Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Well, we're going to begin a series not just on witnessing and sharing our faith, but on all the basics of the Christian faith. You might say, "Well, I know the basics," and I'd like to tell you I think I know the basics, but I always have to come back to them myself, continually reminding myself of the sort of things we're going to be talking about. As a sort of textbook, we're going to be taking the book of Exodus and the book that I wrote called *Here Am I, Send Someone Else*. I think most of us share that sense of inadequacy, that sense of all sorts of excuses, or we choose who we want to talk to and we do not often come through with what God wants us to do.

So we're going to be looking at the Old Testament as we begin this series of studies from Exodus. We're going to be looking at God's plan for the world and how little you and little me can be part of bringing the blessing that God has in mind for the nations of the world. I sat through a long meeting today looking at all the problems of the world, and I began to think, "How can God stand it? How can He just sit up in heaven and see the mess this world is in?" He sees it all at once. We just see a little bit of the mess, or if we happen to watch the news, we see 10 minutes of the mess and then we go on and look at normal things that are happening, but God sees everything everywhere all at once.

Someone that's in charge of missions on this board that I've been part of today told us about a pastor who had just been hung for his faith, leaving a wife and five children in a part of the world that I didn't even know existed. I've never heard of this little country of the world. He said, "Oh, nobody knows, but there's tens of thousands of people giving their lives for their faith out there, but nobody even knows there is a place like that." I think of God looking down and seeing all this at once, and I wonder why He doesn't just take this old world and crush it up in His hand and start all over again.

I really don't wonder because I know that the Bible tells me He's not going to do that yet. There will be a day when He rolls the whole thing up like a scroll and it all goes up in fire, and the new heavens and the new earth come, but that day isn't yet because God has a plan. The Bible tells me in the Old Testament and the New, but it begins right back in the book of Exodus, that God's plan is blessing for the nations. The African nations, the Western Europe nations, the Eastern Europe nations, the Arab world, all the world. God has in mind for this world blessing. That's His big plan. As somebody has said, "This is God's world and He wants it back."

If we didn't believe that, then the situation that we're facing as we think about what's going on in the world would be totally overwhelming. I don't know how we could cope, but the Christian believer believes that God has a plan. In 1 Corinthians 10, the events in the book of Exodus or the events in the Old Testament are used as a picture of examples. Paul is writing to the Corinthians and he says, "All sorts of things happened to the people back in Genesis and Exodus and on." The things that happened were recorded for many reasons, but one of the reasons was that we might have an example, we might have a model, so that we won't make the same mistakes that they made.

George Hegel, a 19th-century philosopher, said what experience and history teach is this: that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it. In other words, what history teaches us is that it never teaches us. We never learn. This study we're going to do is aimed at learning from the models that we find in the Old Testament. The Old and New Testaments are all one. They're divided in our Bible with different names—the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, the Old Promise, and the New Promise, New Covenant, New Testament—but they cannot live or exist without each other. The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed. They go hand in hand.

As we look in the book of Exodus, we can come right over into our lifetime, right over into the present day, and see how relevant the models, the examples we're going to see are to us. Today we're going to look at an example of witnessing, of sharing the news of God's plan with our world, our workmates, with our friends, with our families. If you've any doubt of what God's plan for this troubled, sorry, sad, hurting world is, then you need to learn by heart Genesis 12:3 because that's the key to the Old Testament. "In thee," God says to Abraham, the man He's chosen to kick off this fire that's going to go all the way through the history of the world. He chose this man Abraham and to him He said, "In thee and in thy seed, in thy children, in thy descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. All the nations of the earth are going to be blessed."

What did He mean? What He meant was that as Abraham had children who had children who had children, one of those children one day would be Himself in human form. This was God's plan. The only person that could make sense out of the mess was God Himself. He was the only one that could do anything about it. He's the only one that's big enough, clever enough, wise enough, creative enough, powerful enough. So He would have to come and implement His own plan. He told Abraham it would be one of his descendants that would be the body that He had prepared to invade our planet. So the Divine One would come, He told the writers of the Old Testament, as a child, as we are, and grow and live and die for us. The Father would walk down the staircase of heaven with a baby in His arms.

Abraham had a child, Isaac, who had a child, Jacob, who got another name, Israel, and that's the name God's nation took. It was Jacob's name. God changed his nature and He said, "You're going to be Israel, prince with God." That's the name that the Jews came to be known by, Israel. He had a favorite son, Jacob, Israel, and his name was Joseph. God used him miraculously to save the children from whom the Messiah, God Himself, would come from extinction. We are in a war that began right back in Genesis. Some people say, "When did the war begin?" The war began in Genesis when man fell, and the war is going to be over. The bigger war, all of this is symptoms of the bigger war that's happening down here.

