Hey God, Can We Talk? Difficult Conversations Prøve

Hey God, Can We Talk? My Future Seems Bleak

By the time Moses reached eighty years old, I don’t think he had much hope for a different future. It is precisely at this point that God interrupts Moses’ daily drudgery of walking sheep around, making sure they have food and water, and looking after injured hooves. God confronted Moses with a burning bush that was not consumed by fire. 

What did God and Moses talk about at this burning bush experience? And how did God break through Moses’ hopeless outlook? I think it is really important to consider how this conversation started between God and Moses because it is possible that we could learn something helpful. “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’” (Exodus 3:4). It is significant to recognize that God didn’t start talking to Moses until He had Moses’ attention. Paying attention to God and what He could be saying has to be a critical priority for any conversation we have with Him. 

Once God saw that Moses was paying attention, He then began to talk. What He said to Moses was nothing less than entirely revolutionary to Moses’ perspective at that time. God tells Moses that He is going to liberate the Israelites from Egyptian bondage and bring His people into their own land—leading the Israelites out of slavery and into freedom.

Moses counters God’s information by asking some important questions about his identity. He asks, “Who am I?” Maybe Moses had a flashback to his disastrous debacle forty years earlier when he killed the Egyptian slave master and was rejected by his own people. Maybe Moses thought to himself, I tried to liberate my people a few decades earlier, and it was a fiasco that landed me with these sheep for endless days. I’m not going to make that mistake again. Maybe Moses was so bogged down in his own hopeless swamp that he couldn’t see a different future. 

Thankfully, God wasn’t put off by Moses’ questions or his hesitations, excuses, or resistance. In Exodus 3:4–4:17, Moses and God go back and forth no less than twelve times. Over the course of this conversation, Moses is altogether honest with God and puts his reluctance, reasons, and excuses on the table for divine engagement and intervention. God answers each of Moses’ arguments and obstacles. After all of this dialogue, which includes God equipping and persuading him, Moses agrees to do as God has instructed him. 

We would be wise to take the same lesson to heart. We need to be honest with God about who we are, and we need to communicate our concerns to God. Just like Moses thought that neither the Israelites nor Pharaoh would listen to him, we also have people and circumstances around us that could be hostile, skeptical, or dismissive to what we sense God is speaking to us. It is wisdom to communicate these concerns with Him, and it fosters intimacy with Him when we do so.

Moses had more conversations with God throughout the rest of his life and you can read them in the book of Exodus—particularly Chapters 8-12, 14, and 33. In chapter 33 Moses presses for more by asking to see God’s glory. God replies that no one can see His face and live, but that He will let Moses see His back as He walks past Moses. These verses have always riveted my attention in terms of having a deep and intimate relationship with God. In fact, the following verse has been a personal goal for me in growing my relationship with God: “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11).

I suggest that Moses’ conversations with God, beginning with the burning bush when Moses probably felt like his future was hopeless, was an essential ingredient to his ever-deepening intimacy and connection with God. May the same hold true for us as well as we grow deeper in our walk with God. May His presence become a higher and higher priority among the demands and noises of daily living.

Reflection:

· What areas in your life might you consider being hopeless?

· What areas in your life need some honest conversations with God?

· Would you want to have a more intimate relationship with God? How could you communicate and demonstrate that desire to God?