Moses woke one day and found that the people he was responsible for were about to stone him. It’s a brutal way to start a morning; the very people he’d led out of slavery, fed with bread from heaven, and carried through the sea now had rocks in their hands. Leadership had turned, overnight, into a threat to his life.
Are you waking today to responsibilities that feel like too much? A workload, a family, a church, a decision, something that’s gone from manageable to overwhelming while you slept?
God’s way forward is this: “The Lord answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.” (Exodus 17 v5-6).
1. Get some distance between you and your responsibility. Walk on ahead.
“Go out in front of the people” (v5). Before Moses can lead them again, God moves him away. Sometimes the first act of leadership is a step back, not a step forward.
2. Get a small accountable group of friends that you trust, and meet with them.
“Take with you some of the elders of Israel” (v5). Moses doesn’t go alone, and he doesn’t go to everyone. He takes a few people who’ve earned the right to see him under pressure. Isolation and crowds are both dangerous.
3. Take up again that person you really are: your identity (your staff) again. Believe in who you are.
“Take in your hand the staff” (v5). This is the same staff that turned into a snake before Pharaoh, that split the Red Sea, that has been in Moses’ hand through every act of deliverance so far. Picking it up again reminds him of who he already is.
4. Remind yourself of what you have achieved in the past. (You struck the Nile.)
The staff “with which you struck the Nile” (v5). God is specific. He doesn’t just say “your staff,” He points Moses back to a particular victory. God corrects that lie of being overwhelmed by naming the last time you thought you couldn’t and yet you did.
5. Meet with me.
“I will stand there before you” (v6). God simply says, “I’ll be there.” Whatever today’s crisis is, it doesn’t get solved before you’ve stood in front of Him.
6. Let me take you back to the time when I first called you. (At Horeb.)
The rock is “at Horeb” (v6), the same mountain, almost certainly, where God first met Moses at the burning bush and called him to this task (Exodus 3:1). God brings him back to the place of calling, not to relive the past but to remember the voice that started it.
Let these lessons of Moses help you if you find yourself at Rephidim today.
Missions Paul 