Text: Exodus 2:1-22
The early life of Moses reads like the Oscar-winning screenplay it would one day become. Nicely packaged into a single chapter of Exodus, it may not seem like much at first glance. But take a closer look. Do you see Him? God is everywhere.
He is waiting in the reeds as a young mother pries open her hand and watches through tear-filled eyes as the basket slips down onto the riverbank. It is His invisible hand that brings to that same riverbank the daughter of Pharaoh himself – the very ruler who seeks to destroy this child and each male Hebrew baby like him. It is God who softens her heart to gather an abandoned slave baby into her arms and send for a woman of his own people to nurse him. And it is God’s specific and tender care that allows that nurse to be none other than his mother.
Oh, to hold the child you let go and feel with your own hands and see with your own eyes that he is alive and well. I can scarcely imagine.
This is the kind of fresh start the God of heaven gives.
A child born into slavery and under threat of death is raised in a palace and educated in the high court. The boy grows into a man, a man who sees the burden of his people and begins, almost instinctively, to fight for them well before he receives the Call.
Moses fought for them because it was who he was. It was who God made him to be.
You see, God’s redemption of Moses began long before he could prove himself worthy. It began when he was just a baby! There was no merit, no qualification; only the nearness and goodness of God. God’s plan of redemption for Moses was broad enough to span history and yet intimate enough to meet his most specific needs. It was a plan to redeem a man, a people, a world.
Sisters, the redemption God offers you is specific for today. It is offered regardless and in spite of your merit, your performance, your best laid plans. Receive it. Let’s walk in the freedom of God’s plan for our lives today.
The amazing ways in which God's hand moves will bring even the strongest man to his knees! I have always been amazed at God's love and his power to move mountains, and to make something out of nothing. Just as God guided the heart of Pharoah's daughter, He also guides the hearts of people today. I have been enduring a long, drawn-out custody battle with my daughter's father and one day before I left to travel to another state for the proceedings, my dear brother told me to pray and ask the Lord, "God, don't meet me there, beat me there!" This is a powerful prayer because it is asking God to work on the heart of others and all things will work out according to God's will! Yes, I love the Lord!
I've been reading through the plan trying to catch up and I really just had to stop and meditate on this. I need to really let this sink into my heart because there are some places in my heart that desperately need the fresh start that only heaven can give. Does anyone else struggle with areas that tho you have faith, the dullness and lack luster bring sadness? I am desperate for the Lord to do a new thing, to meet me there on the river and make a way where there seems to be know way. I could never fix the things that need redeeming. I can never perform well enough to say "finally I have arrived." It truly is a fresh start that can only come from heaven. Jesus, Great Redeemer, I receive your fresh start with all that I am. I desire you and your ways more than I could ever express in words. Take all these other things and redeem as only you can. I long for your fresh start.
I love the emphasis y'all put on when Moses's redemption began…as an infant when he had absolutely NO POWER to "earn" it. Such a wonderful reminder that God redeems us from the very beginning. He was, he is, and he is to come. Our Lord grants us this free gift of grace and blesses us with his redeeming power; we are who we are because of what He did!
Wow, Amanda. What can one add to that? How beautiful and eloquent and a fresh word for such a time as this! Blessed to be a part of such a beautiful community of women who hear from God and get right to the heart of the matter!
Thank you, Lord, that although we are born into sin, we can be born again out of it – and that we could never earn our rebirth. It's all for your glory that my story reads the way it does – just as Moses' story of being delivered from certain death in the Nile River as a babe to ultimately delivering his people from certain death at the Red Sea is such a beautiful interweaving of the most unlikely of circumstances.