Satan is after God's people who are implementing His plan, and over and over again he tries to blot them out. Why is this hatred against Israel? This is a wonderful time to be a believer because there's all sorts of things we can talk about with our workmates. It must strike, and I've heard non-Christians talking about it, this little tiny strip of land, and you see the map over and over again, and these few people compared to everything else. The whole of the world is antagonistic. That's happened before in history, but has there ever been such antagonism down history as there has been to Israel? You have to ask those bigger questions.

The Holocaust. Yes, there've been holocausts, but why the Jews? There has to be something greater behind the hatred of what man can think up when you see the efforts of extermination of this little group of people. God says in the Old Testament, "I didn't choose you because you were the biggest nation. If I'd wanted the biggest nation, I would have chosen Assyria or Babylon. No, I didn't choose Assyria and Babylon. I didn't choose you because you were bigger than all of them." And He says, "I didn't choose you because you were cleverer than all of them or nicer than all of them. I chose you because I chose you. It's my secret why I chose you. All you need to know is I chose you. I chose you to be the missionary nation, that through you the whole world may learn about my plan."

So when we come to the book of Exodus, we find God's plan in the making. We're a few generations away from Abraham, but Israel is described at this point as a fruitful vine, and Joseph as one whose boughs of the vine run over the wall because they've come into Egypt because there was a famine, if you remember, and they've grown and grown and grown in the land of Goshen. They've grown until they are beginning to pose a threat to Egypt itself. But Joseph, put there by God, is nurturing the vine in Egypt. That vine is about to be transplanted in the plan of God to Canaan. God uses circumstances that have arisen through the antagonism of Satan instigating persecution against Israel, God's people, part of God's plan. He uses those circumstances to transplant that vine.

God often uses circumstances to transplant His people into the place He wants them to be. Sometimes it's very hard to understand what's happening, but He often uses persecution. Sometimes He uses sickness or other circumstances, normal circumstances. Often He uses persecution. Think of the early days of the New Testament, how He took a little tiny group of people that believed in Jesus who might have died out and Christianity never would have taken hold. He used persecution. He didn't cause persecution; He knew persecution was going to happen. He allowed it to happen and then He turned it to good.

Like Joseph said to his brothers when he forgave them, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. You meant what you did to me for evil. You threw me in the pit and let me be taken away into Egypt. You meant it for evil, but I want to tell you God meant it for good." God used the situation of the children of Israel and the persecution that Pharaoh brought against them, and Satan who was behind Pharaoh. Pharaoh was his representative, persecuting, trying to exterminate, control what God was doing. He used it to thrust them out of Egypt and to continue the implementation of that plan.

When we get to the book of Exodus, we read that there arose a new king that knew not Joseph, and all the privileges were withdrawn, if you remember. He began to put taskmasters over the children of Israel. So we come to Exodus and we find the people being thoroughly mistreated, thoroughly mistreated. They're beaten and unrealistic things are asked of them, like making the bricks without straw and all of this. They were building treasure cities for Pharaoh. They were achieving visible results but they were absolutely miserable and it was all for someone else.

It strikes me that many, many people today are in that case. Like the children of Israel, perhaps they have become nominal in their belief as the children of Israel had at this point, many of them. Sometimes it takes hard situations to bring them back to the Lord. What they're doing has become a bitter thing and they need delivering. They cried out to God and God heard them. It tells us in Exodus God always hears us when we cry and He decided to deliver the children of Israel and continue with His plan. Remember, this is God's world and He wants it back.

He used a person. God uses people. Don't ask me why. That's another I have no idea why. It would have been so much better, I think, if He'd used angels. They would have gone where He told them to go. They would have done what He told them to do. Why didn't He use angels? But He didn't. He chose sinful, selfish people. Half of the reason of that we do glean from the Bible is it's for our benefit, not His. It's to His benefit that His glory is shown in weak people. There are hints why He uses us. The plan of God is obvious, but the person that God uses is always a mystery. It's a mystery to me. Such weak people, people like Moses, people like the people that came out of Egypt.

