Ever feel like the task before you is impossible? Ever feel like what you’re being called to do is beyond your reach? This blogs for you.
“So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.” God said these words to Moses. Exo 3:10
Never in the history of mankind has a man been given a task as impossible as that which Moses was given by God. When God gave Moses the mission, it reads like a passing comment tacked onto the end of God’s expression of concern. Here’s my paraphrase: “I’ve seen how my people are suffering and how much misery they are in. I’ve come down from heaven to rescue them and lead them to the promised land. I’ve seen how they’re being mistreated and I’m going to do something about it. So now, go on. Here’s the bus ticket to Egypt, Moses. Go and bring my people to me.”
“So now, go.” Moses must have been stunned. I’m sure he was expecting God to do it Himself. Maybe he expected that God would ride in on chariots of fire with lightning bolts and thunder and angels all around. But God’s plan was different.
“So now, go.” I can imagine God saying this the way I would tell my daughter, “We need some milk. So now, go. I’m sending you to the store to bring home some milk.” Or maybe it was like a boss telling an employee, “We need to make this sell; it’s a huge client. So now, go. I’m sending you to make the sell.”
There are any number of things in our lives that may seem impossible to us. But consider Moses’ task. Walk into the throne room of the most powerful ruler of the biggest superpower on earth and tell him to let his largest labor pool (2-3 million slaves) leave! Moses was surely feeling inadequate. Afterall, he was a foster child who was rejected by his people (the Hebrews) and condemned to death by his adoptive family (Pharaoh). He had fled to the wilderness as a fugitive when his family tried to kill him. He had murdered a man so he was carrying the baggage of being a wanted criminal. He had a low self-esteem at this point and possibly even a speech impediment (or at least in his eyes). He had fallen in life from being the son of Pharaoh to being a sheep herder in the desert! He had just had an experience with a talking burning bush that probably made him doubt his very sanity.
This man…this flawed imperfect man…was being asked to do the most impossible task! “Uh…Mr. Pharaoh, will you let all your slaves go…this voice out of a burning bush in the middle of the desert told me to tell you that. I’ll be waiting outside for them.”
How could this man even contemplate accepting this Mission: Impossible? It was suicide! Now consider God’s next words to Moses: Exo 3:12 And God said, “I will be with you.”
What could you do if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was going to be with you? What could you accomplish if you were so confident that God was with you that there was NO doubt in your mind? There are times in my life that I’m so confident that God is with me that I’m ready to charge into hell with a water gun! And there are times that I cower in insecurity and fear over the simplest task that I know that I could do. The difference is when you know that God is with you!
“So now, go.”
What are the seemingly impossible dreams and goals in your life that you know that God would want you to do? Moses grappled with fear and insecurity over his impossible mission. Yet, after that initial struggle, he went. And we know the rest of the story!
Jesus told us that there is nothing impossible for God. Paul told us that if God is with us, nothing can stand against us. All we have to do is “go.” And God said, “I will be with you.”
So now, go!