What Is In Your Hand? (Part 1) Series

Opening illustration: My mother’s uncle was a soldier in WWII. He had served the British Army in the course of the colonization of India. During the war he was captured by the Germans and sent to the concentration camp. To India he became a MIA. His family was in shock and cried their life away. They thought he had been killed but his wife secretly harbored a hope of him being alive. Being an electrician in the army, he knew how to use all the electrical tools. After many months he was able to procure a plier/spanner. He and some of his buddies coined a plan to escape one night. Many were fearful of being shot dead during the escape and decided to stay back. Fortunately he and a couple of his close buddies used the plier to cut the camp wires and ran for their life. Few of them were shot dead during the daring escape but he and one of his buddies escaped with two bullets in their bodies. They found a hiding place and nursed their wounds before continuing their foot run from Europe to India.

For many years that followed, folks at home had almost forgotten about them thinking they had met their demise. But my mom’s uncle’s wife had harbored that hope of one day he would turn up. Sure one day he turned up at the border of India and disclosed his identity. After all the formalities, he returned home. He knocked on the door of his home and you can imagine what must have happened! His wife who opened the door fainted right there and his kids had grown so big that neither could recognize one another. It was a terrible, heart wrenching but wonderful sight of restoration and a hope turned to reality.

That night of their escape from the German concentration camp, my mom’s uncle had only a plier/spanner in his hands. He made good use of it which not only fetched him his life but restored his freedom. What do you have in your hand? How are you going to use it?

Introduction: Moses was a great man of God and did many mighty exploits as He followed God in obedience to His word. However, Moses was like most of us. He did not know the value of what was in his hands until revelation came from God. He had resigned himself to life as usual, nothing extraordinary, just getting by from day to day, and then God revealed Himself. God is revealing Himself to people in these days in order that they may be a Kingdom people ready to fulfill His will in the earth. We have something valuable to offer to the world and the truth of the matter is they are waiting for us come forth in demonstration of the Kingdom of God.

What is in your hand?

1. God’s Empowerment (vs. 1-5)

There is always something in Our Hand. Every life has some capacity. God says to each of us, "What is that in your hand?" He takes it for granted that there is something there. Do not envy each other, or despise one another. For if you do, you will paralyze your personal capacity and threaten your life with failure. To every one of us is given grace, according to the measure of the gift of God; and perhaps the hardest lesson that anyone can learn, is to believe that every gift from heaven is of equal intrinsic worth. Our success is to be measured, not by the character of the capacity, but its realization and full use.

“What is that in your hand?” is the question. “A rod” is the answer. Moses must have remembered a time when his hands held a scepter instead. Surely his mind went back to those days in the palace in Egypt when he was being trained and educated to be a Pharaoh. He may have remembered a time when he held the world in his hand, now he has nothing but a dry, dead stick. God knew what Moses had in his hand. God was not asking for information. God was asking for instruction. God was asking Moses to carefully consider the thing he held in his hand. In Moses’ life, the thing he held also held him!

That rod identified Moses and that rod also represented all the problems in his life! That rod reminded him that he used to be a prince. That rod reminded him that he was just a servant. That rod reminded him that he was poor and owned nothing. That rod reminded Moses that his life was filled with vast potential at one time, but that now, he was merely a has been, a washed up nobody on the back side of the desert.