We're saved to serve, you see. We're saved to become part of the witness to the world that this plan is all about. God delivered Moses so he could deliver other people. God delivered you, if you're a believer, from sin and the consequences of it so that you could deliver other people. This isn't just the job of the pastor or the job of the evangelist. This is all of our jobs. Some of us are gifted specially with gifts of evangelism, but every Christian is a witness. Not every Christian is a teacher or preacher, not every Christian is an evangelist. But I remember the girl that led me to Christ telling me the very first day, "Jill, Jesus Christ is living in you and it's His job to win souls. The reason you have become a believer is that Christ might get around in this world through your earthly vehicle, your body, and explain His plan to other people."

How well He does that depends on many, many things, but some of the greatest soul winners I know, one of them particularly, would never stand up in front of a crowd of people. He stutters. He stutters. But that young man has led more people to Christ than anybody I know because he got hold of this principle. No, my spiritual gift isn't preaching or teaching, but every Christian is delivered to be a deliverer. That's where we begin. Not only is there a big plan, but my part in that big plan is realizing that. Moses had a hard time realizing that, as we will see, but that's the plan.

In Hebrews 11:24-29, we read about the day, having been delivered from the crocodiles in the river and grown up in Pharaoh's palace, there came a point where he had to make a choice. God had wonderfully prepared Moses and God has wonderfully prepared you and He's wonderfully prepared me. I call it our palace training. Maybe you didn't know you've been to seminary, God's seminary, but you have. God chooses to school us His way, knowing the work He has in mind for us. When you think about it, think about Moses. What was he going to need to be a deliverer? He was going to take one and a quarter million people through a desert and keep them alive for 40 years. Little job. What was he going to need to do that?

Well, he was going to need people skills, of course. He was going to need organizational ability. He was going to have to read and to write. He was going to have to be a law-maker. He was going to have to be practically able to stand on his own, to be alone. God crafted everything that happened to him in his childhood and his adolescence and his young manhood so that he would be trained with the skills that he would need. Now, he was not in a school for Israelites. He was in Pharaoh's palace, and it was exactly the only place, actually the only place he could have got all those skills. Certainly, the only place he could have learned to read and write to the level that he could.

Remember, he was going to be the author of the world's best seller, a chunk of it, big chunk of it. All those skills were given to him in the palace. Pharaoh thought that Moses was being prepared for the throne of Egypt, but God had another throne in mind. I think so much of many of the missionary stories that I've read. One of my favorite missionaries, as many of you know, is C.T. Studd. He was an English cricketer up at Cambridge and he was a very wealthy young man. He found Christ through D.L. Moody's ministry in a mission at Cambridge University. He was being shaped for an athletic throne. He was captain of England's cricket team. He was very famous as a young athlete. Well, that's what the world thought, and that's what his coach thought, and that's what England thought, but that's not what God thought.

This was his palace training. You say being a cricketer was what God had in mind so that he might become the pioneer missionary that opened up the inland China, the inland India, and the inland of Africa in a lifetime? Have you read the story of C.T. Studd? Quite a story, quite a man. He went to Africa, a museum of diseases, and stayed there for how many years, just about where the white man's grave is known to be, and brought tribes and tribes of people that had never heard of Jesus to Christ? He went with all these diseases. How did he survive? People have asked. Because of his athletic training. The things that would have killed anyone else didn't kill C.T. Studd. He was so physically fit even though he absorbed all these tropical diseases, he was able to overcome them and continue doing what he was doing.

It was his palace training, something like athletics. You know, this is really exciting because you need to sit down with a pencil and paper and realize that everything that's happened to you—your education, the home you were brought up in, whether you had parents or whether you didn't. Moses didn't know his parents very well, did he? And he was brought up in an incredibly heathen environment. All sorts of things happened to that child, like being put on the Nile among the crocodiles. He'd probably be in therapy for the rest of his life if he was around us today when you think of everything that happened to him. And yet this was his, as Diana Knutson says, which I love, his emotional library. God was building into his life an emotional library that everybody could come up to him when God had him in place and take books out of his life and read them and learn.

If we could look back to our past, whatever it's like, and begin to say, "Yes, that was tough and that was difficult and there's some things I've got to deal with, but this was my palace training." Then we'll perhaps be able to deal with our past, and we'll certainly be able to maximize our present, and we'll certainly get excited about our future. This was my palace training. Our preparation may well be in the palace of a heathen king. I think of my own palace training. It was not a Christian training, yet everything that was built into me from my home, to my background, to my training, everything that happened to me, I know was my palace training for what God had in mind. And that's exciting.

