2009 – Day 63.Mar. 5 – Flammable Bushes

2009 – Day 63.Mar. 5 – Flammable Bushes

Passage of the Day: Exodus 3: 4 – 10 … 4 So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” 6 Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. 7 And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. 8 So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. 9 Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. 10 Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

My Journal for Today: Swindoll today in the devotional I just read from his book has come up with a fascinating word picture of what God came to Moses to set in motion for his destiny. What God needed to set His people free was a flammable bush whom He could easily set on fire for God’s glory.

Forty years earlier, Moses probably thought of himself as a strong and growing specimen of a plant; but God had to take him into the desert and replant him to re-grow this plant into a more common variety bush, tinder ready to burn for God. When Moses was exposed to God, THE Burning Bush, that day, he had to come to see that God had been preparing this newly regrown plant so that he could burn brightly for God.

And Swindoll brilliantly pictures what it takes to be a burnable bush for God’s kingdom purposes. To burn for God, one has to be a plant that has been prepared and pruned to be dried up, thorny, and brittle … qualities that appear very ordinary, but they are elements of readiness where all it takes is a spark from God’s Spirit to set the plant on fire for God. As Swindoll points out, Moses 40 years earlier was green and had foliage which was almost like asbestos, … beautiful to view, but unburnable when touched with God’s torch.

And Swindoll is right on in his contention that there are many believers out there in this world who are doing all they can to be beautiful looking plants but are totally unburnable for God. We’ve become a body of Christians who are fed by the streams of this world. Our foliage is green and very resistant to being lit up for God. What God needs, as he did with Moses, is a tinder-ready bush, prepared to burn brightly when lit by God to burn brightly in the darkness of the world.

For those 40 years in the desert, God had been pruning and drying out the bush who was Moses, making him available and quite ordinary looking, but making him a torch-ready plant who would light up the world for God. Perhaps you have wondered what it takes to burn for God’s glory in this world. And maybe you’re coming to realize what Moses was about to learn up there on that mountain in the presence of God, the Burning Bush. Yes, Moses learned that God can use any old, common looking, and possibly thorny, bush who is simply ready to be tinder branches when God lights him up.

What God needs is readiness and availability. He can prepare you as a burning bush for His glory if you let Him. But we need to allow the Lord to shape us, prune us, and prepare us to be burnable for Him. All too often, as Swindoll points out, we try to prepare ourselves; and we become plants who look good to the world but would not burn for God’s glory, even if lit by napalm. I want to be lit by God’s torch and to burn brightly, lighting up at least a small corner of God’s world so that my Lord will be glorified in heaven (see Matt. 5: 16).

How about you? Are you ready to be set on fire for God?

My Prayer for Today: Lord, make me a bush which burns brightly for Your kingdom glory. Amen