Main Point: God desires to redeem our past and use it for his good.

Opening story:

Times that I’ve really blown it and thought - well… that’s it. It’s all over for me now. I’ll never recover this - I’m damaged goods.

The New International Version Chapter 8

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Transition: Where are the places in our lives that we’ve come up against this tension of who we’ve been told we have to be, verses who we feel like we really are? Where are the places where our dreams and expectations have hit a wall and we wonder if our past failures have disqualified us from ever being used by God again?

In a very similar way, Moses was asking a lot of these very same questions. Today we are kicking off a new series titled “Who am I” where we are going to look at lessons from the life of Moses - “and other burning questions”…

But today we’re going to be looking at how we encounter God in the desert. What are the ways that God is trying to get our attention and help us to see that he can redeem our past and use it for his good.

Well, as we look at the beginnings of Moses life, we’re going to discover three invitations from God that offer to transform us and our past so that it can be used for good. These three invitations are, the invitation to:

Encounter Ourselves

Encounter God

Encounter His call

So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Exodus chapter 2:11-15

As you’re turning there, just a little bit of background. The Israelites have been growing like crazy. It’s estimated that there’s about three million Israelites at this time and the Egyptians were fearful of them taking over so they enslaved them. It even got to the point that Pharoah told the Hebrew midwives to kill and Hebrew boys that were born. Moses, being a boy, was kept hidden, put in a little raft and strategically put in the river close to where Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe. Moses sister kept watch and the plan worked. Pharaoh’s daughter discovered Moses, and decides to keep him. So Moses sister “happens” to come along and say - want me to find someone to nurse him for you? So Moses is raised by his mother for the first several years until put in the care of Pharaoh’s daughter, and is a Hebrew that is now being raised as an Egyptian. This is a pretty dramatic childhood. Separated from his people, his family and not really fitting in either world… Moses is conflicted. He was destined for greatness - says he was “instructed in the wisdom of the Egyptians” - he had the world on a silver platter. But eventually his internal life caught up with his exterior life and Moses - encounters himself:

The New International Version Chapter 2

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”

14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”

15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.

14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”

15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.

Encountering Ourselves

Moses has an identity crisis where he encounters the unrefined parts of himself. He doesn’t fit in either world - he’s a Hebrew that’s been raised in Pharaoh’s household but isn’t free to go and worship with his people. He had to learn how to cope… just like we all do. In his early years he was told who he was to be - “You are an Egyptian” and you can see the inner turmoil surfacing as he “goes out to where his own people were and watched them”. Pressure is mounting inside Moses… until finally in a fit of rage it all came out. Moses encounters himself.

How many of us have spent our whole lives striving to be someone that we have been told we need to be? For many people it’s striving to earn the approval of a parent that just never seemed to be satisfied. For others we have an inner critic that is constantly telling us that we are worthless - that we’re not doing enough - incessantly driving us to do more than humanly possible and it brings us to the brink of collapse.

You work yourself to the bone to get a 3.9 GPA but the only thing we here is why it isn’t a 4.0.

Or maybe we had a deep desire to pursue a specific degree or education but were told by our parents that they wouldn’t pay for it if we did because there was no money in that field.

Eventually if we don’t deal with these things our lives implode.

how many of us have been striving to be someone that we have been told our whole lives that we need to be? Eventually if we don’t deal with these things our lives implode.

Be a doctor not a musician

Or maybe as a kid we had a formative experience - something we witnessed or experienced where we made a promise to ourselves. I’ll never be like that, I’ll never be hurt again, I’ll never let anyone get that close, be seen as week, share what I really think, I’ll be self sufficient. But what do we do when these parts of ourselves come to light? When we can’t bottle it up any longer and we explode? Or our lives crumble before our very eyes?

