A handsomely designed, smartly printed business card introduces the salesman and his firm. Ancient Israel’s liberator, Moses, didn’t have a business card when he introduced himself in Egypt after a 40-year absence. But he did have a striking introduction: “I AM has sent me to you.”
The story behind that introduction began with an impressive attention-getter, a flaming desert shrub that wasn’t reduced to ashes. Thus began an encounter that led to Moses’ enlistment in God’s cause to free his people. It was one of those unique calls that stands out in the biblical record. Succeeding generations of believers have also found their God to be one who intervenes to establish his authority in their lives. The mission of the church has advanced when Christians have received a divine calling card of some kind. They have been sufficiently impressed, as Moses was, to find out what the caller, God himself, has in mind.
When Moses inspected the burning bush, God twice called him by name. The speaker was no less than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God worshiped and served by Moses and his family. In Egypt, Moses had shared ill treatment with God’s people. His premature rescue operation thwarted, the erstwhile deliverer fled to the wilderness and tended sheep and goats for four decades.
In this ignominious role, Israel’s future leader nevertheless was ready when the Lord’s call came. God was no stranger to Moses. He responded immediately to the voice out of the bush: “Here I am.” Christians sometimes think God has cast them into obscure, insignificant, useless places. But while Moses shepherded in the desert, he learned patience and long-suffering, two prime qualities of leadership needed for the long grind from Egypt to Canaan over another 40 years.
When God identified himself, Moses hid his face in fear and humility. He knew well God’s holiness and majesty. How we respond to God’s call depends to a large degree on our fundamental appreciation of his greatness. Looking intently at the bush, recoiling with upraised arms and hands, Moses did not mumble some flip remark about the man upstairs or the great L.A. Dodger in the sky. One significant reason some Christians fail to hear and obey God is that they have never permitted the awesomeness of the Almighty to overwhelm them.
With Moses in a proper frame, God revealed his plans. Basically, he told Moses his word was still good. He had not forgotten his people during four centuries of excruciating oppression. This was the answer to his seeming abandonment of his people and their prospective liberator. Four hundred years is a long time to wait; 40 years is a long time to wait. But patient endurance in faith and hope apparently is a divine priority for those who would recognize God’s intervention when it comes. We are not likely to answer a call from God if we have concluded in adversity that he has forgotten us.
No doubt Moses was exhilarated when he heard God say, “I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.” But before he had a chance to yell Hallelujah!, God told him, “I will send you to bring forth my people out of Egypt.” No more monumental task could be envisioned; this was a call of gigantic proportions. For a desert sheepherder to go to Pharaoh would be unthinkable; to accomplish the freedom of his people would be impossible.
But the initiative and the responsibility rested with God, not with Moses. That made the difference. God’s call is tied to his empowerment to fulfill the duty. This fact has sustained Christians who find their assignments every bit as hard as Moses found his.
Of course, Moses questioned God’s choice. “Who am I?” he asked. God’s answer to his rightful insecurity was a firm promise of his presence. God’s power linked to Moses’ faith and obedience meant that one day Israel would worship God on that very mountain. The guarantee of God’s presence is sufficient for anyone to say yes to him, for any responsibility.
Before saying yes himself, Moses asked for a calling card of his own. “What name shall I give them?” he asked God. “Say this to the people of Israel,” God declared, “ ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” Thus the mission to deliver Israel was launched. I AM—the self-existent, self-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable God—speaks, and it is the obligation of humanity to hear and obey.
I AM is pleased to identify himself personally with us. He deigns to love us, to call us, to permit us to live significantly and purposefully.
Christians hear, believe, and obey God’s call, not because he gives them a carefully blueprinted career mission in advance, but because they know in general terms who God is, what he is like, and what he is doing. God seeks people to repent and believe the gospel; he seeks worshipers; he wants believers to be shaped in Christ’s image; he wants them to be his ambassadors of good news.
That may mean a call to meet a neighbor, to befriend a coworker or business associate. That may mean a call to a lifetime ambassadorship in an urban setting, a university, or a primitive area overseas. That may mean a call to use one’s scientific, engineering, teaching, counseling, or preaching skills for the sake of Christ’s kingdom, not your own.
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God does not lead us through some unfathomable maze. He speaks clearly, but sometimes his call is obscured because we are not very much interested in finding out what it is. We’d like to have a sneak preview and then decide if we want to witness the main event.
What is God’s call like? A voice from a flaming bush? A voice out of a dazzling, blinding light at noon? A voice from his own holy throne? A voice at night rousing one from sleep? That’s what it was like for Moses, Paul, Isaiah, and Samuel. But the key issue is not the dramatic setting; it is the unmistakable call of God himself.
Of course, God may get our attention in some spectacular way. But there is no scriptural warrant to wait complacently for a “burning bush.” This is not the time to count oneself out of a God-directed vocation or a specific Christian duty because one hasn’t been given a dramatic invitation.
Every believer in the church today has compelling reasons to seek God’s face and to volunteer, “What shall I do, Lord?” The answering call may very well come in quiet meditation and worship as God speaks in his Word through his Spirit. Christ’s followers are not only called but sent. He said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.”
Aware of that basic obligation, which grows out of Christ’s saving work, we can confidently anticipate more directive calls to keep us on course: calls that shape one’s basic life orientation and more momentary calls that tell us to whom, how, where, and when to serve in Christ’s name.
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