moses' staff

I've always been fascinated by the story of Moses' staff. It started when as a teen, i saw a dance to a song which had these words - throw down your rod...

(see entry on 19 Jan 2008 for the impact it had on my life and another instance God spoke to me through this story).

I just came across this on an online devotional... and am reminded of this story yet again... almost a year later

"So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand" (Exod. 4:20).

When Moses was called by God from his forty years in the desert to lead the people out of Egypt, God first changed his paradigm about his shepherd's staff which represented his work life as a shepherd. God told him He was going to perform miracles through his staff (v17).

A shepherd was considered a very lowly profession by the Egyptians. Moses had a time of being set apart in the desert which separated him from all that he learned in Egypt.

We have to come to bring us to a place of willingness to lay down our vocations so that God can use them for His purposes. This surrendering and yielding prepares our heart for the new calling. God required Moses to lay down his staff in order for him to see it as something that had power. He had not viewed his work life as a shepherd as having any power.

God was instructing Moses to lay down that which represented his life and calling, so that He could transform it and raise it up for His purposes. Once Moses laid his staff down and then took it back up, a significant change took place. It was no longer his shepherd's staff; it was the "staff of God."

God's staff has power. After Moses' staff became God's, it was used as the instrument of deliverance and transformation for the people of God. It delivered people out of the slavery of Egypt through one of the most dramatic miracles of all time -- the parting of the Red Sea (see Ex. 14:16). Moses' staff transformed a people from slavery to freedom and was used to demonstrate his God-given authority.

How about you? Are you willing for God to use your "staff" to bring a people out of bondage?