“When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:4-5 ESV
Moses, in our text, is at a crossroad of the burning bush. It is an intersection of his life, and it is here he is meeting God in this place God calls Holy Ground to change not only the trajectory of the life of Moses, but also God’s people who are enslaved in Egypt. Moses is coming into a new season.
Every season we face in life comes with a crossroads of the Known and the Unknown.
The known is our past. Good and bad, and it can cause us to do two things. Stay stuck in yesterday’s glory or stuck in yesterday’s pain. Let's start with the glory days. People talk about the glory days of their past. They brag about how good of an athlete they were in high school and what they accomplished. At the time those things are great. Incredible accomplishments in high school, but now you are 40 and you cannot keep talking about what you used to do with that “Dad Bod” going on. The thing about glory days is it's not about the present nor the future. It is the past, and oh how we can get stuck in the past. A church can get stuck in the past. A business can get stuck in what they used to do. No one is immune from relying on the good ole days and setting up a museum to brag.
Another thing we know is our failures. We can ruminate on our failures. We can say things like, “I tried that, and it didn’t work.” Or “I am a failure and nothing I do is going to come to anything.” A simple trip to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois will help overcome that lie. President Lincoln failed many times before becoming one of greatest Presidents in our nation’s history. It is usually our history, the known, that dictates how we face the unknown. Moses had a hard time with this one in his conversation with God.
The Unknown can stop us in our tracks too. We worry about the risks that come with the adventure. Think about Moses. God was asking him to do something he had never thought of doing. After all, he was a fugitive, and a shepherd of his father in law’s livestock. The unknowns are the things made possible with God. The plans God had for Moses included giants, deserts, lack of water, and a gigantic sea, let alone the army of Pharoah. But there were more than obstacles. There were also opportunities that would bring solutions, not just more problems. The unknown is what God uses to do great things.
What crossroads do you find yourself in today? What is God asking you to do that includes giants? What opportunities await you? How do you see your past and how will you use it to accept and succeed at the task God is asking you to do? What fears do you need to overcome as you say yes to God?
These are great questions to meditate on as you remember God’s Word and His promise to Moses in Exodus 3:12 “But I will be with you,…” At every crossroad God presents, He also promises to go with us. His grace was with you in the past. He is calling you in the present to go with Him so that somebody’s future can be better than it is today because you got unstuck and sent to do a great thing.
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