"And the Lord Said to Moses" and thoughts on leadership

So I'm preaching at Lifebridge (www.lifebridgelex.com) on Sunday, and here is a foretaste of that. As I haven't posted in over a year, I don't have any expectations of people reading this and responding, but if you are reading and you do have thoughts, by all means comment.

The last sermon in a series our pastor and team of teachers has been doing on Listening to God, I am focusing on Moses as we find him in Exodus. Having read through Exodus several times in my many failed attempts to read through the whole Bible (at least I know Genesis and Exodus pretty well. I apparently haven't had the endurance to make it through Numbers), I noticed something. Out of all the things we praise Moses for doing--the plagues, the Exodus and the splitting of Red Sea, providing manna for the people in the desert--well, he didn't really do any of them. I mean, he couldn't really do any of them. I mean, they're kinda big. I can't even divide the waters in my bathtub (although I can't think of any good reason why I'd want to, but you know what I'm saying). I look back on the last (and only) 26 years of my life, and my resume looks a little thin compared to Moses'. I mean, he led more people out of slavery than Lincoln, and it wasn't like he "had what it takes" to me a leader. I mean, the guy's never led anything but sheep, and he says himself that he's "slow of speech" and everybody wants a leader who can give a good speech (although the US seems to be a current exception to this rule).

So what does he have? Definitely not confidence. Courage? Nope. A plan? Nadda. Drive? He's trying to pawn his calling off on his brother. I don't think so. He doesn't have much of anything that you'd want in a leader. God must not have been at Catalyst or Willow, b/c Moses doesn't really have any of the necessary ingredients to lead a little league team, much less the whole nation of Israel. I mean, Moses couldn't speak, but that's exactly what God was asking him to do to Pharaoh.

So again, what does he have? This is all I got--Within the span of just a few chapters in Exodus, you can find the phrase "And the Lord spoke to Moses..." more than 25 times. That seems significant. Either the writer of Exodus couldn't think of anything else to talk about, or he wanted the readers to see something... or, maybe that was just the most important thing to say about Moses. Moses didn't have skills or confidence or strategy or much of anything, but he did hear from the Lord...a lot.

So basically, Moses didn't have "the right skills for the job," but he did hear from the Lord, and he turned rivers into blood, a staff into a snake, led a heckuva lot of people out of slavery, divided a large body of water with previously mentioned staff. Hmm...maybe I should change the way I do ministry.