Hammer on Anvil '

Moses answered, "What if they do not believe or listen to me and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'?" Then the Lord said to him, "What is that in your hand?" (Exodus 4:1,2).


Remember this great story of Moses? He and Abraham are the biggest names in the Bible, aside from Jesus of course. Their deeds are recalled throughout the Old Testament. They are among several saints mentioned in Hebrews 11, sometimes called the "Faith Hall of Fame."

Yet look at Moses' rocky beginning. God turned his shepherd's staff into a snake and said, "This is so they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers ... has appeared to you" (Exodus 4:5). Yet even after witnessing this miracle, Moses tells God he is "slow of speech and tongue." When God assures Moses that He will give him the words to say, Moses has the audacity to say, "Please send someone else" (Exodus 4:13).

Have you ever done that? Has God told you to do something, and you groused and told Him to go find somebody else? Perhaps you, like Moses, thought you were unfit for what He asked you to do. Maybe you suffer from low self-esteem, and think that surely God could never use you. But you're wrong.

When Moses started with the "what-ifs," God asked, "What is in your hand?" God was trying to convey to Moses that he didn't have to be a stellar communicator. All he had to do was entrust himself -- and whatever was in his hand -- completely to God. The point is that it's not about what YOU think you may or may not possess talent-wise; God's power is what makes the difference. He will use what you have, if you release it to Him for His purposes. A mere shepherd's staff was used to perform some of the greatest miracles the world has ever seen.

As I read this story, I perceived another interpretation to the "what is in your hand" query. I think sometimes God asks us that question because He wants to employ our hands to do His work, but they are so full of other things that He can't use them. Remember the "cares of the world" mentioned in Mark 4:19? Jesus warns that they will choke the Word in us and render us unfruitful. Are you carrying burdens around that God never intended for you to carry, simply because you can't or won't let go? God may be waiting to pour abundant blessing into your hands, but they are so filled with other things that you are incapable of receiving.

If your hands are full, but not of the right things, it's time to let go. Perhaps you have been unable to serve God for a long time because you are bound up in bitterness and unforgiveness. I have been there, and it's not fun. Victim mentalities have no place in the kingdom of God.

What is in your hand? I encourage you today to examine your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal if you have been holding back from giving yourself completely to God because you doubt your giftings or you feel awkward and clumsy as a Christian. Maybe you compare yourself too much to other Christians and tend to give up because you know you could "never be as good as (fill in the blank)."

Friends, God doesn't WANT you to be like anybody else. He created you with unique personality traits and giftings, and He wants to use all of that to bring glory to himself. Allow the ugly, nasty things you may have experienced to become useful tools in the hands of your Maker. He is a master at bringing beauty out of the ashes (Isaiah 61:3).

Have you ever been lied to? No, like, "Whoa. There is no way anything you're saying is right" kind of lied to?  I have. Honey, I grew up in church. We are all magnificent liars.

It's easy to lie, because we do it every day that we pretend we don't have a problem. We want to make church and Christianity look like that one R.E.M song sounds, but believers, we are not all Shiny, Happy People. We all have battles.

Sometime the hardest thing to be is transparent about the things you are still fighting.

1 John 1:8- 10 says, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

Don't let my cartoony nature fool you, sucka. I still wear the scars from when I found some kind of comfort in a razor across my skin. I like to pretend that you all don't know I'm crazy, but the truth is this girl was Mayor of Crazy Town. I went there. I got elected. I made Britney look like a little case of PMS.

I don't diminish what God has done in my life, but I want you to know how badly I still need the Lord. Friends, I've been to crazy and back, and it's way to easy to hop on the train back to crazy town. I have to submit to the Lord and daily ask for His strength and guidance. And the one thing I learned is that regardless of how much I love Jesus, I can not change myself. So I lied, and hid, and cried. And when people asked me how I was doing, I learned to say, "Good. And you?" And then I learned to do that with enthusiasm. It's a coping mechanism. You become a character. And then it's easy to pretend that you aren't struggling with something dark, dealing with something mean, dying on the inside. The world is your stage. The church is full of actors.

I played that part for 15-plus years, but God never wanted me to play that part. God helped me break through this cement mask. I opened up about my rape and the hurt I still carried and my life began to change. I am still Hannah, but I have hope. I found that opening up helped others begin to open up. And then my church, where I've been attending for nearly 12 years, became less like a country club and more like a support group of weirdos, ready to bond together and go where God leads. And when my church started clearing the proverbial stage, things got real.

God becomes real with you when you get real with God. Admit, confess and do that daily. Find others believers who can admit they're broken, too, and then pray for God to bind you together, to weather this storm. I've been reading Colossians 3 a lot. Read that.

Listen, I've played church my whole life. I've seen every sin in the book, and I've done most of them, and all within the church. Let me assure you that your personal struggles do not Houdini out of your life the minute you admit that you love Jesus. Jesus is magic, ya'll. He came to show us how to act and direct us to the Father, but we are still the same people. God can't make us new until we confess that the yuck we are carrying around is getting real old.

And we don't want to admit we're broken and hurt. We have learned to adapt to this kind of hurt,  to survive, not talk about it, and pretend to fit into the mold of  "We don't rejoice in struggles, because we have no struggles." The truth is, we're all a hot mess. Everyone is dealing with something, and it's easier to pick out the smudge on your brothers face than deal with your own gaping wound.

