What is my Excuse for not Being Effective?

Photo by Colin [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Reading: Exodus 4:1-17

When last we considered this passage, we asked the question; “What is that in your hand?” (Verse 2) We saw that when God calls, He equips. So there is no one who can truly say, “I have nothing in my hand with which I can be of service to God.” We all have something in our hands. For Moses, it was a rod; for Dorcas, it was a needle; for the little unnamed lad, it was five loaves of bread and two small fishes. For Mary, it was a jar of Alabaster oil. You know what you have in your own hand.

But what then stops us from being effective? 

In the passage we are looking at today, Moses gives a few reasons why God should look for someone else.

The Excuses of Moses

First in verse one, it is “suppose”! Suppose they do not believe me. Suppose, they doubt my mission! Suppose this or suppose that!  We all have one "suppose" or the other. What is that "suppose" that you have? God answers all our "supposes" by reminding us of what we are sure of – what we already have. He gives us signs based on what we have. Not just one but many. In answer to Moses’ suppose – God gave him no less than four signs:
 The rod became a snake
 The snake became a rod
 The healthy hand became leprous
 The leprous hand became healthy
 The water from the river poured on dry land became blood

But all those signs are not enough for Moses for he still has another excuse.

In verse 10 – “I am not eloquent in speech”. Who has told you that God is looking for only orators to do His work? Has God advertised for only experts and people with years of experience?

Again God has an answer to that excuse for in verses 11-12, God tells Moses that He is well aware of our deficiencies, if we shall call it that. He made every one of us. What we are and want to use in His service He knows; He wants to use us as we are. If He wanted Moses to be Peter, He would have made him Peter. He does not want me to be you in order to be effective. Paul reminded the Church in Council at Jerusalem in Acts 15, that God does not want the Gentiles to become Jews before admitting them into His body, the Church. The Council at Jerusalem recognized this fact. In his epistle to the Church in Ephesus, Paul told them, there is no Jew or Gentile in the Church but a new man whom God has fashioned out of the Jew and the –Gentile. Often we are ineffective because we are waiting to be proficient and we never will be. Let us remind ourselves of what Paul told the Church in Corinth in First Corinthians 1:18-31: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.  But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God — and righteousness and sanctification and redemption — that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the LORD.”   

What is the real excuse? 

For Moses, it is that he does not want to go (verse 13) Perhaps Moses is thinking of his reason for fleeing from Egypt in the first place. He perhaps, thinks God does not remember that he, Moses, is a wanted murderer in Egypt. If he Moses gets back to Egypt, the long arms of the law will catch up with him. But is God not aware of that? Has God not taken that into consideration also?

Some of us are afraid of witnessing and standing all out for God because of our past life styles. People would remind us of who we were. But has God not taken care of that? Did He not know who you had been before He called you? That excuse does not hold water. Whomsoever God calls, he equips. Sometimes we are also afraid of the future. God has not called us to go and fail. The future is in His hands not with us.

But suppose I persist in my excuses, what next? In our next opportunity, we shall consider that.

But now, what is your excuse for not coming to God? What is your excuse for not being effective in His Church? Have you tabled them before God? He has an answer for every excuse you may have. My dear Brother and Sister, Be effective today! He has called, He has also equipped – what is that in your hand; go with it for with it, you shall do many signs (verse 17).

God bless you all.