Do this, don’t do that. This is who you have to be for the world to love you, for me to love you, or for God to accept you

This is how you survive - but you die on the inside. Many of us carry wounds from our childhood where we’ve promised ourselves - I’ll never be hurt again, I’ll never let anyone get that close, be seen as week, share what I really think, I’ll be self sufficient. But what do we do when these parts of ourselves come to light? When we can’t bottle it up any longer and we explode? Or our lives crumble before our very eyes?

Interesting to me that we spend our whole lives trying to act like we’ve got it together, that we’re strong enough… trying to ignore the huge undercurrent of insecurity just under the surface - it’s how we protect ourselves. But yet scripture says that true power is found in weakness. That in our weakness… he is made strong. Where are the places we’re afraid to be real about our weaknesses? We’re afraid if we are honest that the whole facade is going to come crashing down around our ankles? The invitation today is to see that true life isn’t found in hiding but in accepting those parts of ourselves - and that starts first and foremost by becoming aware.

Moses has a lot of raw talent and qualities - but then his repressed anger surfaces. He responds to a situation and ends up killing an Egyptian. He’s crossed a line and can never go back. His internal life is now public and with nowhere else to go - he runs.

Where are the places that we’ve encountered ourselves? The raw and unrefined places in our lives that we’ve been running from? Where do we find that we’ve been repressing our frustrations, or angst or our emotions to the point that if there isn’t some sort of pressure blow off valve that we’re going to explode? Fearful that we might wound someone with our words or actions?

Moses likely was having an identity crisis. Not fittin

David Benner: “Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known. Both therefore, have an important place in Christian Spirituality. There is no deep knowing of God without deep knowing of self, and no deep knowing of self without a deep knowing of God. John Calvin wrote, ‘Nearly the whole of sacred doctrine consists in these two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves.’”

David Benner: Suddenly the gap between his inner reality and external appearance was exposed. Things that he did not know or accept about himself welled up within him and shattered the illusion his life represented.”

Marriage - we see the effects of our unbridled anger that surface and the toll it takes on our relationships

Experienced a divorce, lost a job, or some other circumstance that leaves us wondering if we are damaged goods?

Moses was a man that was destined for greatness! He was raised and trained in the house of Pharoah! But little did he know that God desired to redeem his past mistakes, his unrefined and raw parts of himself, and to use it for good. But in order to do this, Moses had to come to grips with reality. He had to:

Moses was a man that was destined for greatness! He was raised and trained in the house of Pharoah! But little did he know that God desired to redeem his past mistakes, his unrefined and raw parts of himself, and to use it for good. But in order to do this, Moses had to come to grips with reality. He had to:

Grow in his awareness of what was happening in his interior life

Encounter God in those painful places

And the way Moses did this was by encountering God in the desert:

2. Encountering God in the Desert

The New International Version Chapter 2

15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.

18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”

19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”

20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”

21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, c saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”

Moses has probably the most powerful man in the world bent on a mission to end his life. Now we don’t know if Moses maybe felt a raw glimpse that God wanted to use him to rescue his people. It’s quite possible - clearly he felt compelled as he “watched them at their hard labor.” And after acting out of his own strength, he suddenly is outed for what he truly thinks/believes - and is now forced to go on the run, and lands himself in Midian.

Encountering God in the Desert

After

Now we’ve all had bad days - but we probably haven’t had “Most powerful person in the world is trying to kill me kind of days” - I don’t know, maybe you have. But this isn’t go so well for Moses - and there’s probably a good chance that he feels like any chance of him having a life of significance has just gone down the tubes. How do you go from being the son of Pharaoh’s daughter to a shepherd - and not feel some degree of defeat? Many scholars say that Moses was 40 years old when he fled to Midian… you want to talk about a midlife crisis?

Passage: Exodus 2; 3:1-10

But we’re already seeing an improvement in Moses. You notice that he doesn’t kill the shepherds? Hey! Way to go buddy! You’re doing better! I can just see the performance review - so, you didn’t kill anyone this time. Good job!

But what we discover is that God is far from finished with Moses. In fact, it’s out here in the desert that 40 years of solitude as a shepherd begins it’s deep work refining Moses for what is yet to come.

