When The Purpose Is Revealed (2014)

WHEN THE PURPOSE IS REVEALED (2014)

Text: Exodus 17:1-7

"One of the greatest sins we commit against God is not reaching the potential he has placed in us." (Raymond McHenry. ed. McHenry’s Quips, Quotes And Other Notes. [author’s files: John Maxwell]. Third Printing. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004, p. 193). To put it another way, there is where we are and where it is that God wants us to be and it is only when we follow God and His guidance that we are able to close the gap between where we are and where it is that God would like for us to be.

A statement such as the “sinfulness of not reaching the potential that God has placed in us” helps us to understand that God has our growing plans in mind. Yet, perhaps one of the biggest barriers to unlocking our potential is from wondering what our purpose in life is. We might find ourselves wrestling between complacency and the anxiety of taking the risks to explore new and uncharted territory in our lives.

God summoned Moses through a burning bush (Exodus 3:1-7) to be His leader for a very important task. When God summoned Moses to be His leader for the purpose of liberating the children of Israel who were Egyptian slaves, Moses had some reservations about his own qualifications. He was not sure that he was the man for the job. Moses insisted that he was not sure that he was eloquent in speech (Exodus 4:10). In fact Moses even goes so far as to ask God to send someone else for the task. God then tells Moses that He will use Aaron to help him. God had given Moses potential that He wanted to unlock and develop. It seems obvious that Moses’ uncertainty was based on his anxiety and the uncharted territory of the task to which God had for him. Up till now, Moses thought that his purpose was to be a shepherd. He was a fugitive who was evading the consequences of having killed an Egyptian who happened to have been beating one of Moses’ fellow countrymen---a Hebrew. It was now some forty years later that God was revealing to Moses that He had big plans for Moses. There was a purpose, but there was also a journey----an uncharted journey.

JOURNEY

It seems, that one of the things that is a potential for us that we like to know where we are going to go in our future before we get there. We like to know where we are going to go because we like to calculate the risks and foresee the obstacles. We do not like bumps in the road and we want to avoid them because of the setbacks that they can cause to progress that we have made or hoped to make.

Consider the relevance of the following story. “The following conversation occurred between a canary in a cage and a lark on the window sill. The lark looked in at the canary and asked, "What is you Purpose?"

"My purpose is to eat seed."

"What for?"

"So I can be strong."

"What for?"

"So I can sing," answered the canary.

"What for?" continued the lark.

"Because when I sing I get more seed."

"So you eat in order to be strong so you can sing so you can get more seed so you can eat?"

"Yes."

"There is more to you than that," the lark offered. "If you'll follow me I'll help you find it, but you must leave your cage."

It's tough to find meaning in a caged world. But that doesn't keep us from trying. Mine deep enough in every heart and you'll find it: a longing for meaning, a quest for purpose. As surely as a child breathes, he will someday wonder, "What is the purpose of my life?"

(Steve May. compiler. The Stry File. [Max Lucado, In the Grip of Grace] Third Printing. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2000, pp. 263-64).

As long as we stay in the bounds of the cage---the cage of the comfortable and familiar we cannot discover what our purpose in life might be. Like Moses we have to trust God, take risks and begin our journey. And like Moses, we will often find that the purpose of our lives unfolds over the course of time.

THE UNFOLDING PURPOSE

Not only did God have a purpose for Moses, but He also had a purpose for those that He called Moses to lead. The lives of God’s chosen people were being dominated and dictated by the Egyptians who enslaved them. They had been crying out for deliverance. They wanted deliverance and a future. God wanted to deliver them from slavery and mold them to be His people. God delivered them and liberated them. God used Moses to be a key leader in that process. As someone (Bruce Larson) has said their freedom had two parts to it. God delivered and gave them freedom from oppression and slavery. God also freed them from oppression and slavery to allow them to have the freedom to become the people He wanted to them to be. (Bruce Larson. The Presence. New York: Harper and Row, 1988, p. 64).