What’s that in your hand?
Please tell me I’m not alone in this… where you have a task or a job or a goal in front of you that just seems… impossible. You know that it’s the thing you either:
A) Have to do
B) Want to do (but don’t know how)
C) God has called you to do
…but no matter the circumstances, it just seems… impossible. Implausible. Incomprehensible. Probably a bunch more “in-” prefixed words I can’t even think about right now.
I’ve certainly been there a few (gazillion) times in my life. And honestly, I’m in that place right now… not in a bad way, actually… more in a… “Okay, God, I’m gonna do what you’ve told me to do, but this seems really hard…” kinda way.
When I opened my bible this morning, one of my devotionals brought me to the story of Moses in Exodus 4. I won’t spend the whole time recapping the story, but in short, at this point in his story, Moses is at a complete and total loss as to how he is going to serve God and what he’s doing to do for God. He’s got a stutter, he’s in pretty dire circumstances, he’s not the leader we know he can be… and so in that moment, God asks Moses a question:
“What is that in your hand?” -Exodus 4:2a
After this, God doesn’t reply with anything other than simple directions to either throw it on the ground (where it becomes a snake and Moses is like HARD PASS and runs away), or pick it up for it to become a staff again (which if God told me to pick up a snake by its tail I’m not sure I would…).
Eventually, God uses that simple stick as a lesson and turning point for Moses… that stick eventually played a role in leading his people out of slavery, through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, and so much more. The reality is – it wasn’t about the stick that was in Moses’s hands… it was about what could be done with it when it was placed in God’s hands.
So whatever the thing is that God has placed before you… the task, job, or work… look at what is “in your hands.” What is it that God has already given you that you can simply surrender to Him and put in HIS hands to do with it what He will?
I love this. Thank you. In a hard season of “trying to pick up my snake” and it isn’t an easy path