Today’s Text: Exodus 33:12-13
One day Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me,
‘Take these people up to the Promised Land.’ But you haven’t told me whom you
will send with me. You have told me, ‘I know you by name, and I look favorably
on you.’ If it is true that you look favorably on me, let me know your
ways so I may understand you more fully and continue to enjoy your favor. And
remember that this nation is your very own people.”
Words of Devotions
Many times when we don’t
know how to pray, we can look at the prayers in the Bible and learn from them.
We are going to look at the prayer of Moses, who God has given a mandate to
lead the people of Israel into the Promised Land, which was no small task. They
were a ragtag group of former slaves with no real military experience who were
on their way to take over the land of Canaan (a.k.a. the Promised Land). They
also had a penchant for doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.
It’s pretty obvious from
this prayer that Moses knows he is in over his head. In fact, if you read
through the Old Testament book of Exodus you’ll see that as Moses seeks to
follow God and responds to what God is doing, he is constantly finding himself
in over his head. God keeps bringing this guy back to a place of desperation
and dependence.
If we take a step back and
look at the narrative of scripture, or at people throughout history that God
has used in significant ways, or even at our own lives, we’ll see this pattern:
God keeps bringing those who desire to be used by Him back to a place of desperation
and dependence. This desperation and dependence for God
keeps us from thinking we have put our lives all together, being arrogant or
prideful in our success, and allows us to experience the Creator of the
Universe working through us.
Have you been praying with a
desperation and dependence toward God lately?
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