Written by Chuck Swindoll, these encouraging devotional thoughts are published seven days per week.
What does it take to qualify as a bush that God will use? You have to be dried up and thorny. OK, I qualify. You have to be dusty and dirty. All right, I'm there. You've got to be ordinary. Right. That's me all over. What else, Lord?
I think one of the most important words in this verse is the very first one. When. The Hebrew word means "at the same time." That goes back to verse 3, where Moses said, "I must turn aside."
That is the way God works. Without a hint of warning, He speaks to ordinary people on ordinary days. In other words, it will happen on an ordinary day.
Reach for the hand of your Guide! He is Lord of the desert. Make that your desert. The most precious object of God's love is His child in the desert. If it were possible, you mean more to Him during this time than at any other time.
Here is the unvarnished truth: If you don't learn to live peacefully with obscurity, you will repeat that course until you do. You cannot skip this one and still graduate.
Our problem isn't that we've failed. Our problem is that we haven't failed enough. We haven't been brought low enough to learn what God wants us to learn.
Let me ask you directly: Are you willing to be obscure? A servant's mindset will teach you what that attitude is all about. To put it in simple terms, in the Body of Christ some people are called to be the toes. Not everyone can be a right hand, an eye, or an ear. Some people have to be the toe, or the heel, or the kidney, or the liver.
You may have had big-time plans in your life—major league dreams that haven't panned out. You were going to write a bestselling book, but the opportunities just haven't come along. Are you willing to write for your church newsletter?
The fact is, you cannot sow a fleshly seed and reap a spiritual plant. You cannot plant a carnal act and grow spiritual fruit. If you manipulate and connive and scheme and lie to get yourself to the top, don't thank God for the promotion! God knows, as you know, that you manoeuvred and pulled strings and buried those carnal carcasses in the soil to get yourself promoted.
I wouldn't have to go back very far on my calendar to revisit a week where I missed the mark—missed the whole target—more than I hit close to the bull's eye. And I don't have to be a prophet to proclaim that you have experienced the same. Of course you have. You may be having such a week even as you read these words.
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