Obeying, waiting, praying, leading: interview with a servant
By Dean Collins
Does it seem to you as if it took God a long time to bring deliverance to Moses and the Israelites? I thought that today I would just do a quick interview with Moses on the topic.
Me: Moses, it is great to have this opportunity to discuss the lessons you learned and shared in the Pentateuch. I know my readers have so many questions, but we all seem to have so little time these days, so I will just try to hit a couple of topics where you might help us gain perspective.
Moses: I have plenty of time now, but it sure felt different when I was living those 120 years on earth. So fire away!
Me: We know the three 40-year chapters in your life on earth. I’ll skip your early years and move to the incident with the Egyptian.
Moses: The one I killed?
Me: Uh, yes, I wasn’t sure I should bring that up.
Moses: You can bring up anything. That incident was a turning point for me. I was tired of the abuse of my tribe, the Hebrew people. My anger was justified, but I let it get the best of me, and the result was I killed a man. Plain and simple. I felt shame. I felt exposed. If you have read the early chapters of Genesis, you’ve seen what happens when we sin. One thing we want to do is hide. I knew I couldn’t hide in Egypt, so I took off to Midian. I spent the next 40 years trying to forget about my actions. I was determined never to go back to Egypt for fear of the repercussion if I would show up there again. I had seen firsthand the power of Pharaoh, and I wanted to stay far away.
Me: I guess from your view now, you know the rest of the story in the New Testament?
Moses: Sure. Why do you ask?
Me: Well your story seems a little like the apostle Peter’s story. It seems he like you had a lot of access to God and had many long conversations. He ended up giving up and going back to fishing even after the resurrection. You, however, did not yet know God’s plan for deliverance, and it seems you got tired of waiting, took things into your own hands, and when you failed decided simply to try to forget and run away.
Moses: That is mostly accurate. What I never wrote about was how many times I replayed my actions over and over again during the next 40 years. No amount of counting sheep kept me from replaying that scene in my head and then basically giving up on God.
Me: Jesus used a charcoal fire on the beach to help Peter embrace forgiveness and experience his transformation of leadership. It seems like God lit a fire in your life as well.
Moses: Absolutely. When I saw the fire coming from one particular bush, it caught my attention and drew me in. I stood there puzzled and amazed at how this fire was raging but the bush wasn’t consumed. I don’t know how long I stood there, but when I heard the voice of God, I knew who was speaking. My heart burned within me as I answered, “Here I am.” By the way, when God wants to get your attention, it really isn’t that hard to know it is him. We tend to want to explain it away. But God relentlessly pursues us because he loves us so much.
Me: I apologize, Moses. I have some pressing challenges I need to focus on, so I am going to skip over much of your long conversation that led to your eventual acceptance of the assignment to speak to the elders of Israel and then to Pharaoh.
Moses: I remember what it felt like when I was still in the flesh and on earth. I was a lot like you and your colleagues and friends who always forget that nearly all of the work of God takes place in the waiting. While on earth, our perspective is like a view of an iceberg: You see only the tip and not the whole thing. That is true with God as well. His work his way is like seeing the whole iceberg. And don’t forget, as the apostle Paul said, there is a battle raging in the unseen places. We know the work of Christ on the cross brings victory over sin and death, yet the war continues until Jesus returns to restore all things. What I hope you and others would understand is that while it often feels like God isn’t responding, his work is going on in the unseen places and one day all things will be restored.
Me: When you were in those early days of trying to get buy-in to your mission from the Israelites and bring deliverance for God’s people from the hands of Pharaoh, you seemed to get pretty upset with God.
Moses: I was upset, and I let God know it. It is hard to explain, and we don’t always like it, but God’s ways and timing are up to God and not up to us. And we have to trust that his ways are the best. If you think you actually know more than God, then you’re simply giving in to an age-old problem. When things got worse for the Hebrew people after I talked to Pharaoh the first time, I was definitely upset with God and told him. One thing you need to understand is that God already knows what you’re thinking, so you might as well tell him. It creates better communication, and better communication between you and God leads to greater satisfaction and confidence in God’s involvement in your life and situation. I would have handled things differently, but my result would have been far worse than God’s.
Me: Reading Exodus 5 and 6, as well as other sections of your story, leads me to believe you experienced a lot of frustration in your lifetime. Is that accurate?
Moses: Yes, I got angry at the Hebrew people, angry at Pharaoh, angry at my brother Aaron, and angry at God. I thought it was unfair that things would take so long. But from my current seat, I now understand that God was changing me day by day. And honestly, I never did become an image bearer of God that perfectly reflected his glory. And you won’t, either. But with relentless faith in God and persistence in honest prayer, you will one day find out that what God was doing and is doing is always better than what you could achieve without him. His ways involve all of humanity. Your ways only deal with the urgent things you can see.
Me: Many of us look to your life to find tips on leadership. What do you consider your best leadership moment?
Moses: Looking at my life you can find plenty of things not to do! But one thing I did that you should always do is pray and pray again. Be completely transparent with God about what you think and feel and what you need. A lot of folks miss my prayers, but they were constant and ongoing. And one of them isn’t even found in the first 5 books of scripture attributed to me. Read Psalm 90 to get a different view of my prayer life. There you will see me wrestling with the brevity of life but also that I trust God will, in fact, make our efforts successful as we seek him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and learn to wait on him for the best results.
Me: Thank you for your time. I don’t necessarily like the waiting we do while on this side but I fully do believe you are right that my perspective is shallow. I will take your advice and pray more and trust God for the best outcomes, which are always his.
Your time with God’s Word
Exodus 4:29-31; 5:17-23; 6:1, 3-8, 26-27, 29-30; Psalm 90 NLT
Photo by cottonbro studio at Pexels.com
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