Well, what about all of this? What do we do with it? Hebrews 11 says that there came a point in Moses' life when he chose to suffer affliction with the people of God and to count the reproach of Christ far better than the treasures in Egypt. He chose the treasures in heaven over the treasures in Egypt. That's a choice that all of us have to make. He identified with the plan of God, he identified with the people of God. If we're going to learn to be witnesses, we have to have that nurturing among the people of God. We have to identify with the people of God so that we can learn the skills and learn the knowledge to share and be able to get out there in the world and know what we're talking about. We've got to do our homework. We've got to be able to be knowledgeable and be able to say to people in the office, "God has a plan." "Well, what you mean?" "Well, it says so in the Bible." "What you mean it says?" "Well, look here, it says God said to Abraham there's going to be an incredible event." You should be able to take it and put it in words that they'll understand. But you can't do that unless you've chosen to identify with the plan of God and the people of God and you're being nurtured somewhere and learning things to be able to share. And that's a choice. It's a choice to spend time and energy understanding those things. That's what Moses chose to do.

Now, what happened to Moses when he chose to do that? Well, he began witnessing. I want to look with you what happened when he did the first time he ever tried to be the deliverer that God had delivered him to be, and he somehow got this message. What happened? Exodus 2:11-12: "In those days, when Moses was grown, he went out to his brothers and he looked upon their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his brothers. And he looked this way, and he looked that way, and when he didn't see anyone, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out the second day, behold two men of the Hebrews strove together, and he said to him that did the wrong, 'Why do you strike your fellow?' And he said, 'Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?' And Moses feared and said, 'Surely this thing is known.' Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and lived in the land of Midian."

He sat down by a well, and you know the story. The women came and the shepherds who never liked the women watering the flocks tried to chase them away. Moses helped the women water their flocks. They went back to their father and he said, "How have you come home so early?" They said, "Oh, this Egyptian helped us." He said, "Well, where is he? You leave the man in the desert? Where are your manners? Bring him to eat." He came to eat, stayed and lived with the man, and he gave him his daughter and they married, had two children, and Moses settled down with the man. But let's go back to the story. What happened when Moses went out that first day to decide to be the deliverer he'd come to be? I mean, he knew that he'd been saved for a reason, and I come back to that. His life had been saved for a reason. Unless we really get hold of that individually, we will not fulfill the plan of God for our lives.

I think of Drew Trotto, who served here as a pastor for five years or so. We've known Drew for many, many years, and when he was a teenager, we didn't know him. Well, we did know him when he was a teenager, but when he was about 12 or 13, he and his two sisters and his older brother, Patrick, were out in a boat. As they began to come into the harbor, a storm sprang up. They came in and they were tying the boat up, and Drew, who was the second son—Patrick was the eldest, then there was Drew, then there was Andrea, and then there was Polly—Drew, who is the second son, jumped up to get the rope and tie the boat up. It was thundering and lightning all around them, and Drew's father said, "Sit down, Drew, let Patrick do it." Patrick was 15, jumped up and took the rope, and as he did that, lightning struck him, killed him. He toppled over into the water, dead.

Drew, in his testimony, would tell you one of the reasons he's in the ministry today is he realized that God had saved his life very dramatically. God had obviously spared him for something bigger than himself. It made a lifetime impression, as I'm sure you can understand, on Drew Trotto. Now, something like that might not have happened to us unless you really realize possibly all of us have been saved from death every time you cross the road, who knows how near it's been for some of us. Have you got that sense of special preservation? Why has God allowed me to live? Because He wants you to be part of this plan, sharing it with other people. But when you go out and you try and witness and you end up murdering the fellow, that's not a very good start. Well, you say you win some and you lose some. You win one and you kill one. I think that was a pretty bad start.

So many times, people tell me that. "I tried to witness to someone and you've no idea I made it so much worse. They'll never listen to anyone again. I'll never do it again. It's obviously not my gift." When I think back to my efforts of witnessing at the beginning of my Christian life, I realize that there are Egyptian dead Egyptians littering the landscape. How sad. It was a pretty bad mistake, we'll all realize that. But how sad if Moses had never recovered from that. Now, it did take 40 years to recover from it and he had to get his life in order because, you see, he'd lost his temper. All the way through the story of Moses, he loses his temper. We'll talk about that in another session that you and I will have together on being holy. But it began right back here. He obviously had a terrible temper, terrible temper. God needed to take him to a place where he got his life in order in order to make him the great deliverer he was going to be.

