During this Lenten study Mike Slaughter is inviting us to find our God-sized dream, our purpose in life.  This week we look at the life of Moses beginning with his birth.  Moses’ story begins with Pharaoh ordering all Hebrew boys born to be thrown into the Nile. 

When Moses was born his mother hid him for three months but then made a little ark, placing Moses into it, she laid the child in the reeds along the Nile River.  Not long after, Pharaoh’s daughter found this child and, in time, claimed him as her own son.  Moses grew up as an Egyptian prince with all the luxury of royalty. His was a blessed life.

When Moses was 40, he went out to where his own people lived and watched as they were forced to do hard labor. Moses was a Hebrew but his was the life of a prince not a slave. Yet as he watched an Egyptian beat a Hebrew, he identified no longer as a prince but as a slave, no longer an Egyptian but a Hebrew. Feeling the gut-wrenching pain of his people he strikes out and kills the Egyptian. 

When Pharaoh learned of this, he tried to kill Moses but Moses fled. Moses fearing for his life ran into the hill country of Midian. In the blink of an eye, Moses goes from prince to pauper—no shelter, no job, no food, no family, no friends. He is out living under the stars as a fugitive. One can only imagine him crying out to God in prayer, “Save me!”

To his delight Moses soon met a man who offered him a job tending to sheep. This man also offered his daughter to Moses in marriage. Maybe life was looking up for Moses! Forty years later, while tending sheep, at the age of 80, Moses sees a bush on fire yet the bush was not consumed by the fire.  So he walks over to check it out. Out of the burning bush God speaks to Moses. God gives to Moses a God-sized dream, saying, “I will send you to Pharaoh, to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” 

Moses, at the age of 80, sometimes it takes a while to figure it out, discovers his purpose in life wasn’t to tend sheep – it was deliver the Hebrews from slavery into the promised-land. This was a defining moment for Moses. The burning bush was not consumed but Moses was. Moses was consumed with compassion, with a sense for justice, with a heart for the oppressed, and a desire to do what he could to set the people free.

Friends, Mike Slaughter reminds us that we all have purpose, a God-sized mission that is revealed to us in a burning bush moment. Our burning bush moment may come from a mission trip, listening to a sermon, time in prayer, the voice of a friend, or maybe from a painful experience in our past that is calling you to act.  Moses’ burning bush moment to set the people free was closely tied to his life experience growing up as an Egyptian prince, watching a Hebrew beaten, and seeing the harsh conditions of his kin. 

As you journey through this Lenten season my prayer for you is that you will discover your burning bush moment, that you will know your purpose and that it will ignite your passion, consuming you with a fire to act.   May your prayer simply be, “Lord, use me.” 

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Week 3 - Your Burning Bush – Be aware of those illuminating God moments in your life from Dakotas UMC on Vimeo.