In the movie Bruce Almighty, actor Jim Carrey plays Bruce, an
angry, down-on-his-luck television newsman. After tiring of the newsman's complaints, God offers
him the chance to take over the Almighty's job. But something totally unexpected happened
after the movie hit the theaters. The
movie showed God's phone number on Bruce’s pager, and although movies usually
use a phony telephone number, this time the seven-digit number shown in the
movie was real for certain area codes. So soon after all over the country, people started
dialing their area code and then that number, leading to some fascinating conversations.
In San Diego ,
Cathy Romano, president of a company that manages the practices of doctors, was
getting as many as 40 calls a day from Bruce Almighty watchers. One day she decided to play along.
"Hello, this is God," she answered on a whim. The woman caller gushed, "I can't believe
it; it's God, and it's a woman!" Question
– does God speak to us or is that idea something make-believe that we only see
in the movies?
From the time that I was a child in Sunday school I have
enjoyed the story of Moses and the burning bush. It’s a memorable story that captures the
imagination of children, but at the same time conveys an important message for
adults.
Moses is tending sheep for his father-in-law Jethro in the
wilderness and comes to Mt.
Horeb
I think this story says something about people in the
Bible. It reminds us that though we
often think the people of the Bible were so much more spiritual and holy than
us, we discover that it’s not true. They
were human and fallible like we are.
When Moses saw the burning bush, do you think he immediately thought: “Verily
yonder a bush burneth, God must want to speaketh to me.” Not at all.
God first had to get Moses’s attention. God used a burning bush. God might use a different means today. A
burning bush would quickly bring the Fire Department. Like in Moses day God has to do something in
our day to first get our attention. Why? We can get so caught up in things, so
wrapped up, so distracted, so immersed, that we aren’t in a frame of mind to
hear God speaking or see God guiding us.
How has God gotten your attention? Can you think of any burning bushes in your
life? Do you ever think that sometimes
we too miss God’s initial signs in our lives as well? I
mean if a burning bush doesn’t get your attention and if a voice speaking from
a burning bush still doesn’t get your attention, then you are really in
trouble.
Then God’s voice sounds forth from the Bush. “Moses,
Moses.” This gets his undivided attention. Moses hides his face because he is afraid to
look directly at God.
God says to Moses – “I have seen the misery of my people who
are in Egypt ,
I have heard their cries and have come down to deliver them from slavery and
bring them to the promised land.” The oppression of the Israelites has moved
God’s heart. God’s words shock him: “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my
people the Israelites, out of Egypt .” God doesn’t say this is your mission if you
should choose to accept it, God simply says I will send you on this
mission. Does Moses reply: “God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, on
ruler of the universe, You have selected the right man for the job, I’m ready
to go.” Does he say, “God I couldn’t
think of anyone better suited for such a mission?” No,
quite the contrary.
And then follows a series of classic excuses. “But God, who am I that I should go to
Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt ?” I'm a nobody.
When we say to God "I'm a nobody," God's response is always
"I know." God is not looking
for extraordinary people; God is looking for ordinary people who will trust an
extraordinary God. Does God leave Moses
hanging? No God says: “Moses I will be
with you, I will go with you.”
“But God, If I come to the Israelites and say, The God of
your ancestors has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name, what
shall I say? I don't know what to say.” What does God say to Moses? “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what to
say."
“But God, what if they say:
“The Lord didn’t appear to you! What
if they don't believe me or listen to me?”
God's answers: "It's not your job Moses. Your job is not to try to convince someone or
twist their arm, or fix everything or solve the problem or have all the answers,
your job is only to be obedient to me,
to obey my call, the rest is my job.”
“But God, I’ve never been eloquent, neither in the past nor
even now, I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. I'm not good enough. I’m not a good public
speaker.” God's response to that is
"Who made you? I know you
better than you know yourself, I know what you’re capable of. I will be there with you.”
David Ring, an evangelist with cerebral palsy, says "I
can't even pronounce the name of the Lord Jesus, but I'm going to brag about
Jesus until the day I die, so what's your excuse?"
Now just when you think Moses has run out of excuses and
that God has convinced him, he turns to that age old fallback position “Please
send someone else.” And God says: “Nope,
I’m sending you.” Now as we know, after
all was said and done, Moses ultimately obeyed God. But God also heard Moses, and told Moses to
recruit Aaron, Moses’ brother, to assist him in this great mission of
deliverance.
