Running From Your Calling

When Moses was in Egypt, he ran away to the land of Midian to avoid being charged with murder in Pharaoh’s court. He had a calling on his life to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, but he went the other way. Moses spent forty years in the land of Midian, when his calling was in Egypt. God had to put the exodus on hold, while He waited for Moses to be ready to fulfill his calling.
When God told Jonah to go warn Ninevah, Jonah caught a ship headed to Tarshish. Tarshish was about as far from Ninevah as there was in the known world at the time. God arranged for a whale to swallow Jonah, to bring Jonah to the understanding that he needed to fulfill his calling, and, eventually, Jonah went to Ninevah. God waited until after Jonah had preached to Ninevah before pronouncing His final judgment. In fact, God spared Ninevah because the people repented at Jonah’s preaching.
There is a story, I don’t know for sure if it is true, but the story is that a Christian man was in a restaurant, and felt it laid upon his heart to share about a hope in Christ with the waiter. He understandably (I say understandably—some of you may not understand, and that’s actually a good thing if you don’t. I won’t pretend that I don’t understand) felt awkward about doing it, so each time the waiter came by his table, he made an excuse to himself. Each time, God dealt with him a little stronger. Finally he couldn’t stand it any more, and he promised God that the next time the waiter came by, he would talk to him. The waiter didn’t come by for a very long time. The man finished his meal, and was waiting for the check. And waiting, and waiting. Finally the manager came by, asked if he enjoyed his meal, asked if he wanted anything else, and gave him his check. “Wait,” he asked, “what happened to the waiter?” The manager gave him an awkward look, and then, lowering his voice, said, “I don’t quite now how to tell you this, but, about fifteen minutes ago, he went out into the alley and, well, he took his own life.”
Moses ran from his calling, but God didn’t take his calling from him, He just delayed it for a time. Jonah ran from his calling, but God gave him another chance. Sometimes I think God gets tired of people running away, though. Just because God chose to use Moses and Jonah in spite of themselves, doesn’t mean that He promises to be so patient with any of us. Did you know that you can run from your calling without taking a single step? You can hide from your calling in your routine, or in your attitude. Your calling isn’t necessarily to go be missionary in some dark jungle somewhere; it’s more likely to be just to share with people that you work with or go to school with that don’t know Jesus. It may very well be that the biggest difference between what you’re doing now and what you should be doing is just the words that come out of your mouth. The Bible says that from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. If you truly love God, that’s going to be in your conversation, not just your words, but the way that you live your life. People should be able to see in you a heart for ministry, even before you open your mouth, but when you open your mouth, it should confirm what they already observed. Not fulfilling your calling, though, can have dire consequences, not just for you, but for those around you, also.

Zipporah

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been left stranded on the island of misfit toys. Whenever I feel that way, I pray about it, and God reminds me of some of the reasons why I belong on the island of misfit toys. Nobody’s perfect, especially not me. Some of the people in the Bible seem like they shouldn’t have been there at all, and yet, God knew the hearts of these people, and He knew where they belonged.
Zipporah is one of those people. For those of you who don’t know, Zipporah was Moses’ wife. When Moses was forty years old, he came to the realization that he was where he was to deliver the Children of Israel. I’m not sure that he really wanted to, but he knew that was why God put him where he was. To make a long story short, Moses ran away. He went and joined himself to a group of Midianites living in or near Ethiopia. One of these was a wise old man named Jethro who had a daughter named Zipporah. Moses lived with the Midianites for forty years. God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, and sent Moses back to Egypt, and Moses went, taking his wife and children with him. If Moses was reluctant, Zipporah was even more so. These were her people only by marriage; I don’t think she had ever been to Egypt before, and she certainly wasn’t familiar with Hebrews (other than Moses). Somewhere in between Midian and Egypt, God reminded Moses that He had commanded circumcision for all Israeli males, back during Abraham’s time. Moses, living “among the heathen” as it were, had never circumcised his own son. Zipporah really didn’t know anything about this; it was not the custom of her people, and as far as she was concerned, it was just mutilating a baby. And Gershom wasn’t a baby any more. God threatened to kill Moses, and Zipporah performed the circumcision herself. I think it’s safe to say that her religious conversion was complete at this point. She became very angry with Moses at this point, but she stayed with him, and I don’t believe there’s any record of another disagreement between the two of them after that (I’m sure there were some, just not major enough to write down). Later on, Moses’ sister Miriam criticized Moses for marrying Zipporah on the grounds that she was not an Israeli. God struck Miriam with leprosy, but then healed her at Moses’ request.
Of course, the mere fact that God sided with Zipporah against the prophetess Miriam is a good indication of where Zipporah’s heart was. I think it’s also important to look back over her life and see what she had to go through to get to that point. If God had demanded circumcision for Moses’ sons while they were still in Midian, she probably would’ve had a much harder time accepting it. As it was, it seemed that God had to go against Moses to get her to follow the commandments that God had given the Israelites. Could God have used Moses to deliver Israel while Moses had an unbelieving wife? God is God, He can do anything, but Moses was skittish enough about what he had to do with his wife’s support; imagine what it would have been like for Moses if he spent his days arguing with Pharaoh and his nights arguing with Zipporah. Really, God did Moses a favor by almost killing him.
The most important thing that we have to look at in Zipporah’s life is that she started out living one kind of life, and ended up living a completely different lifestyle. There’s no real indication that she even realized that the way she was living wasn’t going to cut it. God had to deal with her pretty strongly to get her attention. She was not as flexible as she really should have been, but it ended up being okay. We need to be flexible, ready to do what God would have us to do, able to change as the need arises. There’s a song that they play on the radio, one of the lyrics is, “The way it always was, is no longer good enough.” It’s important to understand that, you may have been comfortable with your lifestyle for years, but then God has something else in mind for you. But I don’t want to change. Miriam didn’t want to leave Midian; Moses didn’t want to leave Pharaoh’s palace, Lot’s wife didn’t want to leave Sodom (how could you not want to leave Sodom? She had grown comfortable there), but it’s not about being comfortable.