God reveals Himself to Moses, speaking from the burning bush. Moses has now entered a new phase in his life; at 80 years (young!) he receives his authentic call to do what he has been created to do.
I want to put paid to the idea that all the fun stuff belongs to the younger generation. That is not how God operates. Yes, there is a lot of activity that younger people get involved in, but the Biblical precedent is this: Retirement is at the beginning of your life not the end of it.
Many people in the Bible didn't do much by way of 'anointed ministry' until later.
Actually, if you have a calling within what people would see as ‘fivefold’ ministry, in my opinion you won’t do much before you are mid-forties or older. God said to me that I would’t really begin to come into anything as regards ministry until I was in my 50s. That is what has happened.
Moses learned to be a shepherd in the desert. When he killed the Egyptian he wasn't sufficiently motivated by compassion. God only calls him to rule, when Moses has grown enough to be able to nurture the flock. David was the same. He had a heart to nurture the flock of sheep, killed a lion and a bear out of compassion for the sheep, and was then given authority over God’s flock (people). David came into it a lot younger than Moses.
God is fully conversant of the need of his people. He wants to incarnate Himself in humans to set humans free.
We need to understand calling from God’s perspective. We need to understand ministry from God’s perspective.
You may well have a calling to be a ‘pastor’ but this title has been bastardised - it is a shepherd, someone who looks after God’s sheep. You may have a pastoral calling but never have a title, an office in a building, or preach from a pulpit. You may be teaching from your home, or in the cafe, or even the pub!
You may never have a ‘Public Figure’ Facebook page yet still face down a ‘Pharaoh.’
There are billions of people in the world, unreached by the Father’s love. You could pastor people who will never darken the door of a church building. Maybe God will call you to where they are already gathered and you will become a shepherd over them. (Cave of Adullam) This is in the future of the Body of Christ.
What about the ministry of ‘evangelist’? What does it look like?
Crusades? Maybe. Thousands lining up with hands raised to accept Christ? Maybe.
How about a ‘Philip’ who conducted and was part of a thriving move of the Spirit, but was then snatched away to an obscure desert place to connect with a single individual in a chariot? How about an undercover evangelist? It takes all sorts, my friend.
Calling is always to lead His people out of bondage and into freedom. This is true to the nth degree. The love of God is to spread in ever increasing circles from individuals, to a prophetic vanguard, to the whole body of Christ, to the whole human race, to the entire created order, to the entire order of beings yet to be created.
When you go back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh and liberate the people of God, the Egyptian buried in the sand doesn't matter anymore.
Moses didn't revisit the place where he killed the slave master and buried him. He couldn't even find the place where it had happened. The sands had shifted and changed the landscape.
The landscape of his memory was changed by the blowing sands of passing time, no less than forty years!
Moses returned to Egypt after his great rupture. He wasn't the Prince of Egypt any longer. He wasn't trying any more to be a Hebrew Hero. He was flattened, deflated, with a stutter.
His attractiveness to the world-system was diminished beyond redemption; diminished by the dealings of the Lord in the Midian wasteland. But he possessed something; the same God that was in the burning bush. Finally, he was ready to confront Pharaoh and become the liberator he was called to be.
[Note: I'm not finished with this series yet. I know what my final blog will be, but there may be one or two more blogs before I get there.]