Responding to God’s Encounters

So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up

Exodus 3:3

My first vivid experience of being led by God was in 1999. It happened during a church programme when I suddenly heard a still, small voice telling me to intercede to avoid an accident on the road around the church. I didn’t take it too seriously, but a few minutes later, a car crashed right beside the church fence. I was gripped with fear as I realised it was God who had spoken to me in such a seemingly dismissable manner, but more than that I had let Him down. 

However, if there was one thing that emerged from that encounter, it was that it became the starting point of my obsession with knowing this God who speaks. Many years have passed since 1999, and I have had his leading in other mysterious and dramatic experiences and on more critical matters. The major lesson from this experience is that God’s encounters are not ends in themselves; they are stepping stones in a progressive path, and only through a progressive attitude can we truly maximise them. 

This is similar to the experience of Moses in Exodus 3. “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up” (Exodus 3:1-2). 

At this point, Moses could have settled and just kept feeling wowed by the sight of this great encounter. He could have returned home and made this into a bragging right of being the first man to ever see the ‘burning bush’. What God had in store for Moses, however, was more than seeing a burning bush. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”(Exodus 3:3). Moses pressed deeper. 

As Moses pressed deeper, we saw what happened “When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” (Exodus 3:4).  God  didn’t call him at the first layer of the encounter; he waited to see that Moses was actively interested in going deeper. Are you interested in going deeper? You prayed to the Lord in the days of trouble and he heard you, then you stopped praying? That’s sad! God wants to show you the power that comes through continuous prayer but you settled for just receiving one answer. He healed you from your sickness hoping you would press deeper into the healing anointing, but you got comfortable with just being healed. 

God wants us to press deeper! The first encounter is just an indicator; keep pressing into God, and you step into the fullness of his goal. 

PRAYER