This week, my church is running a Blast from the Past Vacation Bible Camp for our community.
I can’t help but get excited about what God is going to do through the willing hands serving & revealing His character to the children who will be attending.
So this week, I felt led to post the main themes of the week, especially coz not only is my son going to be volunteering there, but because God is stirring within me to remind me of these/His five characteristics being taught, and I pray, caught!
God is….INCREDIBLE!
We not only see how incredible He is through creation & caring for His chosen ones, but incredibly, He initiates contact with us!
He pursues us, and reveals Himself to us!
We tend to think we are the ones initiating things with God, that we are in control.
Not.
The incredible Maker of all things wanted to set His people free. Despite many turning from Him while in Egypt, He heard their cries for deliverance, and arranged for His deliverer to be raised by the very household He would overturn to set His people free.
Moses was not only Israeli born in captivity, He was adopted into the royal family who were enslaving Israel. Talk about awkward. It’s not surprising that he would have had conflicted emotions, and been stirred by His Maker to have compassion on his birth family.
Because God stirred up His compassion within Moses before they met!
They didn’t meet in church, or while Moses was praying, or because someone introduced them face to face, although I suspect Jethro was praying fervently for Moses, married to his daughter, as the priest of the Lord in this area.
God showed up while Moses was watching the flock of sheep he has been entrusted with by Jethro.
Think for a moment about that whole scenario.
God was about to call Moses, raised & educated to understand rule, who has lately been working exclusively with sheep.
God calls His people His flock, the sheep in His care.
What better balance to his royal training than to be hands on with stubborn sheep?
How better to prepare Moses for the leadership role God had to come for him?!!!
God is truly incredible!
Flash back to Moses with the flock. Doing his usual job, he has led the flock near Horeb, the mountain of God.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to to him…
Say what? Just that alone is incredible!!!
in a flame of fire….
Okayyyyy… God’s got my full attention now, and I am sure Moses’ too in the moment!
Out of the midst of a bush. Moses looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
INCREDIBLE!
God used an ‘average joe’ bush out in a desert as the basis for His Presence to reach Moses!
Moses’ response was to draw closer to this phenomenon. Once we get to know him a lot better as his character becomes more revealed, we learn he is very fearful, and uncomfortable speaking in public.
Unusual for someone raised as a royal…
God knew that this set up, the burning bush, while Moses was away from other people, was the best way to intrigue him to draw near.
(Incredibly, He meets each of us exactly where & when we need Him most, and that encounter is tailored uniquely to do so by the One who made us and knows us sooo well! But I am getting off track!)
When Moses did, God called him by name, and invited Moses to draw close & talk with him, as He revealed Moses to be His, and His deliverer. (Exodus 3)
INCREDIBLE!!
And despite his fears and apprehensions, God went on to guide Moses as He asked him to lead His people out of Egypt.
Moses became one of the most talked about stories in the Bible, in no small part because he knew how desperately He needed the God who never failed to move in His behalf, speak with him, and empowered him to lead His people.
INCREDIBLE!
God uses ordinary folk & does the incredible through their willing hands!
And He still does the same today.
May we dig deeper in the Word to catch all the glimpses of our INCREDIBLE God He reveals to those who still seek Him today!
KARLA LEES 