Good Reasons or Poor Excuses

Bienhome Muivah *

Nowhere is this tendency better illustrated than in third chapter of Exodus, which describes how God gave Moses an unexpected and incredible assignments to lead Israel out of bondage and slavery from the Egyptians. By this time Moses was eighty years old and apparently had grown accustomed to the life of a shepherd. Long gone was his desire to rescue his fellow Jews from the hands of the Egyptians (Exodus 2:11-15).

He had zero ambition to be the leader of the Jews, much less God’s man to lead their deliverance from slavery. But that is precisely what God called Moses to do. God dramatically appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush and in no uncertain terms told Moses that he was His man for the job (Exodus 3:1-10).

Imagine how absurd this task must have appeared to Moses. How could he, an eighty-year-old exile, lead an enslaved people out of a nation as powerful as Egypt? It’s humanly impossible job and it is obvious from the text that Moses knew it. He was overwhelmed with a sense of inadequacy and proceeded to present God with few excuses of why he was not the one for the job.

Excuse No.1: “I am a nobody now and Pharaoh won’t give me the time of day” (3:11).

Excuse No. 2: “I have no authority or credibility with the Jews” (3:13).

Excuse No. 3: “The Jews won’t believe me” (4:1).

God answered Moses with two powerful Illustrations (Exodus 4:3-9). First, the Lord asked Moses to throw his staff on the ground, he threw it and it became a snake. Then the Lord asked him to reach out his hand and hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. Secondly, He told Moses to take his eighty-years-old hand and place it inside of his cloak. As soon as he did, the hand became leprous. Once again God told Moses to take that same hand and put it back inside his cloak. When Moses obeyed, the hand was restored.

God specifically answered all of Moses’ arguments by pointing to His sufficient. It was as if God was saying, “Moses, will you take your eyes off of yourself and take a look at who is giving you this assignment? Don’t worry about your authority or credibility. Don’t worry about whether the Jews will believe you. Don’t worry about personal weaknesses. I will supply everything you need”

I believe the lesson from these two miracles is that God does not primarily delight in using what you bring to the table. Instead, He delights in using what you surrender to Him. His assignments will require you to operate outside of your areas of strength, out of your comfort zone. God will put you in situations where you have no choice but to rely on His miraculous power, strength, and intervention.

The fact is that leaders are always in over their heads. God’s assignments are supernatural in nature and He gives these assignments to vessels of clay-cracked, chipped clay pots! His holy, noble calling is placed in the hands of fragile, weak humanity. We can come to firmly believe that inadequacy is always associated with anything that God call us to do. If as a leader you do not feel weak, you may very well have to answer two fundamental questions. First, have you been ambushed by pride, giving you a false sense of capacity and security? Second, are you really doing what God called you to do?

Our weaknesses should also remind us how much we need other people. One common problem with leader is a bit of a paradox-they direct other people, yet they may hold on too fiercely to responsibilities they should delegate to others.

It’s important for leaders to realize they can’t do it all. They don’t have the time to do it all, and they don’t have the skills to do it all. It’s interesting that many leaders don’t bemoan their weakness in completing administrative work. They know they could not survive without the help of a capable administrative assistant. Yet they run themselves into the ground trying to keep up with too many other tasks.

For example, it’s impossible for many pastors to keep up with all the counseling need in their congregations, or to adequately meet the needs of all the sick, injured, or grieving individuals. And while it is important for them to be involved in meeting those needs, they also need to delegate some of those responsibilities to others.

Awareness of your weaknesses should also help make you more sympathetic to do the challenges faced by other leaders who are tackling the assignments God has given them.

At the same time, our weaknesses and inadequacies, whatever they may be, should not cause us to be stuck and overwhelmed by an unhealthy, wounded condition. This is a tricky subject to address, because some people have been wounded deeply during their lives, and some struggle with weaknesses that are almost overpowering. We should learn to be sensitive to them. At the same time, we should feel the struggle we face, should be the opportunity to experience the liberating power and grace of God as we acknowledge how fragile and dependent we are before a holy God and we go to Him for the help that we desperately need.

God does not want us to wear the immobilizing paralysis of our wounds and pain as a badge of brokenness. But rather He wants us to pursue healing point to His power in the midst of our weaknesses. Brokenness is a statement about how God ministers to us and through us because we have allowed our weaknesses to drive us to His heart. Authentic brokenness always casts the spotlight on the glory of God and not the fact that we struggle.

Theologian and author Don Carson puts it in perspective when he says, “It is possible to be so broken that one’s life is characterized rather more by depression and even despair than by renewed strength in leadership. In other words, brokenness does not guarantee enriched leadership. It is marked of the Lord’s kindness when He so providentially overrules such that the brokenness engenders humility, recognition of one’s weakness and potential for failure, and renewed eagerness to trust the Lord”.

We should always remember that there is such a thing as an unhealthy brokenness. Unfortunately there are more than a few Christian leaders who have spiritualized their emotional hurts and pain, passing it off as brokenness.

We need to examine what real brokenness is!