Probably one of my most favorite Action/Adventure films of all time is the Jason Borne series. Matt Damon stars as Jason Borne and as the story unfolds, Jason is a black ops assassin for the US government that after a botched mission finds himself floating in the ocean with two bullets in his back and left for dead - when luckily a fishing boat see’s him floating in the water and rescues him.

How might solitude play a role in our lives?

The New International Version Chapter 3

3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

7 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

The New International Version Chapter 3

3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

After finally regaining consciousness he quickly discovers that he has amnesia and can’t remember anything about his past. As the rest of the movie unfolds, we see that Jason is driven and consumed by the bigger question that is constantly haunting him: “Who am I?”

Now while we don’t have a lot of insight into those 40 years that Moses was living in Midian as a shepherd, but we do know that there was a significant amount of solitude - it just comes with the territory. I can’t help but wonder how this time of waiting played a significant role in Moses life as he was being shaped and prepared. As his raw and unrefined leadership gifts were being worked out and refined. Obviously this passage doesn’t say “and God had him be a shepherd for 40 years to teach him and prepare him for what it was going to be like leading a massive group of people.” But we know this season played a role - and I can’t help but wonder what sort of situations in our lives do we find ourselves in where God might be trying to refine us

As the movie continues on, Jason is being hunted down by the CIA that thinks he’s gone rogue, and as he evades authorities, he picks up bits and pieces of his story. Slowly fragments of his memory begin to come back and he begins the work of piecing his past back together and in a rather dramatic scene - Borne discovers the answer to his burning question… he discovers that he was an assassin that worked for the US Government - and once again is asking the bigger question of not just “who am I”, but who do I want to be now?

I think in a very similar way, many of us are asking the same question. Growing up, many of us remember the awkward years of Middle School and High School where we often would look to our friends to give us some sense of identity as we asked “Who Am I?”

In college we may have had pressure from a parent to achieve certain things, pursue a specific degree or to be play a sport that we really didn’t care for. And it’s left us asking, “who am I?”

As a young professional, maybe we’re just starting out in life and still trying to find clarity in who God has made us to be - or maybe we’ve looked to our role as a parent, a spouse, or our vocation to answer the question “Who Am I?” - but now that the kids have moved out and the house is empty… now that we’ve retired and no one really seems to remember our accomplishments or contributions - we find ourselves asking the same question: Who am I? Am I defined by what I do or by my past experiences?

Today we’re kicking off a new 9 week series titled “Who Am I” that focusses on lessons from the life of Moses where we are going to see that God helps us find our identity in him and that He has a redemptive plan and purpose for our lives as well.

So if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Exodus 2:11-15

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” 14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.

Now many of us are pretty familiar with the story of Moses, but if not, it’s important that we understand some of the background:

Israelites - about 3 million - were enslaved to the EgyptiansBecame so numerous that Pharaoh was concerned and decreed that Hebrew boys were to be killed.Moses was sent in a basket (under the watchful eye of his sister) in the river by some reeds so that Pharaoh’s daughter would find him and essentially adopt him.Moses is nursed by his mother till weened and then enters Pharaoh’s home and is raised by Pharaoh’s daughter as an Egyptian.

What we are going to discover today through the life of Moses is that God desires to transform the unrefined parts of ourselves and he does this by extending three invitations. These three invitations are to:

Encounter Ourselves

Encounter God

Encounter God’s Call

Look again with me at Exodus 2:11

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.

The first invitation we see in Moses life is the invitation to:

Encounter Ourselves

Now there’s a pretty good chance that Moses feels like a fish out of water. He’s a Hebrew, raised as an Egyptian - likely not fully accepted in either world - has been told his whole life who he was supposed to be, but then notices the plight of his people. They are enslaved, treated horribly and beaten regularly and it’s stirring something inside of him. We know that he knows his family because his siblings hook up with him later on in Exodus. But we begin to see the widening gap between his interior life and exterior life until it explodes and results in the death of an Egyptian putting him on the run.

