Exodus 6-9 Self Image

In psychology class it is taught that a person’s understanding of themselves and of their own abilities is necessary for a functional life. They call it self actualization.

All of us strive to “know ourselves” and somehow to make our choices based on that knowledge. This is great, until the moment when our image of our “self” is shattered by the demand that is placed upon us by an outside source.

For Moses, a moment like this came when God stepped into his life and asked him to do things far outside of his comfort zone. God took Moses’s self image and he broke it in exchange for a new identity…for a new picture of what his life would look like.

Moses knew himself to be “a man of faltering lips” meaning that he did not have the ability to present himself in front of others. He saw his life as staying outside of that world….he was sure of it.

When God comes into the picture and shows his power to Moses, he calls Moses to speak and to stand up in public. God tells Moses that he will be given everything that he needs for this task…but Moses cannot bring himself to believe God on that one.

It truly amazes me that Moses could see God do incredible miracles, and that he could know God’s power without actually believing that God could use HIM to work his plan. I think that Moses could believe that God could do all of the things that he said…except for the part where it involved using his life and his skills.

I don’t think that this kind of an attitude is really a stretch for any of us. We have this bad habit of separating ourselves and our abilities from the hand of God. We see God’s power as something separate from the things that go on inside of us. We allow our own pictures of ourselves to overpower the pictures that God has of us.

Fortunately, God didn’t let Moses off the hook. He dealt with Moses’s doubt until the day that Moses was standing before all of Israel and literally speaking for an entire day. Moses never saw that coming!

The challenge of tonight is not the person that you think that you are to overshadow the person that God is turning you into. He knows you better than you do!