God can USE us WHERE we are and WITH WHAT we have!

 

January 19 Bible Reading: Exodus Chapters 4-6

God can USE us WHERE we are and WITH WHAT we have!

When God revealed to Moses about His master plan of delivering the children of Israel from the clutches of Pharaoh in Egypt through him, Moses was reluctant to move forward.  In Exodus 4:1, we read the following: Then Moses answered and said, “But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, ‘The LORD has not appeared to you.’” This response is typical to that given by a modern day believer who has to convey the gospel to his/her unbelieving friends. 

From this passage (Exodus 4:1-5) we can distill some important truths that should help us in our personal witnessing of the gospel:

1. God asks Moses what he has in his hand (v. 2). Through the last 40 years, Moses had a rod that he carried as a shepherd. This rod signifies the past experiences in the life of Moses. When we witness the gospel to others, we can just use our past experience as the context to communicate the gospel with others.
2. God asks Moses to throw the rod down into the ground (v. 3). This denotes giving up the control of our lives to God at His word. God caused a dead piece of wood to turn into a living snake. Remember, God can do a miracle through our ordinary everyday life experiences if we surrender everything to God. When Moses caught the snake by the tail at the word of God, it turned back into a rod (v. 4). The miracles that God will perform will not harm us, but will cause others to believe in the power of God (v. 5).
3. After Moses threw the rod down, the ownership of the rod transferred from Moses to God. From that moment onwards, the rod is referred to as the “rod of God”. (Exodus 4:20). “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20)
4. Moses used this “rod of God” to perform most of the miracles in the process of delivering the children of Israel and during their wilderness journey (Exodus 4:17; 7:12, 15; 8:5, 16; 9:23; 10:13; 14:16; 17:9). This tells me that God will use our experiences as a wonderful testimony to attract many people to Jesus Christ during our spiritual journey.

Let us surrender ourselves into the mighty hand of God that He will use us as effective witnesses of the saving knowledge of Christ. “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life” (2 Cor. 2:14-16)