Striving to be someone he’s not - internal and external life can no longer be hidden. David Benner describes this kind of “encountering of ourselves” in this way: Suddenly the gap between his inner reality and external appearance was exposed. Things that he did not know or accept about himself welled up within him and shattered the illusion his life represented.”

Where are the places in our lives that we find the same internal strife and angst in our own souls? Where are the places that we’ve been striving to be someone that we’ve been told we have to be? And what were the experiences in our upbringing where we’ve been told that we have to be or act a certain way?

To always have the answer. Be the smartest. Don’t be insecure. Don’t ever be vulnerable. Never show your weaknesses. To talk less and smile more… don’t let them know what your about or what your for?

Many of us have had experiences as kids where we’ve made promises that we wouldn’t ever let certain things happen to us again, or we would never let people know what’s really happening inside - and like Moses - we can only hide that for so long.

What we discover is that like Moses, it’s essential for us to encounter ourselves - what we truly think and believe and desire if we are to experience the life of purpose and freedom and hope that God offers us - we can’t keep stuffing that down and not expect it to come out sideways.

You might not be killing an Egyptian and hiding the body in the sand, but it does come out in other ways:

Marital infidelity

Long hours at work used to numb the pain of our interior life. (This is a big one… look at people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk)

Anger that seems to come out of nowhere

Moses crossed a line and once he encountered himself - once everything came out there was no going back.

The thing about encountering ourselves is that when we finally grapple with reality - it can feel as though all is lost. Moses was a man destined for greatness - he had raw leadership abilities - but in it’s unrefined state it was dangerous and wildly.

But as Sam Rima says in his book “Overcoming the Dark side of leadership: “When we refuse to process in healthy ways feelings of insecurity, unhealthy codependence issues, feelings of personal shame, deeply sublimated anger or fear, or some combination of these or other issues, they will wreak havoc in our lives and leadership and eventually endanger ourselves and others.”

God desired to use Moses in some very powerful ways - and even Moses desire to help the Israelites and longing for justice were good - but his leadership was still raw and unrefined. God had some work to do, and the first step was for Moses to come to grips with reality. And like Moses, God is extending an invitation to us to Encounter Ourselves.

In what places might God be trying to help us see the raw and unrefined parts of ourselves?

It’s important that we come to grips with these places in our lives, but it’s not enough for us to just Encounter Ourselves. Because much like Moses, we may have noticed them and ran. Ran from a commitment, ran from a relationship.

Chances are we’ve noticed these parts of ourselves and feel completely incapable of fixing ourselves. When we encounter the unrefined parts of ourselves, it can create a desert state where we feel lost - we feel overwhelmed - but it’s only in these desert places where we encounter the realities of the unrefined parts of ourselves that we can begin to see the ways God desires to refine them and to transform them. It’s only here that the deep soul work of transformation can happen and that’s why it’s important that we accept the invitation to Encounter God - which is the second invitation.

2. Encountering God

We need to encounter God in these desert places and unrefined parts of our lives.

Read Ex. 2:15

15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”

The first thing we notice is that after Moses encounters the unrefined parts of himself, he flees to the desert where he begins to encounter God in solitude - in the quiet desert or wilderness.

Now already we’re seeing a significant improvement in Moses’s leadership. After coming to the rescue of these women - he doesn’t actually kill anyone this time. Way to go!

What we find is that Moses is 40 years old at this point, flees for his life after the most powerful man in the world is trying to kill him. And he probably thinks that this is it. This is what he’s going to be doing for the rest of his life. Destined for greatness - he encounters the raw parts of himself and now thinks that he’s damaged goods. It’s over.

How many of us have been here before? Maybe we’ve encountered the raw parts of ourselves and we’ve wound up feeling that somehow our past mistakes have left us feeling like God is done with us.

We see this often in relationships - people start to get close - our inner lives are exposed - we lash out in anger, or we feel to vulnerable and so we run. Creates a cycle of bouncing from relationship to relationship or job to job.

