Manna and Coffee

 “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” 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 and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.” – Exodus 3:1-6

This week I was thinking about the story of how God chose to call Moses to go back to Egypt to face Pharaoh, to demand that he free the Israelites from their misery and bondage, and lead them to a promised land flowing with milk and honey. I mean God could have revealed His plans to free the Israelites to Moses in a dream like he did to Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father. He could have spoke from Heaven like He did at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan river, or He could have gotten His message across to Moses through a blinding light like He did to Saul on the road to Damascus. But instead, the great I AM chose to reveal himself to Moses as flames of fire in an ordinary desert bush.

Many years ago, when I first decided to follow Jesus as Lord of my life, I led a Bible study based on a book by Henry Blackaby called Experiencing God. That book really impacted me and the people that went through this study with me. I have recently blew the dust off this book and am going through it again and am amazed at the practical Biblical wisdom contained in powerful book. I decided to ask some friends to join me through the study again, but this time virtually through a private Facebook group called Love God and Love People Bible Study (if you want to join us let me know).

In a nutshell, Blackaby suggests the obvious, that God is always at work in the world around us. But he goes on to say that God is always preparing us to join Him in His work, whether we know it or not. When we decide to join God in his work, we experience His presence and power in our lives in the same way that Moses, Abraham, Paul and even Jesus experienced, because the Holy Spirit will equip us, teach us and help us recognize God’s voice and will. The Holy Spirit will also give us the courage and ability to do what He asks of us, and it gets easier and easier because we start to experience God in us more and more as we obey.

When we obey God’s call, and join Him in His work, we bring glory to God. Our faith becomes more than Biblical knowledge about God, we actually feel and experience His very real and tangible presence in, and all around us, through the Holy Spirit’s sweet presence in our most inner core. We stop calling God’s provision and miracles hard work and luck, and we start seeing the impossible as possible, because God is in it. When we apply we live out James 1:23-25.

“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”

So back to the burning bush, what is up with that? The truth is I don’t really know. God can reveal Himself to whoever, however, and whenever, He choses. If you will allow me to guess however, I wonder if God had been trying to speak to Moses in other ways, but Moses was not “listening” to what God was trying to tell him, so God had to get his attention in a rather dramatic way.

God had already decided that Moses was His chosen vehicle to accomplish His work to free the enslaved Israelites before Moses was even born. If you go back and read about Moses life, you will see that God saved him from death as a baby, opened up Pharaoh’s daughter’s heart to raise Moses as her own son to learn the ways of the Egyptians and teach him to be a leader, and then revealed Moses true identity to him at the proper time. He then called Moses through a burning bush to go back to Egypt, not as an adopted son of Pharaoh, but as an adopted son of the great I Am.

What has God been preparing you to accomplish for His Kingdom? Have you ever thought about that? Do you see God working in the people and world around you? If not why not? Do you know Jesus as your personal Savior and are you looking to the Holy Spirit for your guidance or to your own ability and strength?

Are you so busy right now that it would take a burning bush in your yard to get you to slow down long enough to listen to God and experience His Holy presence? Take off your shoes, sandals or Crocks today and ask God to help you see His work in the world around you. Ask Him to reveal to you how you should get involved in His work.

If you are a follower of Jesus, the promised Holy Spirit is present with you, and has sealed you for eternal life; but there is much work to do while we are still breathing in this life. God’s work is nothing like the work of the world. God’s work is to simply to believe in Jesus (John 6:29) and to submit your life to the influence of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) so that we can recognize God’s voice within us, and move to join Him in His Kingdom work. God wants us to experience a peace, a joy and a purpose that we were created before time to fulfill (Ephesians 2:10). To God alone be the glory now and forever!