Moses saw the oppression of his people and was certain that he was the one to deliver them. But after he’d struck his first blow for God and for rightness, God allowed him to be driven into blank discouragement. God sent Moses into the desert to tend sheep, then left him there for forty years. When, at the end of these years, God reappeared and told Moses to go and bring forth his people, Moses was baffled: “Who am I that I should go?” he replied (Exodus 3:11). He’d forgotten what he’d known in the beginning—that he was the man God had chosen for the task. Moses had always been the right person for the job, but before he could actually do the job, he had to be trained and disciplined. He was not fully prepared for his work until he had learned communion with God.
We may have a vision of what God wants us to do; we may even start to do it. Then comes the equivalent of forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing. Then, when we are thoroughly discouraged, God comes back and revives the call. We get nervous and say, “Who am I?” We have to learn to draw on God’s authority and power and say, “I am who I am . . . has sent me” (v. 14). Individual effort for God is an impertinence. Our individuality must be transformed by a personal relationship to him. We fixate on the individual aspect of the vision, seeing only what God wants us to do. If we have not entered into communion with him, we’ll meet with discouragement instead.
If you are going through a time of discouragement, take heart; there is a time of great personal growth ahead.
