Who Am I? - Exodus 3:11-12

3:11-12 – This is going to be a short one because the next part is pretty important and I want to devote enough time to it tomorrow while still working within my new time window. God has pretty clearly spelled out to Moses that He wanted him to go back to Egypt and free the Hebrews from slavery there and bring them to “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Understandably Moses is not excited and asks, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” We discussed yesterday exactly why Moes might have been one of the least popular people in Egypt at this point. He was hated and even wanted for execution among the Egyptians, not only for killing one of their own, but for living amongst them as equals when he was in fact of the slave ethnicity.

Likewise, even though he was Hebrew by birth and even spent the first 5+ years of his life with them and certainly spoke their language, he was taken back to the palace and spent 35+ years living as a royal. He would have been educated among them, he would have lived a lavish life compared to his Hebrew counterparts who spent their lives in slavery with hard labor. They would have hated him for being a “traitor,” and this is obvious after Moses kills that Egyptian in defense of a Hebrew and the people STILL rat him out and aren’t interested in associating with him.

These are only his social flaws that could complicate the mission of freeing the Hebrews in Egypt, the reasons why the people would reject him personally. But then there are the faults within his character that he feels is inadequate for the call, such as a speech impediment, or stage fright or whatever particular flaw Moses felt disqualified him from service.

Interestingly, TB has a check list of requirements for God calling a prophet, let’s see where Moses is at with them: 1. “It is God who approaches the one He has chosen to be His prophet. It is God that initiates the contact. Sometimes it’s in a vision, or a dream. In this case, with Moses, it is a direct confrontation… the flame in the bush is about the closest thing we’re going to see in the Bible that approaches ‘face to face’ conversation with God.” This seems like an obvious requirement but can be complicated when it comes to the claims of others. For instance, when Moses came down off the mountain after his conversation with God, he would have told his family about it, but there would have been no other person that could substantiate the event. So when it comes to the call of prophets, verifying the decision from God can be trickier, and thus the difficulty of distinguishing between true and false prophets sometimes. I suppose that the only way for a person’s claim to be verified is to pray about it and receive direction on whether we should involve that person in our spiritual journey.

2. “The chosen is always either reluctant or outright refuses the call at first. Jonah is often called the Reluctant Prophet. In point of fact, ALL prophets are reluctant prophets. Being reluctant seems to be a ore-condition to being chosen to be a prophet of God.” I used to think about leadership callings and positions and think how great it would be, like I wanted to be the President of the United States when I was younger. I think about my motivations and I think I just wanted to have people do what I say, which probably stemmed from me not having any control over my situation growing up. But now that I’m healing and more settled emotionally and I’m older and realize what those jobs entail, I have absolutely no desire to do anything leadership wise. I mean in most situations I feel like I’d do a pretty good job leadership wise because I don’t care about a lot of stuff and I want things to be equitable so there’s that, but I’m not interested in it at all, and for those that would be, we have to ask ourselves why exactly a person would want to have that job.

3. “The prophet candidate (male or female) is to return to society, or wherever God sends him, without concern for the opposition he will receive, undeterred by the skeptical nature of the many who will scoff at him, ready to tell me of great power and authority things that will, shall we say, disturb them. It may be well that the prophet will never, in his lifetime, achieve an even modest amount of respect from his former friends and family, nor might he ever see come to pass what it is he has been told by God to prophesy.” There’s a saying that I love that is, “he who kneels before God and can before anyone,” and that’s really the sentiment here, the internalized belief that God is the only thing that matter, doing what he says is the only thing that matters, and that He can make anything happen that He sees fit. I’ve been having dreams recently where I’m taken prisoner of war and Putin shows up and in my dreams I’m terrified, which I have no idea why I have started dreaming about this. But during my dreams, I say tell myself that Vladimir Putin is not more powerful than God, and whatever happens will be God’s will. It’s actually a very interesting thing that’s been happening, and I wonder why or what it means but it’s very strange.

These characteristics or humility and absolute faith builds characteristics within the person God has chosen to call that would make them reluctant and feel unworthy, and so the convincing process can take some time. As TB says, “We see God’s patience with Moses; because God will understands that the very attributes of the man He will use to bring His people out of Egypt runs counter to what this man THINKS he is capable of doing.” And that’s really the pinnacle of all the vetting and training and preparatory process, to get a person who has no desire for power so they won’t exploit it, and who is malleable enough to learn what God has to teach them, and THEN convince them that they can do it, with God’s help.

Part of that convincing process is for the person to accept, believe, and act upon God’s promise “I will be with thee.” Whom the Lord calls, He qualifies. We aren’t chosen for our callings because we are uniquely knowledgeable about a certain topic. We aren’t chosen because no one else is able to speak like us or anything like that. People are chosen because they are uniquely ready to trust God and do what He says, not just to be prophets but also nursery teachers or friends or co-workers or neighbors. Our usefulness to God isn’t because we have a skill or talent or something that no one else does. Our usefulness to God comes when we are able to just do what he says and trust that He will work through us to fulfill His plan.