The Great Hero is the Great I AM. I AM, meaning the God of the present, the God Who is, the God with me, beside me, before me…I am. Being. A state of complete and total existence.
I love seeing Moses’ doubts as He questions God’s abilities to be all He claims to be. Funny how God is speaking to him from a bush on fire and he’s still like ‘Ooookay God, so I’ve got a slight problem here: I have a speech impediment. Sooo, I kinda thought I’d just letcha know, ’cause that definitely puts a glitch in your plans.’ I just want to reach through time to shake Moses and say ‘hellooo! You’re listening to the Almighty God talk to you out of a bush and you’re sitting there worrying whether God is powerful or miraculous enough to deal with a bunch of stubborn Egyptian royalty because you have a talking problem. Dude. He’s making abush talk. Somehow I don’t think making you talk is going to be that hard for Him.’
But then I look at my own life and see God’s hand time and time again in instance after instance, the Great I AM, the ever-present, all-existing One, and still here I am, fretting over how fast or if at all the anesthesia is going to kick in when I get my wisdom teeth pulled out eventually. Yep. I don’t even have an appointment scheduled.
I have seen God’s I AM-ness so many times in the lives of Moses, Ruth, Esther, Abraham, Jeremiah, Daniel, and so many others, and yet somehow I draw the conclusion that God’s presence and provision stopped right before He got to my little world. Like He ran out of power or something. And now I feel so foolish, for each person at the time felt like God wasn’t there. But He was. In worrying about the future, or in looking to the past to try to find a solution, they completely forgot about the present, and missed at first what God was telling them all along–I AM. The God of the right-now, the present, the One Who lives with me each moment and gives me strength for every second of the day.
God gave Moses 40 years of time-out in the desert to build his character before he led the Israelites out of Egypt. 40 years. That’s about half of a lifetime right there. And yet he was having major confidence issues when God told him what he needed to do. But rather than blasting him for his unbelief, God just gives Moses the reassurance of His I AM-ness. Time and time again. All throughout Moses’ confrontations and the next 40 years in the desert.
I’m challenged by the thought that I’m right about at the half-way point of Moses’ character building time. God has already taught me so much, yet in the years to come I want to fully grasp this mind-boggling, radically life-changing concept that Moses missed for so long yet gradually came to understand. The I AM. That’s the kind of God I want to have a constant awareness of.