“Then the LORD said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ ‘A staff,’ he replied. The LORD said, ‘Throw it on the ground.’ Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it” (Exodus 4:2-3).
For Army Ranger Jeff Struecker, whose courage has been portrayed in the movie, Black Hawk Down, the defining moment of his life was when a rocket-propelled grenade was flying through the air towards his Humvee as he was in the middle of a firefight in Somalia. At that very moment, he knew God was calling, and he knew he had to answer, “Lord, I put myself completely in your hands!” Struecker survived the 17-hour battle, and the experience gave him a faith, which he describes as “bullet-proof.” He should know. He’s been there.
“What is that in your hand?” That was the question that God put to Moses when he had that conversation with the Lord following his encounter with the burning bush. When Moses left home that morning, he never thought about the fact he was about to confront the defining moment of his life. He stumbled across God, shepherding his father-in-law’s flock on the back side of the desert. Whereas the accomplishments of most men are winding down at age 80, his were just beginning.
But back to the question God put to Moses, “What is that you have in your hand?” Can you not picture Moses looking at his gnarled, weathered hands, expecting to see something more than a shepherd’s staff—a slender branch which he had chosen, then soaked in water, and bent the diminished end into a crook or a staff? “A staff,” Moses replies, wondering what’s next. Then the LORD says, “Throw it on the ground!” Or “Give it to me!”
Your defining moment in life comes when you do what Moses did. You take whatever you have in your hand and release it for God to control. Corrie Ten Boom, the watchmaker who served time in a Nazi concentration camp before she became a missionary to the world, used to say that you should hold onto your possessions loosely because it hurts too much when God has to pry them out of your hands.
Whether or not you realize it, you have three things in your hand: (1) resources; (2) abilities; and (3) time. Now the extent of numbers one and two—resources and abilities—may differ, but when it comes to your time, every person has exactly the same amount—168 hours a week, 24 hours every day, 60 minutes in every hour.
When you are willing to submit your talents and abilities, along with your resources and time, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, you are answering the same question that Moses had to answer. And what happened when Moses turned loose?
A dead branch, or a staff, found life, a focus of awe and mystery to the Egyptians. The staff became a snake. Then God told him to pick it up, and again it became the shepherd’s staff, an instrument of power when Moses knew that the hand of God was holding His hand.
It was the same staff that Moses used to hold high over his head as the waters of the Red Sea rolled back, and the same one he held when his forces were fighting the Amalekites (Exodus 17).
A final question. Why are we so hesitant to release what is in our hands, letting God take control of it? It’s the issue of power and control, right? We’re not quite sure that God is to be trusted, and like a little child who grips a coin in his hands, afraid to let his daddy hold it for him, we forget that every blessing is a gift from God. When you turn loose, you too have confronted the defining moment of your life.
Resource reading: Exodus 3-4:5.
