Desert Week: The Scriptural Armory - God Uses Bumbling Screw-Ups

Moses is a really interesting character.  Obviously, he’s a hero.  He saved an entire race from the hands of extreme oppression.  Though reluctantly, he followed God into an amazing adventure marked by opposing royalty, a pillar of cloud and fire, the parting of the Red Sea, manna from Heaven, and receiving direction from God etched into tablets of stone.....not your average afternoon outing to the mall.  But we tend to forget that the same guy who encountered God in all of the above ways, started out by murdering someone then fleeing for his life to a far away land.

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” 14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well (Exodus 2:11-15, NIV).

Even though Moses completely embarrasses himself and commits an atrocity the first time he tries to lead the Hebrews, God still chooses him. This has always given me hope for my own future. No matter how badly I mess up, no matter how misguided my attempts are to follow God, he still has a plan in store for me, and most importantly he has called me to be his child through Christ.

I figure if he can use a bumbling murderer screw-up to lead what has been estimated to be well over a million people out of a hostile country, giving him the words to write the first five books of the Bible, he can use a bumbling screw-up like me to do something great.

Let’s think about this through our family leadership lens.  It doesn’t matter what you have done or not done up to this point.  It doesn’t matter how much your family is off course, God can turn things around and give you focus if you let him use you.  He can heal your marriage.  He can heal broken relationships with your kids.  He can still use you to do something GREAT in the lives your family members.

You and I might be bumbling screw-ups when it comes right down to it, but those are precisely the men God loves to use to change the world.