From Face to Face

Do you have a Facebook account? If so, how often do you check it?  

A few weeks ago our church did a corporate fast as we sought the Lord's direction for us in this new season. You could fast from food, things or activities.  The first few days I fasted meals but decided to up the ante and fast from Facebook for a week.  This was quite possibly the longest and surprisingly the most productive week I've had in a long time.  If you're like me, you do have a Facebook account and you check it quite frequently (multiple times, daily).  The problem is that they have an app for your phone so you get notifications every time someone "tags" you in a post or when they comment on something you've posted (ain't nobody got time fo dat!). Which is great for keeping in touch with long distance friends and family, not so much for everyday productivity. 

I was reading my devotions recently and came across this verse: Exodus 3:6b, "Moses hid his face, afraid to look at God."  This is how we know Moses didn't have a Facebook account.  All joking aside, why do you suppose he was afraid.  If we read a few chapters earlier we learn his history.  We discover some possible reasons why he hid his face.  I've compiled a list in Dave Letterman form, drum roll please....

Top Ten Reasons why Moses hid his face: 

10. He saw a burning bush (which wasn’t consumed).    

9. He saw a “talking” burning bush (ooh wee, cookooie). 

8. He had a severely disfigured face (totally joking). 

7.He was afraid of what God would say to him. 

6.He didn’t want to go back to Egypt (or confront his past). 

5. He was ashamed because of his past (his past kept him paralyzed). 

4. He felt unworthy. 

3. He felt disqualified because he stuttered (no wonder I like him).  

2. He was an outlaw.  

1.   He’d forgotten or was unsure of who he really was.

As you read that list, if you're like me, you could probably relate to at least half of those excuses, I mean "reasons." Exodus 3:11, 'Moses answered God, "But why me? What makes you think that I could ever go to Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?'  When we look at Moses' life at the time of this miraculous encounter with God, we find out that not only  did he flee from Egypt because he murdered a guy but now he's herding sheep on the "backside of the desert" for his father in law Jethro.  This is not exactly the type of leader you and I would have chosen.  If he was running for office today, we would not pick him as our next president.  He's not the type of guy we want leading an entire nation.  This is exactly why God chose him.  And continues to choose people like you and I today. 

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”

What this scripture is NOT saying is: "time to take up trumpet lessons."  Or "hey, you should join a jazz band!"  What it's saying is if you want to boast in anything boast in God.  I'm reading a book about spiritual leadership and here's an excerpt that is applicable.

Once Saint Francis of Assisi was confronted by a brother who asked him repeatedly, "Why you? Why you?" Francis responded, in today's terms, "Why me what?"  "Why does everyone want to see you? Hear you? Obey you? You are not all so handsome, nor learned, nor from a noble family.  Yet the world seems to want to follow you," the brother said.  Then Francis raise his eyes to heaven, knelt in praise to God and turned to his interrogator:   

You want to know?  It is because the eyes of the Most High have willed it so.  He continually watches the good and the wicked, and as His most holy eyes have not found among sinners any smaller man, nor any more insufficient and sinful, therefore He has chosen me to accomplish the marvelous work which God hath undertaken; He chose me because He could find none more worthless, and He wished to confound the nobility of grandeur, the strength, the beauty and the learning of this world (Spiritual Leadership, J.Oswald Sanders, 2007). 

When we read in Exodus 33:11a, the bible says, "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend." So how did Moses go from the guy who hid his face to the guy who spoke to God face to face?  What changed?  His perspective.  Instead of focusing on his weaknesses, he learned how to focus on God's strength.  He went from telling God how big his problems where to telling his problems how big his God is.  Because of his faith an entire nation was delivered from slavery.  What would happen in our lives if we updated our prescription and changed our focus (Rhetorical question)?  Imagine how different our world would be if we stopped hiding our face from God and started meeting Him face to face.