Hey, Wha'cha got?

Imagine standing outside in your pajamas, a spatula in your hand, phone to your ear, listening as the President tells you he's chosen YOU as the one who will bring an end to the Iraqi conflict. Right away. Today.

After you convince yourself you are not sleepwalking, your next thought is: "What? ME? Are you kidding? I...I...c-can't do that. What do I know?"

That's exactly what Moses thought when God told him he'd been chosen to defy the most powerful ruler in the world, Egypt's Pharaoh. Moses had run out to the desert just to escape this guy, and now God was telling him to go back? And sass the man, too!

Imagine glancing down at your spatula, then at your pajamas, and wondering why you'd bothered to get up this morning.

If anyone ever felt too small for the job, it was Moses. But God wasn't the least bit concerned about Moses' opinion of himself. When God decides something, that's how it is and he makes sure all the components are in exactly the right spot---whether we think they look right or not.

"What's in your hand, Moses?"

Moses looked at the smooth stick he was holding and wondered where this was headed.

"Throw down your rod," God told him and it became a snake.

When he picked it up again, it turned back into a rod. But not just any rod. From then on, Moses referred to it as "the rod of God."

I love that phrase. It symbolizes what happens when God gets hold of something. He wants to accomplish much more in our lives than we could ever do by ourselves, but he can't do it while we're still holding on to our spatulas.

What do you have in your hand? Is it a passion? A dream? A talent? A skill that you've worked to develop and want to enjoy?

Maybe you don't feel you have anything in your hand. Maybe you're "just a mom," "just a janitor," "just a____." Fill in the blank. You've looked around at your life and you're pretty sure you don't have anything God could use to do great things.

Neither did Moses. How could God use an 80-year-old murderer-turned-shepherd with a walking stick?

Yet, when God gets hold of something, it becomes anything he wants it to become. That simple rod was the tool God used to defeat the greatest empire in the world at that time. With it God baffled the greatest minds and stumped the harshest critics.

Whatever you hold in your hand will never be all it can be
until you throw it down.

So what are you clinging to? What private dream, talent, skill, or goal are you afraid to throw down, afraid God won't know what to do with it?
Do you really want it to be limited by what you're capable of doing with it?

Wouldn't you rather be holding "the rod of God?"

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