Freedom From My Misperception

Exodus 3:12-4:20

If Moses was going to free his people from Egypt, he was going to need to be free himself, free from a small view of God and free from misperceptions about himself.  Coming into this passage, Moses has received the call to go and free Israel, but he has questions.

The change in Moses is subtle though profound.  We don’t actually see it in him, but we see it in him through his staff, his shepherd’s rod that he carries with him to shepherd the sheep.  God knew that Moses needed 

more than just answers to questions, for Moses needed to experience God and to understand himself differently.  At the beginning of the passage, the staff was known as Moses’ staff, a staff that he used to do his work as a shepherd and marked him out in his identity as a wanderer, away from his home.   Then God changes the staff to a snake and Moses needs to trust God’s words enough to pick it up by its tail.  The act of obedience in faith increases Moses ability to trust God, for he experienced God when the snake turned back into a staff.  Something happe

ned to the staff also.  At the end of the passage we read (4:20), it is no longer Moses’ staff, but rather “the staff of God.”

Moses would take this new tool to shepherd people, not sheep.  It represented a change in Moses identity.  Answers to his questions weren’t enough.  He needed to step out and faith and trust God.  Once he did, he saw life, himself, and his calling differently.  He moved forward becoming a man of freedom who could lead others there as well.

Your ability to experience freedom is directly related to your ability to trust God in obedience and in so doing, experience Him.  The more you experience Him through this trust, the deeper your well of faith gets.  None of us will ever arrive at perfect trust in God—Moses sure didn’t, but we can practice it.  The more we practice this trustful obedience, the more it becomes second nature, and the more we become, well a person who trusts God.  

We can never give up and think we do not have anything to learn here.  Until we go and be with Him, we should count on God meeting us and challenging us to deeper steps of trust.