We’ve seen a side of ourselves that we can’t stand and wonder - is God done with me? Am I damaged goods now?

You see, it’s not enough that we just encounter the raw parts of our interior lives, but we have to encounter God in those places if we are to grow into the person God truly created us to be. He gave us our gifts and talents and passions for a reason, but unrefined they can be dangerous to both ourselves and others. God is too loving to let us stay here - he extends an invitation to us to encounter him in those places - and it’s often done in solitude - in the desert and the wilderness of our lives.

Look at Moses Life - Moses enters Midian when he’s 40 years old and what we see is that Moses becomes a shepherd (from Egypt’s finest to a shepherd!) and what we know is that he’s in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses spends significant time in solitude. But why is this so important?

Because in the desert and in solitude is often where we are still enough to actually encounter God in this interior places of our souls.

Story: Ever noticed how when we are alone (some of us wish we had that problem) that we distract ourselves? We always have music playing or a book to read? We find a project, busy ourselves or get sucked into a tv show or series? Ever noticed how it’s difficult for us to simply be still?

Henri Nouwen describes it as being like the flying monkeys from Wizard of Oz. The minute he tries to quiet his soul, he describes it as the Monkeys in the tree start jumping up and down.

I know I’ve experienced this - even when I’ve pulled away to stay at a monastery for several days at a time. Completely unplugged from technology - wherever I go, there I am.

Sometimes Solitude is difficult because it’s here that we begin to grapple with the reality of who we are - we encounter ourselves - including the places that are raw that we try to hide, and we are invited to encounter God by yielding those places to Jesus. To be real with who we are and see that God loves us in those difficult to accept crevices of our souls. As we open those unrefined parts of ourselves to God He begins to do his transformative work.

Solitude functions like gravity on a jar of river water. Having been allowed to sit for a few days gravity does it’s work and settles all the muddiness that makes it hard to see… and pulls it to the bottom. In the same way, solitude settles us, and it gives us clarity about who we are and who God is - and we begin to see these two realities come together - we see the unrefined parts of ourselves and that God loves us and desires to transform those places and use them for good.

Tim Keller put it this way: “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.

says that: 

The New International Version Chapter 8

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

How might you be in a wilderness of sorts right now? In what ways might you feel like you’ve been running for your life and wondering if God could ever make sense of the mess our lives are in? And how might these places actually be places that God is inviting us to encounter him?

How might you be in a wilderness of sorts right now? In what ways might you feel like you’ve been running for your life and wondering if God could ever make sense of the mess our lives are in? And how might these places actually be places that God is inviting us to encounter him?

Like Moses, how might God be using this season or this wilderness in your life to settle the sediment in your soul?

Or on the flip side - maybe we haven’t sat down by the well yet. Maybe we’ve kept so busy that we need to make a point to slow down. How might God be trying to speak to us in the midst of our crazy busy lives, but we’ve packed our lives so full that our souls are never given space to settle? To actually encounter God? Is the invitation for you this morning to slow it down? To create space to actually “Be still and know that he is God?”

Ruth Haley Barton puts it this way, “Solitude is the place of our own conversion. In solitude we stop believing our own press. We discover were not as good as we thought but we are also more than we thought.”

This is why we can’t simply skip to encountering God. To just learn facts about God really doesn’t become transformative until we begin to see what that actually means to us. If we read about grace - it never means anything to us until we realize that WE NEED GRACE.

Augustine wrote in Confessions, “How can you draw close to God when you are far from your own self?”

John Calvin in 1530 wrote: “Our wisdom . . . consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”

So how might we do this?

One simple way - Prayer of examine - end of each day as you lay down in bed. Take ten minutes to rewind and play through your day and ask yourself, where was I aware of God throughout my day? What ways do I sense God trying to speak to me? What parts of my day did I encounter myself - anger, impatience etc. and how might God be inviting me to let him into those places of my life? To see that God loves me even in light of these places? It’s a simple, but powerful way to start becoming more aware of what’s stirring under the surface of our lives and to begin to encounter God in those places - allowing him to grow us and transform some of those more raw places so that God can redeem them and use them for good.

