What’s In Your Hand? – Part 2

Michael continues that God called Moses to lead the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land. God got his attention and talked to him from a burning bush that was not consumed. Moses protested, “I’m not worthy to lead your people. I’ve been banished from Egypt. I can’t even speak.” God asked Moses, “What’s in your hand?” Moses replied, “It’s a shepherd’s staff. God said, “throw it down.” Immediately it turned into a snake.  

Psalm 90:16-17 “Let Your work appear to Your servants, and Your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us; Yes, establish the work of our hands.”

God works in mysterious ways. He uses the weak things of the world to confound the wise. What’s in your hand? God places His tools in our hands to do His work. When David Flood looked in his hand, all he could see was a dead wife, a baby girl he couldn’t care for, and a little delivery boy, the only one who listened to the Bible after a year in Congo. He couldn’t see what God had placed in his hand. Like God said to Moses, “what’s in your hand.” Moses saw a shepherd’s staff. It was the symbol of his profession. It was his identity as a shepherd. The Lord said to Moses, “throw it down.” Sometimes God asks, “what’s in your hand?” The next thing he says is “Throw it down, let go of it.” Our command is to throw down our identity and the things we hold dear. The staff in Moses hand represented his good life as a shepherd in the wilderness. What God saw in Moses hand was a staff that would represent the power of God to part the Red Sea, a staff that would bring forth the water of life in the desert. God places in our hands tools for His purposes also.  He asks us, “throw it down and surrender it to me.” If you don’t relinquish it for God’s purpose, it will just be a shepherd’s staff.  

Ephesians 3:20 “Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think according to the power that works in us.”

Two fish and five loaves in our hand adds up to seven. Two fish and five loaves in the hands of Jesus adds up to five thousand, miraculous food to feed hungry souls.  We’re tools in the masters’ hands. Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the father by Him, for it is God who works in you to will and to do of His good pleasure.

In the words of Saint Francis of Assisi: Lord make me and instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console.

To be understood, as to understand. To be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive. And it is in pardoning that we are pardoned.

And it is in dying that we are born again into eternal life. Amen.

Psalm 63:3-5 “Because Your loving-kindness is better than life, My lips shall praise You.
Thus I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips.”

What’s in your hand?  May we pray that we are instruments in God’s hands, fit for the master’s use,

Your brother in Christ, Michael