So if we do fail, if the people are put off or we do say the wrong thing or we wish we'd never opened our mouth, don't worry about that. God will look after our mistakes. He can make something with a mistake. He can't make anything with somebody that refuses to open their mouth. But God wants us to learn from our mistakes, and for that, He will use all sorts of things like He used with Moses. He'll use monotony in the desert, monotony in the job to make you the person He wants you to be, to teach you the lessons He wants you to learn. Maybe He'll use marriage and sure that Moses learned lots through his marriage. Maybe He'll use memories. Plenty of time to think, plenty of time to be on his own. I don't know what God is going to do with the failures you will encounter as you begin to witness. You will encounter them. That's the way you learn.

I remember the girl that led me to Christ sending me out, as it were, with a rod and a bent pin to catch some fish for Jesus. As I went, I said, "But I am such a young Christian. I'm this, I'm that. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to do it." She said, "Many a little boy has caught many a big fish with a rod and a bent pin. Now get out there and have a go." I know because my father was a fisherman you can catch fish all sorts of ways. You can even catch them in their side, poor things, or in their fins, or in all sorts of ways you shouldn't catch them and really hurt them, but you can catch them.

Yes, you will fail, but go to the desert like Moses did and God will help you with that failure. For He's a forgiving master and failure's never final for the Christian. After 40 years in the desert, God called him. He was on the job and suddenly he was alerted to something extraordinary happening. If you remember, there was fire in the middle of a little scrub bush. Now, he'd seen many scrub bushes, but there was one day in his life when that scrub bush was different. What does God use to alert us to the divine nature of what's happening around us in very familiar situations? Well, He uses little scrub bushes.

Major Thomas has a wonderful sermon on this scrub bush. He says any old bush will do, any old bush can burn, any old bush can last. It'll never be consumed. It's the fire of God inside us that burns and burns, but the bush is never consumed. There's all sorts of lessons, all sorts of pictures there. God wants to use little scrub bushes, even little scrub bushes like a Moses who's blown it to that degree that he's become a murderer instead of the deliverer he really believed God wanted him to be. He had 40 years to think about that. He could have burned up with bitterness, jealousy, anger, unhappiness, loneliness. But he ended up burning with the fire of God and he never burned up with that.

What he did was took time out to turn aside and see this strange thing. That's what we need to do: to take time out to see these strange things that perhaps might seem strange to some of you. You know the wonderful story, how he approached the bush to see what was happening and God spoke to him from the bush. The angel of the Lord, a theophany, a self-revelation of God before He ever became a man. He said, "Moses, take off your shoes because the place you're standing is holy ground." That's the secret to witnessing. All this is principle, but that's the secret. The place I am standing at any one time is holy ground.

If I'm on fire for Him, that place I'm standing becomes the place where the plan of God, as far as I'm concerned—part of the big plan of God—is going to be fulfilled. This is very exciting. If you want a little exercise, do what I do sometimes: standing in the supermarket and I take off my shoes. People look at me rather strangely. They say, "Oh, are your feet hurting?" Well, maybe my feet are hurting. I'm standing in the supermarket, I take off my shoes to remind me of something: the place I'm standing at any one time is holy ground. I look around at the people in the queue and I think, "This is holy ground." What I need to do is to remind myself of that, keep it constantly in mind.

I remember stopping to get gas at a petrol station in England and I was reminded that the place I was standing on was holy ground. Two German hitchhikers came up and asked me the way to somewhere. I said, "Oh, I'm going past there. Do you want a lift?" and they got in. It was still in the days where you dared to give people a lift. They got in, I started talking to them and I thought, "Well, the place I was standing on was holy ground. The place I'm sitting in is holy ground. What do you want to do, Lord?" As I talked to the girls, one of them said, "I'm a theology student." I said, "Oh, that's interesting." "Yes," she said, "I've taken this time out." Her English was impeccable. "I've taken this time out to find out if there's even a God." I said, "You're a theology student?" She said, "Yes, that's why I became a theology student, to see if God was God, if He was there."

So I said, "Well, I'm just going past a place that you might like to come and ask some questions." I said, "I don't think I can answer your questions." So I took them to Capernwray, which was where I was going. There on the steps, as we arrived, was Major Ian Thomas. Now I want you to understand, Major Ian Thomas is home at Capernwray at the mission probably about two weeks in a year. I have never seen him standing on the front steps, even if he's home. But there he was. I introduced him to the German young person, and within an hour he'd led her to Christ. The place you stand upon at any one time is holy ground. Keep it in mind.

