The Power of Calling

Given the salvation which took place in the Nile River when he was a baby in a basket, Moses should have figured that God had something in mind.  No doubt he heard the story from his birth mother, his sister, and the Egyptian woman who adopted him as her own.  But, sometimes stories told become stories forgotten.  Though raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and all the advantages of being an Egyptian instead of a Hebrew, he ended up in the wilderness a murderer and a fugitive from the justice of Pharoah.  He must have breathed a sigh of relief after a few years of safely tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.     

His sigh of relief was a short one because the Lord came and spoke to him from a burning bush that burned but which was not consumed.  When he put his sandals back on and left that holy place, he knew the road was going to take him back to Egypt and a confrontation with Pharoah.  It was a word Moses surely did not want to hear and he did everything he could to get out from under this word of God, but the God who called was also an unrelenting God.     

There may be some who are born with a desire to stand as a spiritual leader for the people of God, but most of the ones known over the years did their best to persuade God to get someone else.  When I knew that God was calling me to ministry, I also knew it was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do with my life.  It took God six months of speaking to me from the shadows of my experiences to bring me to a  point of relenting and saying "Yes."  It was not something I remember wanting to do as much as something I remember as something I was compelled to do.  If I was to live in obedience to Jesus, I realized there was no choice.  After much running the other way, I finally came around to the calling of God.  It is not something I have ever regretted and has always been something for which I have been grateful.