LifeWay Bible Studies for Life Series for November 6: Your own burning bush

If you’ve been saved by the blood of the Lamb, you’ve heard the voice of God, because it’s the Holy Spirit (who is God) that convicts people of sin and leads them to the cross.

It’s that same Spirit that leads a person to see his or her own burning bush. Once they see it, they have to decide whether to approach it. They have to decide whether they have the intestinal fortitude to set their feet on holy ground and to do what God asks them to do, or whether they’re going to turn away from the fire and do their own thing.

Granted, what God asks you to do may take you over the roughest terrain imaginable—mentally, physically and spiritually—because when God finds a person willing to do his work in the world, the assignment likely is one that tests every fiber of his or her being. But, it’s also the most spiritually rewarding earthly journey you can possibly take.

And, if you think God’s assignment for you is tough, study carefully the assignment he gave Moses. It went something like this: Moses was to go back to Egypt where he was wanted for murder, a death sentence hanging over him, and he was to demand the most powerful man in the world free God’s people from slavery. He was then to lead those people out of Egypt and settle them in the Promised Land.

Also remember this: God didn’t send Moses to college or seminary to prepare him for this assignment. He had been hiding out or hanging out and tending sheep in the wilderness for 40 years.  Maybe it took that long for God to get him ready to approach the burning bush.

Time doesn’t count; results do. The fact Moses was 80 years old when he was called by God to do his assignment should be a wakeup call to everyone who thinks they’re too old to serve in anything other than a menial way. Moses didn’t stand there barefoot in the hot sand trying to get out of his assignment by saying: “Hey, God, I can’t do this. I’m 15 years past retirement age.” No, he didn’t do that, but with humility he did say “Who am I to do this?”

Well, God made it clear it didn’t matter who he was. What mattered was who he (God) was. We’re talking sovereign God here, the great “I Am”—and if he’s with you, nothing or nobody in the universe can hurt you.

God is looking for someone just like you. He wants you to see the burning bush, to approach him, to plant your feet on holy ground, and he wants you to accept an assignment from him.

When growing up, I thought I was born to play baseball, preferably for the Yankees or Phillies. That’s a pretty pathetic goal when you think about it, and it definitely smacks of a “me” mentality. It ranks right up there with being born to hunt alligators or possums, or to be a persimmon picker.

I could, but won’t, blame this on the fact that growing up most Sunday worship services I attended were primarily 60 minutes of irrelevance attended by self-absorbed people who enjoyed sermons about compassionate love—as long as they didn’t have to practice it. That’s still a problem. We have an ample supply of dysfunctional, slowing dying congregations comprised primarily of inwardly focused folks content with “church as usual” as long as the preacher lets them out on time to watch football on TV.

It’s also why there’s no end to the number of over-entertained and under-challenged young people who are drifting further and further away from the church, because the very people who should be mentoring them are, instead, teaching them how to distance themselves from God.

A biblically functioning church is infused with the life, hope and excitement only found in Christ.  In such a church, the people are filled with a ravenous passion for doing the assignment God has for them.

People who are “in Christ” possess the knowledge of what he wants them to be; so they know and understand what he wants them to do. They know he expects them to give nothing less than their entire life—mind, spirit, soul and body—to the work he has called them to do.

Ephesians 2:10 says “… we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

If you’re alive and kicking, there’s a specific work you’re expected to do. It’s an assignment that has your name on it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a teenager or living in a nursing home, he will be with you in fulfilling that assignment.

Remember, Moses was 80 years old when he had his burning bush experience, but David was a teenager when he went out with a slingshot to fight the nine-foot-tall Goliath who was trash-talking God.

If God is on your side, the giants aren’t any bigger now than they were then. So we need to attack this unbelieving world with everything in God’s arsenal. And, God says to each of us: “If not you … who? If not now … when?”