Ordinary

Do you ever get too comfortable with life? You get up and do the same thing day after day…especially during the work week…. a ho-hum kind of life. Even the weekends can be routine. Have you ever made a decision or made a series of choices that have taken you to a place of….an unintended destination…with monotony as a description of your life? I often wonder if Moses felt that way after being in the desert for 40 years.

He was raised in the palace with everything you could imagine at his fingertips. One day he witnessed a Hebrew slave being mistreated. He allowed his anger to turn to rage and made a “hot-tempered decision” to kill the Egyptian who mistreated the “fellow Hebrew”. That decision totally took his life in a hard left direction and into the desert he fled! Far from palace life.

If we were all honest with ourselves, we have all made some poor decisions…some poorer than others….but decisions nonetheless…that have taken us in an unintended direction. If you are there right now, I want to encourage you to think about this:

The day Moses awoke and put on his sandals for the last day of 40 years of desert life do you think he got up thinking, “This day will be different?” Do you think he had a clue that God would show up in a “burning bush” to instruct him on his “call” in life? Moses was so not expecting it. God spoke through a burning bush. He had Moses throw down his staff which God turned into a serpent and then back into a staff. He had Moses put his hand in his cloak and it turned leprous. Then God made it whole and healed again. With all these amazing acts Moses was still reluctant. It even says…God burned with anger.

It is easy to read the account and life of Moses and say…Why didn’t you see? We have the helicopter view–the beginning and the end. We are to apply God’s word to every aspect of our lives. The story of Moses encourages our faith…to step when God speaks and trust Him with the outcome…to know He will show up when we are in the desert. We just can’t predict when or how.

Proverbs 3:5-6 rings true. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.”

Our job is to learn from Moses to NOT DOUBT…to step…in FAITH. When God shows up and shows out, to listen and blindly trust. We can also learn from Moses not to take matters into our own hands. Study the life of Moses to learn from his humanness and learn of God’s character. Live a life of expectation that God has a specific plan for you.

God is described in scripture as the Potter who shapes and molds us, the clay. Isaiah 64:8, “But now, O Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand.” I love how Jeremiah 18:3-4 shows us that He does have specific plans for us. He uses it all for His glory. “Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.”

No matter what your mistakes have been, allow Him to cleanse, shape and mold you into beautiful pottery in His hands. Have your “sandals” ready to move when He speaks!

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