When God gets your attention, pay attention, I hear the
story saying that. When God lays
something upon your heart, the hurt of a friend, the hurt of a community, the
hurt or struggle of someone in your family, then listen. God may even specifically give you the name
of an individual to pray for or to call or to reach out to. God will lay it clearly upon your heart, not
as a requirement for the grace that is ours in Christ, but as an opportunity for
someone else to experience God’s grace through your forgiveness, through your act
of mercy, through your investment of time and love, through your witness,
through your courage.
I think of times when out of the blue, I have thought of
someone and decided to call or contact them and they say: “You know I was thinking about you, so glad
you called, or you know I have been dealing with a difficult time in my life,
thanks for calling.” Was that a call
from God? Was God prompting me? I believe it was.
To have a personal relationship with God means you must be
open to the possibility that the Spirit of God will prompt you, guide you,
direct you, call you. True, we are not infallible about whether or
not we are hearing from God. Can I prove that thought was from God? No. So
it helps to understand God’s will is always in sync with the truths and
principles that we know from Scripture. That God’s promptings, God’s call, is
always in line with the scripture, in line with the gifts and abilities God has
blessed us with, in line with a call to service, in line with a call to
repentance and confession. Often the Spirit will prompt us with thoughts:
a thought to write somebody, to serve somebody, to get involved, to make a
commitment, to do something, to confront somebody.
When those thoughts come, the point is to listen, to pay
attention, and to obey God’s prompting. I recall the story of Christian author, political and social
critic Os Guinness. He was convinced early
on in his life, that now that he was a Christian, he needed to meet everyone’s
expectations by becoming a pastor. So, urged on by his spiritual mentors, he became
a pastor and worked for a well-known church, but he was miserable. He was extremely unhappy.
One day God opened his mind through a random encounter at a
gas station. He had enjoyed a
conversation with the mechanic at the station.
He writes: “As I turned on the
key to start the car, a thought suddenly hit me with the force of an
avalanche. Ten minutes of conversation
with a friendly man at a gas station and I knew once and for all I was not cut
out to work in the church as a pastor. Through
that conversation God released me from what I was not supposed to do, and I
found the freedom to pursue God's true calling for my life.” Was God speaking to Os through this mechanic?
You never know in what circumstances you might hear the call
from God. God called Millard Fuller
during a time of crisis in his marriage.
At 29 years of age, Millard walked away from his life as a wealthy and successful
businessman to devote himself to the poor, eventually starting Habitat for
Humanity in 1976, which spread what he called “the theology of the hammer” by
building more than 300,000 homes worldwide.
He died in 2009 at 74.
Mr. Fuller’s life changed completely after his wife Linda,
whom he had married in 1959, threatened to leave him. She was frustrated that her busy husband was
never around, and their marriage and family was falling apart. They spent time soul-searching. After a time
of prayer in a motel room, they heard God’s call to totally change their
life. The two agreed to start their life
anew on Christian principles. Eschewing
material things was the first step. Gone were the speedboat, the lakeside
cabin, and the fancy cars. Today, more
than a million people in 100 countries live in the homes built by Habitat for
Humanity. All because God called out to
them in the midst of a marital crisis and both Millard and Linda listened and
obeyed the call.
It’s strange. The
Israelites were suffering under the yoke of slavery. And Moses turned out to be God’s answer to
that situation. Yes, know this, in
certain situations you are God’s answer.
No not someone else, you are. God
is calling you to a task or mission. God wants to use you to accomplish his
purpose. Yes, you may initially come up
with excuses like Moses, but also like Moses, trust that God will be with you in
that call. God will always grant you the
grace, power and guidance to accomplish what God sends you to do.
I close with a story by Garrison Keillor titled - Your Forgiven
Already. "Larry the Sad Boy ... was
saved 12 times in the Lutheran church, an all-time record. In nearly 10 years he threw himself weeping
and contrite on God's throne of grace on 12 separate occasions--and this in a
Lutheran church that wasn't evangelical, had no altar call, no organist playing
"Just as I Am Without One Plea" while a choir hummed and a guy with
shiny hair took hold of your heartstrings and played you like a cheap guitar.
This is the Lutheran church, not a bunch of hillbillies. These are
Scandinavians, and they repent in the same way that they sin: discreetly,
tastefully, at the proper time. ...
Twelve times! Even the
fundamentalists got tired of him. ... God did not mean for us to feel guilt all
our lives. There comes a point when you should dry your tears and join the
building committee or start grappling with the problems of the church furnace
and ... make church coffee and be of use to God." Yes, pay attention. You never know when God might speak in a
burning bush to you. Amen!
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