The Leading that Surprises

There are times when God is leading us forward.  We sense in it our being, but we also know it is to destination, or to a task which is undefined and unseen.  What we know as believers is that the Spirit is always leading us into the future He has in His hands for us, but we also know there are moments when such an awareness it sharpened to the point that it seems that life is being lived in a strange expectancy.  In those moments of spiritual attentiveness, we walk through our day surprised not that God jumps out from behind a bush to speak, but that He has not done so yet.  

When Moses encountered God in the burning bush, he may have been on such a journey.  The language of the third chapter of Exodus speaks of him going beyond the wilderness where he normally tended his sheep to Horeb, which the writer defined as "the mountain of God." (Exodus 3:1)   The faith of Moses which was leading him to this undefined and unseen moment in his life brought him to a moment of hearing God calling, "Moses, Moses!"  Did Moses go with such an expectation, or did he go according to an awareness that he could not stay where he was if the stirring within his heart was going to know its purpose?  Moses may have been surprised by what God said to him about the work of delivering his people, but there does not seem to be any surprise that God revealed Himself and spoke to him from the burning bush.  When he heard his name, his spirit knew it had arrived where it was being led and Moses said the only thing he could say, "Here I am."  (Exodus 3:4)   

There are surely times when we have a clear sense of where God is leading us, but it should not surprise us that God puts within us a discomfort and discontentment that will not enable us to be still.  Even if we know not what to do, or where to go, we know where we are is not where God wants us to be.  So, we go. We go with an expectant faith.  The Apostle James wrote about it, "But, ask in faith, never doubting for the one who doubts  is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind."  (James 1:6).  In those moments of choosing to go with God even though we know not where, He calls us to exercise a faith that is not ornamental or ritualistic, but life directing.  Whenever we go beyond the edge of where we are comfortable, we should not be surprised that God shows up behind a bush to call our name.