Just a Stick?

Read Exodus 4:1-20

What resources do you have available to you right now?  My grandmother used to say, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  What is in your hand right now?  What talent and resources can you put to use immediately for God’s purpose?  In this story Moses had a rod in his hand.  There was nothing special about this particular rod, it was just a rod (a stick).  But a rod, a simple stick, was what Moses had in his hand at that moment.  God didn’t ask Moses to go out and get something that He could work with, He didn’t ask Moses to find something useful, God used what was in Moses’s hand.

All of us could probably make a pretty good sized list of all the things that we do not have: I don’t have a lot of money, I don’t have a fancy degree from a prestigious university, and I don’t have a high social standing.  The list of the things that we do not have can be rather exhaustive, but God never asks what we don’t have.  God uses what’s in our hands, even though it may seem useless to us at the time, He uses what we have right now to accomplish His purpose.  What we have may seem small, it may seem weak and insignificant, but this is an intentional strategy of God.  Paul said, "His power is perfected in weakness."  It is when we surrender what is in our hands that He takes what is offered in surrender and links them with His power and anointing to accomplish His will and glorify His name.

I Corinthians 1:26-29

“Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.”

It is not about the stick; our ability, our knowledge, our talent, our comeliness, or our wealth, but what matters most is whose hand is wielding the stick.  Our stick represents the parts of our life that we have surrendered to God.  When God’s in something, it will confound us. Moses fled from before his rod when it turned into a serpent.  The anointing is the supernatural power of God operating through the natural to produce results that are humanly impossible.

We need more of God in our stick.  The greatest need today is more of God in our song, more of God in our preaching, more of God in our marriage, and more of God in our business.  When the power of God’s Holy Spirit gets in something, it changes the very nature of it.

When God’s Spirit touched an ordinary rock it caused a river of water to flow from it that quenched the thirst of more than a million thirsty people.  God’s Spirit got into a donkey and it spoke and rebuked a rebellious prophet.  God touched a small pot of oil and it to multiplied until it met every need and provided an abundant overflow.  God’s Spirit got into a box, and they called it the Ark of the Covenant.  The Ark was made of wood and then covered with Gold.  This is symbolic of what happens when the ordinary meets the extraordinary.  Even though the outside of the tabernacle was covered in badger skin the inside was covered in Gold.

Today God has chosen to place His presence and glory in human tents; our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit.  II Corinthians 4:7 says, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”

Moses’s rod symbolizes something that is weak, it has no life or energy of its own, and its effectiveness was dependent upon what the natural human power of Moses enabled it to do, until the power of God got in it.  In the same manner we are weak, we have no life or strength or power of our own, just like the rod.  It is only as we surrender ourselves to God that His power will be poured into our weak human bodies and His glory will be manifested through us.

Too many times we are unwilling to surrender what we have.  We want to hold on to what we know, what we understand, what we are comfortable with, what we have leaned upon and had control of for so long.  God wants to give us something new, He wants to give us something greater, but first we have to be willing to let go of what’s in our hand.  We need to trust God with our stick.

Before God could cause Abraham’s seed to be a blessing to all nations of the earth, He asked Abraham for his seed back.  Abraham surrendered his seed to God, Isaac, and through that seed God sent Jesus and blessed everyone who trusts in His name.

The rod of Moses became the rod of God, the seed of Abraham became the seed of God, and whatever you surrender to God, God will make His own.  Just like the rock in the wilderness if we surrender our lives and talent to God, He will cause rivers of living water to flow from within us to bless a thirsty world.

It’s time to dig up that hidden talent and put it in the master’s hands.  After all, look what God did with a stick.