Reaching Out

Exodus 4
1 Moses answered, "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The LORD did not appear to you'?"
2 Then the LORD said to him, "What is that in your hand?" "A staff," he replied.
3 The LORD said, "Throw it on the ground." Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the LORD said to him, "Reach out your hand and take it by the tail." So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 5 "This," said the LORD, "is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you."
This is really cool. In this passage, Moses is trying to convince God not to use him because he is scared and does not believe he can do what God is asking him to do. God responds to Moses with this miracle.

The staff turned into a snake. It was a scary snake. It was scary enough to scare the bejeebies out of a guy who had lived in the desert for four decades! We know this because it states that Moses ran from the snake! Then God tells Moses to reach out and grab the snake by the tail. I guess Moses was more afraid of God than the snake because he did it.

A staff is symbol of support or power. For a shepherd it is a symbol of authority. It is what he uses to keep his sheep in line. The staff was in Moses’s hand but he dropped it. Once it was out of his hands, it intimidated him to face it and take it back up again, but, because he believed God, he overcame his fear and took up the staff again. Here’s the point I’m trying to make - Moses had the authority and the position of power in Egypt, but he let go of it. God was calling him to take up that position again, but he was scared. God told him to take it up again and he had to overcome his fear to take back that authority.

After this point, the staff is referred to as God’s staff. Moses was able to carry God’s authority after he overcame his fear. I sense that God is often trying to lead me to do things in him and I have to admit, more often than not I’m scared. I look at who I am and remember how I have failed in the past and try to talk myself out of it. Then, I look at the demands of the role I think God is calling me to and I am terrified.

Then I hear God saying, “Reach out and grab it by the tail.”