We've been lied to, guys. And we've been lied to for so long that we've begun to get comfortable with lies. We think this is how the church looks, how Christianity should feel. We play church, pretend through faith, and honestly, it's starting to look like we've just become comfortable with being miserable.

And yet, we still don't want to admit we're miserable. "Nah, I got this." Guys, God is not glorified in the pretty picture you pretend and project. Remember what Paul said, "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Maybe it's time we get real, honest and transparent about the fact we are still people. People who still need the Lord. People who love Jesus, but still have addictions, hurts, failures and faults. Don't fear who you are, fear the Lord and what He says will happen if we don't turn back to Him. The Lord means it.

When working with children, you get to say some of the grossest phrases ever uttered. Like when you see the little cutie eating something you can't even identify. "Where did you get that? Who gave you that? Put that down!"

My mom said that I once tried to bite the tick off an old stray hound dog. My reasoning? Apparently, it looked like a grape.

Kids are gross, guys, but they are so innocent. Once you tell them it's bad news, they steer clear. They search for answers and accept answers without fear, worry or doubt. This is why I try to be so childlike in faith and life. I pray I never stop asking questions, and yeah, sometimes making a fool of myself. I am glad I still have a lot to learn and I'm thankful I have a God that is never done teaching me.

The morning after the big storm, my daughter, Missouri, curled up on the couch with me and started to snuggle. As I sipped my coffee and fumbled through my phone, Missouri snuggled closer and I could sense she had something to say.

"What's up, baby cakes?" I inquired.
"Nothing," she spouted quickly, than reluctantly said, "Actually, I was really scared last night. I had the worst dream and I really wanted to come get you."
"Aw, sweetie, why didn't you?"
"Because I realized something. You said God did not give us a spirit of fear," she said boldly, "So if He didn't give that to me, I don't want it."

"For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and self-control." 2 Timothy 1:7

In my recent studies and prayer time, I have been meditating about Caleb in Numbers 13. You may remember the story: God tells the Israelites they are to possess the land of Canaan, and Moses selects 12 men who are commissioned to "see what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak," among other things (Numbers 13:18).

Wait a minute. God tells you to go take possession of a land He is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, and you send men to go before you to see if it's okay? Yes, that's exactly what Moses did. But Deuteronomy 1 tells us this was not Moses' idea. In this chapter, Moses recaps what the Israelites have been through. After he told them to take possession of the land and exhorted them to not be afraid or discouraged, "Then all of you came to me and said, 'Let us send men ahead to spy out the land for us and bring back a report about the route we are to take and the towns we will come to'" (Deuteronomy 1:22).

Apparently they forgot that God had led them with a pillar of cloud and they had no need to inquire about the route they were going to take. Instead of reminding them of that fact, though, Moses says, "The idea seemed good to me," and it went south from there. The outcome is not generally good when you listen to men rather than God.

The 12 men go to spy out the land, and after 40 days return to report to Moses. They agree that the land is flowing with milk and honey as God had promised, but then the fear kicks in, and they tell Moses "the people in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there" (Numbers 13:28). Apparently the descendants of Anak are gigantic, and the Israelite men seemed like grasshoppers in comparison.

Before it goes any further, Caleb steps up boldly and says, "Let us go up at once and occupy it, because we are well able to overcome it." Then all the wailing begins, about how these giants will devour them and there's no way they can take the land. God's judgment quickly ensues. He says none of the men will see the promised land except Caleb, "because he has a different spirit and has followed Me fully" (Numbers 14:24).

So instead of possessing the land and beginning to enjoy its fruit, the Israelites were plunged into 40 years of wilderness wandering. All because they took their eyes off of God when circumstances loomed a little too large for their comfort.

Has this ever happened to you, my friends? Has God ever spoken to you about something specific He wanted you to do? You were excited about it at first, and you could see the way ahead, but then some big nasty hurdle showed up in the road and blocked your vision. Though you knew you were following God, you just couldn't seem to see beyond that hurdle. Frustration and fear got the best of you, and you may have even determined that it wasn't really God speaking to you after all. Have you been there?

Brothers and sisters, when you begin to seriously take God at His Word, I can guarantee hurdles in the road and giants in the land. Satan has no reason to mess with you if you are a nominal Christian who does nothing to threaten him. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit of the living God, and you offer your body as a living sacrifice to Him on a daily basis, Satan gets ouchy. Prayer makes him particularly nervous, as Samuel Chadwick observes:

Satan dreads nothing but prayer. His one concern is to keep the saints from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, he mocks our wisdom, but he trembles when we pray.

This is why we are told to "be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer" (Romans 12:12). It is why James encourages us to count it all joy when we meet trials, because the testing of our faith will produce the perseverance it takes for us to be "mature and complete, not lacking anything" (James 1:4). Our lives are not supposed to be easy, my friends. But if we keep our focus on God, rather than being deterred by the giants in the land, we will reap a harvest of joy and blessing that we cannot even imagine.

If giants are haunting you right now, I pray that you will be able to see beyond them. Isaiah 45:22 says, "Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other." Turn to Him today, and ask Him to give you a fresh revelation of himself. As you watch this video, may you become, as John Mark McMillan sings, "unaware of these afflictions, eclipsed by [His] glory."