God's training plan

There is no doubt that it was one thing for God to take the Israelites out of the slavery from Egypt but quite another to get the slavery of Egypt out of the Israelites. That first generation of Israelites, with two notable exceptions, never overcame the slavery of their souls. They had been released to walk free, they had seen the mighty miracles of God but inside every one of them was still a slave.

The problem is that slaves have no passion, no purpose, no vision and no personal direction.  They have no rights and there is little pleasure in life because all they are doing is fulfilling other people’s purposes.  They have little or no sense of personal destiny.  They have no freedom of any sort and no ability to choose because their owner provides for them. What they lack most of all is any leadership capability because they rarely if ever lead.

It would have been almost impossible to find someone to take these million slaves out of the slavery of Egypt from amongst the Israelites but God had a wonderful plan. He needed to raise up a Hebrew, one of their own but one not raised in slavery. God hand picked Moses and then trained him up for 80 years.  Moses needed to be comfortable and confident in two different places; a palace and the desert. For 40 years this Hebrew was raised as a prince in the palace and for another 40 years he learned how to shepherd in the desert.

God was working out his plan for both Moses and his people.  When Moses tried to pre-empt the plan by intervening in the lives of the Hebrews and killing an Egyptian who was beating them, God used the event to take Moses from the first part of his training plan (the palace) to the second part (the desert). God uses our mistakes, presumptions and assumptions to work out his plans.

Moses I suspect knew there was a great call on his life. Why else would this Hebrew boy have been brought up in the palace when everyone else was making bricks? However the flame of destiny must have been burning very low by the time God suddenly appeared at the burning bush after 80 years.

Moses’ confidence in his abilities by this time was shot to pieces but that was fine.  God wanted to teach him to be confident in God not in himself. There was no way anyone would be able to bring about the 10 plagues and part the Red Sea if they were looking to their own abilities.  God taught Moses plague by plague, confrontation by confrontation with Pharaoh to trust him. By the time of the tenth plague it says in Exodus 11: 8 Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.

This was the Moses who was so scared of re-visiting the palace and confronting Pharaoh at the beginning that he begged God several times not to send him but to get someone else to do it.  By the time of the 10^th plague he knew who his God was and how Pharaoh was defying the plans and purposes of the Living God. It was the same spirit of holy boldness that David had when he slew Goliath. 

Moses was God’s man for the task and God trained him till he was ready to fulfil his divine calling. God has a destiny and calling for you and, though it may not look like it, he is working it out often in small painful steps. Despite our shortcomings, complaining and grumbling God will bring about his plan and purpose in our lives. He doesn’t give up even when we do.  Keep faithful, keep trusting, God is at work.