I heard a sermon once by a dynamic speaker - who liked to use props whenever he spoke; he found it helped his audience remember what he had said. This particular day, he walked onto the platform with a bright blue mop handle, unscrewed from one of those wonder-mop varieties of mops they sold in the stores about 15 years ago or so.
He hadn't been speaking very long before the color of the mop handle, or even that it was a mop handle at all, didn't matter any more to me. I was transfixed.
He spoke of the life and ministry of Moses. In particular, he spoke about the experience at the burning bush. And then he started talking about the miracle of the rod - how God told him to throw the rod on the ground; when he did, it became a serpent. (I can still see him throwing the mop handle on the floor and jumping away from it as if it had started to move and he might get bitten. Then gingerly, carefully reaching for the end of it - and raising it up for all to see it was a mop handle - er - shepherd's rod again.)
Then this pastor held the rod up in his hand and said something like this: "I want you to understand something. In Egypt, Moses was the next thing to being a god. He had it all: money, power, anything he wanted. But when he identified with his own people and tried to help them on his own, he was so disgraced by his failure to help them that he left all that behind and lived in self-imposed exile. He took on the life of a simple shepherd. And a shepherd's rod is his most important tool for doing his work; it protects the sheep from predators, keeps them in line when they stray, and helps the shepherd reach craggy places and tight spots into which sheep have gotten themselves. But over the course of 40 years, this rod came to symbolize for Moses ... everything he lost, all the failure, all the guilt and shame, all the things he could never be, and all the things he believed he always would be. Nothing but a shepherd.
"That rod was a metaphor for everything he had lost in his life. Lost dreams, lost reputation, lost future. Then God came into the picture and told him to throw it down. The Almighty told him to throw down the symbol of the life that he'd been living the last 40 years - a life of disgrace, of shame, of lost opportunities. Deep in his heart he wanted so desperately to be rid of all of that. So yes, he threw it down. Then it transformed into the very personification of those feelings : a venomous snake!! Moses ran from it. Who wouldn't!! But God told him to do something that scared him even more. 'Pick it up.' Not only was this a venomous snake, which would bear watching, it was also the symbol of all of his failures. Why? why would God say to pick up the very thing he loathed? the very thing that caused him so much pain?
"But Moses DID pick up that serpent - and it transformed back into a rod again. And here's what I want you to get. Ever afterward, when Moses talked about that rod, he didn't call it 'the rod of Moses' when he wrote about it. God called it 'your rod' but Moses never did. He called it 'the rod of God.' "
Then he said something else I will never forget. "God can take the very thing that is causing you the most pain, the thing in your life that you feel you can never be free of - and transform it eventually into an instrument that He can use to help others. All you need to do is throw it down at His feet, see it for what it really is, and then allow God to transmute that into what will eventually become your own unique ministry - whether you are a pastor or a lay person who rubs shoulders with hurting people every day. God can use the very thing you think is so ugly and turn it into a beautiful thing for Him. When He tells you to throw it down...throw it down.
"And when and ONLY when He says it's time to pick it back up, do it, for only then will you be ready to enter into the realm of using that very thing to help others who are suffering with the exact same issues you once had. And you will be the only one who can reach them because quite frankly, they won't listen to anyone else who's never been through what they have. That will be your unwitting gift to them, just as it was Moses' gift to his people, given totally unawares. And God will be glorified in and through it. You will be amazed."
How could I improve on that kind of message!? All I can say is that in my own experience, this has proven to be true. No matter how far down the scale I have gone, I have eventually been able to see how my experience not only of recovery and healing but of what I have been healed FROM, can benefit others, and God gets all of my gratitude for it, for without Him (and I tried for years to do it on my own and failed miserably every time) I can do absolutely nothing.
He hadn't been speaking very long before the color of the mop handle, or even that it was a mop handle at all, didn't matter any more to me. I was transfixed.
He spoke of the life and ministry of Moses. In particular, he spoke about the experience at the burning bush. And then he started talking about the miracle of the rod - how God told him to throw the rod on the ground; when he did, it became a serpent. (I can still see him throwing the mop handle on the floor and jumping away from it as if it had started to move and he might get bitten. Then gingerly, carefully reaching for the end of it - and raising it up for all to see it was a mop handle - er - shepherd's rod again.)
Then this pastor held the rod up in his hand and said something like this: "I want you to understand something. In Egypt, Moses was the next thing to being a god. He had it all: money, power, anything he wanted. But when he identified with his own people and tried to help them on his own, he was so disgraced by his failure to help them that he left all that behind and lived in self-imposed exile. He took on the life of a simple shepherd. And a shepherd's rod is his most important tool for doing his work; it protects the sheep from predators, keeps them in line when they stray, and helps the shepherd reach craggy places and tight spots into which sheep have gotten themselves. But over the course of 40 years, this rod came to symbolize for Moses ... everything he lost, all the failure, all the guilt and shame, all the things he could never be, and all the things he believed he always would be. Nothing but a shepherd.
"That rod was a metaphor for everything he had lost in his life. Lost dreams, lost reputation, lost future. Then God came into the picture and told him to throw it down. The Almighty told him to throw down the symbol of the life that he'd been living the last 40 years - a life of disgrace, of shame, of lost opportunities. Deep in his heart he wanted so desperately to be rid of all of that. So yes, he threw it down. Then it transformed into the very personification of those feelings : a venomous snake!! Moses ran from it. Who wouldn't!! But God told him to do something that scared him even more. 'Pick it up.' Not only was this a venomous snake, which would bear watching, it was also the symbol of all of his failures. Why? why would God say to pick up the very thing he loathed? the very thing that caused him so much pain?
"But Moses DID pick up that serpent - and it transformed back into a rod again. And here's what I want you to get. Ever afterward, when Moses talked about that rod, he didn't call it 'the rod of Moses' when he wrote about it. God called it 'your rod' but Moses never did. He called it 'the rod of God.' "
Then he said something else I will never forget. "God can take the very thing that is causing you the most pain, the thing in your life that you feel you can never be free of - and transform it eventually into an instrument that He can use to help others. All you need to do is throw it down at His feet, see it for what it really is, and then allow God to transmute that into what will eventually become your own unique ministry - whether you are a pastor or a lay person who rubs shoulders with hurting people every day. God can use the very thing you think is so ugly and turn it into a beautiful thing for Him. When He tells you to throw it down...throw it down.
"And when and ONLY when He says it's time to pick it back up, do it, for only then will you be ready to enter into the realm of using that very thing to help others who are suffering with the exact same issues you once had. And you will be the only one who can reach them because quite frankly, they won't listen to anyone else who's never been through what they have. That will be your unwitting gift to them, just as it was Moses' gift to his people, given totally unawares. And God will be glorified in and through it. You will be amazed."
How could I improve on that kind of message!? All I can say is that in my own experience, this has proven to be true. No matter how far down the scale I have gone, I have eventually been able to see how my experience not only of recovery and healing but of what I have been healed FROM, can benefit others, and God gets all of my gratitude for it, for without Him (and I tried for years to do it on my own and failed miserably every time) I can do absolutely nothing.
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