, you are going to get all that freedom and you are going to have the rescue and all that. Like, sometimes we pray for something and we are, we just hope for like one thing, and then God goes, 'Oh, by the way, it is going to have threefold on top of that.' Like, sometimes when we pray, guys, I feel like we just pray so small. This is the God of the universe that we pray to. We probably can have some bolder prayers." And so God is calling Moses not just to a task, but He is also providing the resources for Him along the way. See, that is how God does it. God provides the strategy and the guaranteed outcome and the means by which to sustain and have success when He calls.
I have got three final thoughts I want to share with us. First of which is trusting God is a process. This does not happen overnight. I can imagine that the journey that Moses had from where he was back to drop off the sheep with his father-in-law, like that was a weeks' journey. And I can imagine the conversations he is having with God along the way. The restless nights by a fire, watching a bush burn with a fire right there, to be like, "Okay, God, I remember that. I remember that time I saw a bush burning and it changed my life. Okay, I got you." And then to think about the journey from where he was in Midian all the way to Egypt, those conversations: "Hey, okay, God, so like, what about this? We are like, so, like, what if, what if, like, this happens? What am I supposed to do?" It is a process. It is a journey. It takes time. The call of God is sometimes sudden, but it is always disruptive. It is sudden for us. It is never sudden for God, right? God knows what He is doing. God is not surprised. God knew when Moses was being put in that basket in the Nile for him to be redeemed, God was like, "That is the one. That is the one that is going to change all of this and get my people free into their promised land, the covenant I made with Abraham. Him." But for us, the call of God is always disruptive. That is the reality. I do not want to be bearer of bad news, but when you signed up to be a disciple of Jesus, you signed up for discomfort. It requires sacrifice to be a follower of Jesus. It requires different priorities in our life. It requires us to shift what maybe we want to do in our lives to be in line with God's calling for us. And by the way, each of us has a calling from God. You may know it, you may not know it right now. Sometimes it changes. But the God that I know, the God of promises in Scripture, says like He said to Moses, "I will be with you every single step of the way." And so this calling, although uncomfortable and requiring sacrifice, is always covered in peace and hope. Jesus Himself in Matthew 11:30 said that He says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." I think we have misread this scripture to think the life of a Christian is easy. It is not. A yoke, although easy and a burden, although light, is disruptive. The yoke does not allow the animal to go wherever they want to go. And it requires sacrifice and reordering our priorities. But see, it takes our everything. I came across this, I thought this was amazing. Deuteronomy 6:5 says, "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, and with all of your strength." Do you know who wrote Deuteronomy? Moses. Moses, I could imagine penning that scripture by the power of the Holy Spirit to go, "I have lived this life. I have walked the hard. I have given God my everything. And He knew what it meant to follow God. And the journey from here I am of Moses to obedience, it takes time, vulnerability, and divine reassurance." God did not say, "Go get it, Moses. You got this, buddy. I will see you on the other side of the Red Sea. Peace." No. He said, "I am going to be with you every single day, single step of the way." And from this moment of the burning bush until we read in Scripture where Moses is able to be given the blessing of seeing the promised land upon a mountain, before he breathed his last breath, the presence of God was with him and walked with him for the rest of his life. That is amazing. That is the life that I want. I want to walk every single day with God, knowing that He is there with me.
So three questions to close this out. Where is God calling you to step outside of your comfort zone? I do not think it is going to be going up to a Pharaoh and having to shout to him, "Let my people go." But maybe you are supposed to have a spiritual conversation with someone. Someone in your life, maybe a friend, maybe a neighbor, coworker, somebody, you are supposed to talk to them about God specifically. Maybe you are supposed to begin serving in the church in some way. Or maybe God is asking you to step up and serve more in this church. Maybe God is asking you to give your everything. And unfortunately, or fortunately, you decide that means your finances and tithing and living a life of biblical financial discipleship with God. Maybe it means inviting somebody to church, even if you feel that you might get rejected or ridiculed for it. Maybe it means joining one of our Bible studies. Maybe it is men here Tuesday nights, ladies Thursdays. We are working to get some small groups going in people's homes. Maybe it is stepping out and being a little vulnerable in those moments of saying, "God, I do my thing. I live my life. I come to church. I get my muffin and my coffee. I sit down. I worship. I hear the sermon. I pray. I go home. I take a nap, watch some football, and pray my fantasy team wins. It is still baseball season. You are the only one in here? No, okay, we got two. We got two. But maybe we are supposed to get uncomfortable. But we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable to step outside of our comfort zones." Number two, how has God already reassured you of His divine promises? Maybe a time in the past when God showed up big time in your life. It is like, same God. Same powerful Yahweh. Maybe you needed to hear this story this morning of Moses to be reassured of that thing God is tugging on your heart for you to do. God is like, "Hey, I took Moses from a bush to Pharaoh, promised land, Red Sea, manna, 40 years in the desert, all this stuff, promised land. You think I cannot take care of the thing that you are praying about right now? This Bible, this Scripture of God is filled with promises from Him. Maybe God is going to reassure you through a Christian friendship. Maybe somebody in this church has reminded you of who God is in your life. And that is why we gather every single week to be reassured and encouraged and built up. Reminded of who Yahweh is in our lives." What is the first step that you can take in that calling this week? Simple step. Baby steps. It does not have to be this huge thing. I am not saying you have to pick a billboard up and go shout with a megaphone on the corner of Sunset and Fairway. But there is a step that God wants you to take. And He is putting it on your heart right now. I do not know what it is. He knows. You know. How are you going to take a first step? And so I want you, this tear-off card on your program, we want to be praying for you this week in that. And so there is a box down there that says, "I am stepping outside of my comfort zone to obey God's call on my life." We wanted to put this week in there, but we ran out of room. So it is this week, okay? We are going to have some ushers in the back, and have some buckets, and we want you to write down on this card and mark that checkbox. And we are going to be praying with you on what that is. Maybe also you can pray to be thankful that you did not get the call of Moses in your life, along with praying for obedience for the calling that God is asking of you right now.
Let us pray. Jesus, we thank you for your servant Moses. God, we are grateful for his heart and willingness, even though in the midst of all the questions in the world, and then some, he still said, "Here I am." So God, may we learn to trust in you and your leading in our lives even more this day. May we step out of our comfort zone this week, however that may look for us. God, there is a variety of ways that we can do that. And you are placing that on our heart right now in this moment. So I pray, God, that by the power of your Holy Spirit, you would begin to reveal it, if it has not already. But God, you would build up a boldness and a strength to make that happen this week, Jesus. Lord, we thank you for your promises of who you are, that you hear us, you see us, you hurt for us in the times that we hurt. And that, God, you have a calling, you have a plan for our lives for the redemption of this world. God, may we be faithful to play the small part in that. This week, we love you, Jesus. Amen.