So God says to Moses, "Will you go for me?" He says, "Well, here am I, but who am I? I'm too little and the job's too big." God agreed with that, but reminded him that He wasn't too little. So the little 'i' could take hold of the hands with the big 'I AM'. Moses said, "Well, I am nothing." God says, "I AM something." So the little 'i' took hold of the hand of the big 'I AM'. Then he had another excuse. He was a frightened man. "Here am I, but who are you? I don't know enough about you, God." God said, "Well, you know enough. Just share what you know, not what you don't know."

Then he said, "Well, here am I, but who are they that I must speak to? How do I know who to tell? If I get the wrong ones, they won't listen to me. I've got a slow tongue." God says, "Well, who made your mouth?" Then he said, "Well, here am I, send Aaron." God says—He got a bit mad with him actually—He said, "Well, all right, I will send Aaron, but I'll send you with him. He'll be your mouth. If you won't speak for me, Aaron can. I know he can speak well." By the time Moses got into it with Pharaoh, he let Moses speak for him twice and I don't think Moses ever got a chance again. He went with Aaron and he took over because he had the gifts.

That's what God will do with you and that's what God will do with me. If we ever get around to fulfilling the plan of God, we'll find that God will provide the people that are ready and prepared to hear. That's exciting. You get up every morning waiting to see, "Who is it you want me to lead to Christ today?" You say, "Well, what should I say?" Then I say to you what God said to Moses: just go. Just be willing. Just open your mouth and start and He will give you the ideas and the answers. You mightn't think it's right. You might make mistakes, but God's spirit will do something with it.

You might find that they're ready to be part of the plan themselves, to become delivered that they might become a deliverer, that they might lead somebody else to be a deliverer, and that's how the chain goes on. How do I actually bring them to Christ? I tell them they're a sinner, that they can't live in heaven unless something's done with their sin, that Jesus died to do something for that, and that if they open their heart and life, He can come in. I learn a few verses to help me show them in the Bible, which is always a good idea, on each of those points: sin, the penalty of sin, Jesus died for me, I must receive Him. Learn the verses, explain it, and then ask the big question: "Would you like to pray with me?"

Fishermen don't influence fish, they catch them. That's the biggy. You can do all the talking, you can get everybody convinced, but you need to ask them, "Would you like to pray with me? Do you know how to accept Christ?" That's what I was asked. "Do you need Christ?" Yes, I was convinced of that. "Do you want Christ?" Yes. "Will you accept Him?" Yes, but how? "I'll show you how. I'll help you how. I'll pray a prayer, you pray it after me." That's all you need to say. Pray a very simple prayer: "Jesus, I know I'm a sinner. I know I need you. I know you've got a big plan and I'd like to be part of it. Part of that plan is that my sins are forgiven and that I know you and that you come into my life so that you can use me to be a deliverer and to be part of this incredible big story that's going to culminate in one day with every knee bowing to Him and every tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord."

How do I witness? I decide if I'm going to, if I'm willing. However scared, however frightened, however inadequate, remember that my palace training is all I need. Who I am is what God has allowed me to be, and everything that's happened to me is all part of the plan. Now then, how is God going to use all of that palace training to take me out into this hurting, terrible world and tell them that God's plan for the nations is that one day the earth shall be full of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and lead them to know that God for themselves?

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the book of Exodus that lays it out for us. Thank you for Moses. Thank you for what he teaches us. And Lord, thank you that the place I am standing at any one time is holy ground. Now Lord, send me out into my day tomorrow with these principles in mind. Help me to start and look at other people with new eyes, that maybe this is the person that's to be part of the plan and I am the person, the only person that can reach that person. There's a job for Jesus only I can do. Give me the sense of expectation about my workday, even tomorrow. And then help me be willing to make the mistakes that I'll have to make if I'm going to learn how to be a deliverer. Remind me that I'm delivered to be a deliverer. Lord, give us that sense of mission, excitement, and realization that this is the reason I exist, to be your instrument in my world. Lord, there are so many people around me that are under taskmasters, that are mastered by the very tasks they're doing, and they need delivering. They're groaning and they're crying and they're looking for saviors, and they need to hear that you've heard their cry. We need to explain to them how they can find peace with God and joy. And so we pray that we may have a new concept of this idea. This very basic thing, that every Christian is a witness to the God with the big plan. Help us to do our part, Lord, that thy kingdom may swiftly come. because we ask it for Christ's sake. Amen.