God desires to transform the unrefined parts of ourselves and he does this by inviting us to encounter ourselves and to encounter him in those places. And it wasn’t until Moses had spent 40 years in the wilderness that he was ready for the third invitation, which is the invitation to:

3. Encounter God’s Call

Look with me at Exodus 3:3-5

3 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”

4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses said, “Here I am.”

5 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

The next invitation we see here is that God invites Moses to encounter his call on his life.

So interesting to me the way that God chooses to get Moses’s attention. It’s fascinating to me. If you’ve grown up listening to bible stories - chances are that you’ve seen this on a little flannel graph board a thousand times, but if the story is new to you - what a fascinating way to get Moses attention! I think I’ll appear as a bush. And on fire! YEAH!!! And then I’ll call out to him. Done.

But doesn’t God use some interesting ways to get our attention? What’s interesting to me is that Moses has been a shepherd by this point for probably close to 40 years. Little does he know that those 40 years weren’t a waste, and that God actually had a place for Moses. He had a call for Moses but that Moses had yet been refined enough yet for what was to come.

I remember at one point in my life: Scotland - Bus, “finish what you’ve started” Whoa! God was using a waiting period in my life to refine me for what was next - for when his timing was right and I was no longer to wait but to go.

Some of us wish God would come crashing through the woods with burning bush or a bus of sorts, but for others - sometimes it’s a still quite whisper. Sometimes it’s a general sense that God’s timing is right now, and it’s time for us to pursue the dream he’s stored up in our hearts and been refining us for.

Where might be the places in our lives that God is trying to get our attention? In what ways might God be extending an invitation for us to “go over and see this strange sight”?

Another element that’s interesting to me is that Moses had probably grown pretty comfortable and at peace with the wilderness. He probably thought he was going to die a shepherd. How many of us by age 80 are just longing for a big adventure? Some of us are 30 and we want more than anything to be settled - get me off this crazy roller coaster! I just want to be settled! But how might God be inviting you to encounter his call for you in this new chapter or new season of life? Regardless of our age?

What we see here is that God demonstrates his faithfulness. He hasn’t forgotten his people: And he was going to use Moses. Not only was God refining the unrefined parts of Moses, but he was going to use him in a very powerful way to rescue his people.

I can imagine the conversation unfolding: “I’ve noticed and share your plight for my people” Awesome. “I’m going to rescue them!” Sweet. Do it. “I’ll take them to a land flowing with milk and honey” - sounds weird, but I’m sure it’s great. “And your going to lead it!” *insert crickets* ………… uh….. “moses…” someones calling me, I gotta go.

I can imagine Moses hearing the invitation and it probably raised all sorts of feelings in him. “I tried that before! I almost died!” God takes a call, a passion, raw gifting - things that nearly cost Moses his life. An area where Moses had likely given up all hope, and he use it for his purposes. God redeems his past and says, go - in my strength… I will be with you.

And in a very similar way God helps us find our identity in him and that He has a redemptive plan and purpose for our lives as well.

What broken dreams might God be inviting you to trust him with? Where might we not only need to yield to God these raw parts of ourselves, but also being willing to actually dream again.

So as we wrap up our time today…

In what places might god be inviting you to encounter yourself? What are the raw places of our lives where we’ve been afraid to be honest about the widening gap between our interior and exterior lives?

And in what ways might God desire to encounter us in those places in solitude? Maybe for you the invitation is to find ways to be intentional to just be with God and to listen. To invite him into those places and see the work He’s doing under the surface.

And in what places might God be trying to get our attention? That he isn’t finished with us and longs to see us dream again.

When we encounter ourselves, encounter God, and encounter his call - like Moses, God desires to transform the unrefined parts of ourselves. He helps us find our identity in him and see that He has a redemptive plan and purpose for our lives as well.