Moses: A Man of Selfless Dedication

by Charles R. Swindoll

Timing is as important as action.

Knowledge tells me what to do; wisdom tells me when to do it and how to carry it out.

“One blow struck when the time is right is worth a thousand struck in premature eagerness.” God has no limitations in His ability to pull something off, but He’...

What if David had seen King Saul vulnerable in the cave, and had said, “Now’s my chance to cut years off this exhausting hide-n-seek

n-seek chase through the wilderness. I’ll just dispatch the old boy right now and claim the crown. After all, God said it would be mine.” Do you suppose God would have blessed such a short cut?

The problem, of course, is not that God is too slow. It’s that we are too fast. Too fast for our own good.

One day, after observing that spectacle once again, I remember thinking, That scene reminds me of me! I want to get way out ahead of God, pulling and straining, choking on my own eagerness,

not having much fun at all. And God is saying, “Slow down. Take it easy. Heel! You’re only hurting yourself. Let’s enjoy the morning. Let’s enjoy this walk together.”

Moses was too strong. Too educated. Too cultured. Too gifted. Too advantaged. He was straining at the leash and had to learn that waiting— pacing himself—...

According to Exodus 2:12, Moses hid the body of the slain Egyptian. But by the next day, it was all over the papers. They found the Egyptian. Five inches of

Hiding wrong, Moses now had to admit, does nothing to erase wrong.

So many of us feel as though we have to hide our failures, believing no one else could have possibly failed as we have. Some are even afraid to tell God about it, fearing He might be as put off as we imagine others will be.

Moses, I’m convinced, never covered up again. He learned that lesson from failure. He learned a fourth lesson, too.

He was a summa cum laude graduate of Sun Temple U. He’d earned his stars in a distinguished military career. It was only a matter of time before he would be proclaimed Pharaoh Moses the First (think of that!).

With such confidence in his own capability, jumpstarting a rebellion seemed like something well within his range of competence. He just went out and did it. And why not? It came natural. In the spiritual life, however,

It’s remarkable how God appoints and directs as He wills, and we have very little to say about it. Moses learned that lesson from failure.

Do you know how I know Moses learned this lesson in humility? Because forty years later, at the burning bush, when God said, “You’re the man to deliver the people from Egypt,” Moses responded, in effect, “You’ve got to be kidding, Lord. Not me. Wrong

Remember me? I’m the failure. I’m the washout. Forty years ago I couldn’t pull it off, and I surely can’t do it now. Not me, Lord.”

Earlier, he had thought he was going to deliver a nation. He had grand dreams and mighty schemes. But this time God said, “You want a job as deliverer? Then stand up and do it, son. Start here. There are seven women here in Midian who need a champion at this moment.”

It was here Moses took his first steps in becoming a man of selfless dedication.

The young women would later tell their father, “An Egyptian delivered us from the hand of the shepherds, and what is more, he even drew the water for us and watered the flock” (v. 19).

Failure, you see, teaches us a servant’s attitude. And what does a servant do? He does “the next task.” She does what is available and ready for her to

God, however, will use our failures and setbacks to cultivate within us a servant’s heart. That’s all part of the process.

Moses was willing to be obscure, to dwell apart from the limelight, to accept his new status. I ask again: Are you? God will use failure in your life to break down that strong desire in your heart to see your name in lights.

But unlike before, he rested and relied upon God. He didn’t try to organize a rescue party. He didn’t slip back into Egypt as an assassin or saboteur. Not him! He’d learned that lesson. Now he simply said in his heart, God knows all about it. When He’s ready, He will work. I must leave it at that. Rather than rushing back into battle, he relied on and rested in God.

He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. We think we’re finished because of our failures, but God says, “No, you’re just getting started. Press on!”

Our problem isn’t that we’ve failed. Our problem is that we haven’t failed enough. We haven’t

been brought low enough to learn what God wants us to learn. We’re still trying to red...

Through the heady days of laughter and success and those nameless intervals of setback and blank despair. Through it all, He is with us, leading us, teaching us, humbling us, preparing us.

I’m grateful that in one area of life—no matter who we are and no matter what our backgrounds—we are all on the same level. We all qualify as failures. All of us!

Plead with the Spirit of God to

prepare you, then use you, however He pleases, dark side and all. You’ll be amazed how that takes the pressure off.

This very moment, you and I are the recipients of a gift from One who loves us just the way we are, warts, cracks, failures, and all. Since it is a gift, you might as well open your hands and receive it. Look, there—that’s your name on...

First, He encircles us. Second, He cares for us. Third, He guards us as the pupil of His eye. Isn’t that beautiful? When you think about it, you realize the pupil of your eye is the most protected part of your body. You won’t let anything touch it. You shield it with great care. You safeguard it from the sun. You care for it constantly. If

Moses had a four-decade course of study in the wilderness so that

He might know how to lead a whole nation through a similar wilderness.

It is so that He might humble us, that He might test us, and that the true condition of our heart might be revealed.

It will humble you. It will show you your strengths and weaknesses. It will help you discover yourself as never before.

God never puts us through the blast furnace in the desert to ruin us. He does it to refine us. And in the midst of that howling wilderness, through the process of time, the stinging sand bites through the rust and corrosion, and we become a usable tool in His hands.

That’s all part of the desert. In the desert you learn to do things you never dreamed you would have to do. You learn to tolerate inconveniences and bear with the situation; you learn to accept a set of circumstances you never imagined being a part of your life. That’s all part of the training.

That’s just a phase in the curriculum at God’s wilderness university.

Moses had to cope with being a nobody. All his adolescent and adult life, he had been a big-time somebody. The spotlight followed his

move, much as the contemporary spotlight follows Britain’s Prince William and Prince Harry. Every time Moses stood, people looked up expectantly. Every time he addressed them, people stopped talking and listened. Every time he strolled through the streets, heads turned.

truth: If you don’t learn to live peacefully with obscurity, you will repeat that course until you do. You cannot skip this one and still graduate.

He knows when you need the desert, and He knows when you are ready to move on.

We live today in a microwave culture.

When it comes to walking with God, there is no such thing as instant maturity. God doesn’t mass produce His saints. He hand tools each one, and it always takes

longer than we expected.

An impatient activist like Moses needed those years in the desert to unwind—to climb off the fast track and find God’s track. God’s work was painstakingly slow, yes; but in order to shape Mos...

You and I are strangers to silence. That’s why we almost panic when we find ourselves alone.