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

2009 – Day 61.Mar. 3 – An Ordinary Day

2009 – Day 61.Mar. 3 – An Ordinary Day

Passage of the Day: Exodus 3: 1 - 3 … 1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”

My Journal for Today: Yes, as Swindoll exposes today in his devotional, it was an ordinary day of shepherding for Moses that day in the deserts of Sinai when God decided to break His 40 year silence in the life of this silent servant. But in God’s timing and in Moses’ preparation, the time had come. But before that “day of the bush,” there were no unusual signs that this was the day to change the lives of Moses or God’s chosen people.

And we should, as Swindoll points out, ponder the reality that this is the way it will be when Jesus comes back to liberate His Church. Today is a day like all days. I’ve gotten up and I’m sitting here early in the morning, doing my devotional, typing my thoughts and seeking God’s insights. I’ve gone through my personal discipline of taking my morning medications and vitamins; and I used my sinus flush system as I do every morning. A little later, after my devotional time and posting this journal entry on my ministry website and blogsite, I’ll go through my other hygienic routine of washing my teeth, flossing, shaving, and bathing. Then, as it is my Tuesday routine, I will go to an early morning men’s Bible study at our church. All of these are a part of my very normal morning and Tuesday morning routines of life; but then, with the help of this devotional, I realize that Jesus could come today, as it says in Scripture, “like the twinkling of an eye.” Yes, our Lord could appear and come for His Bride, The Church even today.

And I ask myself in this moment of realization, “Am I ready?”

Moses was. He, without knowing it, and by his dedication to follow God, had been getting ready for 40 years, doing what God had led him to do. For 40 years, he had been doing what Jesus commands all of His disciples to do in Luke 9: 23 (oh, how I hope you know that that command says). And Moses, without really knowing it, had also been doing what it says in Rev. 19: 7 – 8. He had been preparing himself for the coming of God. And in the imagery of the New Testament, I need to ask myself, if what I’m doing in my daily, weekly, and regular life is preparing “my linens” for the wedding feast of the Lamb of God, who will one day – maybe today – come to take His Bride home.

And just as personally as you read this, you need to ask yourself, “Am I doing what I need to be doing to ready myself for the spectacular coming of Christ?” We all need to be checking our lives regularly to see if what we’re doing on a routine basis is readying ourselves for our Lord’s second coming. I ask myself today, “Is what I’ve doing this very morning, as routine as it is, what I should be doing to be ready when my Lord takes me home to be with Him for eternity?”

It is a worthy exercise periodically to test our routines and habits in a way, exhorted by 2nd Cor. 13: 5 and, as I alluded above, Rev. 19: 7- 8, to see if what I’m into on a daily or regular basis is preparing me, as Moses’ life prepared him, for that day when he looked up in the slopes of Mt. Sinai and saw that burning bush. Time to take inventory … ???

My Prayer for Today: May my life, today and tomorrow and every day, ready me for Your coming again. Amen