When God Uses Prayer to Reveal Your Calling

Exodus 3:9-10

In earlier posts I described how prayer is so much more than us just telling God what we want. Prayer should be a conversation with God, and as such we should give Him time to speak. But when you let God speak, you should be prepared as He might ask you to do something. That’s when prayer becomes a chance for God to reveal a very important aspect of your relationship with Him. That’s when prayer becomes a chance for God to reveal your calling.

In Moses’ case the calling is described in verse 10 where God tells him that he is being sent to Pharoah. Once back in Egypt, Moses’ job was to bring the people of Israel out. In other words, Moses was being sent to serve as God’s answer to the people crying out to God (praying) as He described in verse 9. This was God’s calling upon Moses’ life and it became the legacy by which we know Moses today. All of it started first with the prayer of the people of Israel crying out to God and then with the conversation (the prayer) between Moses and God.

Up to this point Moses has only said one thing, “Here I am.” The rest of the conversation is God revealing His plans. The dictionary definition of prayer does not seem to leave room for this sort of interaction. Does your prayer life leave room? Do you hold two-way conversations with God that allow for your prayers to become a chance for God to reveal your calling?

What Did Moses Hear Part 3: His Name, The LORD

What Did Moses Hear Part 3: His Name, The LORD

Exodus 34 tells us that at God’s command, Moses cut two new stones, replacing the two that he broke over the golden calf, and took an early morning hike up Mount Sinai. There, in the midst of the cloud, the LORD descended and stood with Moses. As described in What Did Moses See, we know that something special happened at that moment and yet we are not sure exactly what Moses saw. The passage does tell us exactly what Moses heard as the LORD kept His promise from chapter 33:

Then He said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you.”

Exodus 33:19 (NKJV)

Exodus 34:5-7

As the LORD’s goodness passes before Moses, the Bible says He proclaimed His name but what He says beginning in Exodus 34:6 seems more like a proclamation of a title as opposed to a “name” as we would think of today. This title gives us a description of God’s nature which was often true in the Old Testament where names reveal a person’s character. And because this is coming from the LORD, I believe this is an important passage to understand.

The first thing He says is, “The LORD.” I looked at a handful of sources and it seems that the word used here is, “Yahweh,” which is the covenant name used by God in the Old Testament. According to biblestudytools.com, “The English language doesn’t have an exact translation of the word “Yahweh,” and this is why we see it written as “LORD”. The website goes on to point out that in Exodus 3:14 (in the passage where we first see the name used in the Bible), “...God uses ‘I AM’ and ‘Yahweh’ interchangeably.” 

So what we have is the word “LORD” which is very different from the word “Lord”. “Lord” is a title for someone who is in control: someone who is the master over someone else or over some domain. Most certainly God is Lord but “LORD” is different. LORD or “Yahweh” is about God being self-existent and eternal, as again pointed out by biblestudytools.com. God has always existed, does not need anyone in order to exist and will always exist. And so in declaring Himself as “The LORD”, God is telling Moses and us about His eternal nature.

As His covenant name, “Yahweh” is also God’s declaration that He will keep His end of the covenant even though the people had broken it when they worshipped the golden calf. Going once again to biblestudytools.com we see that this is a name that says that He is a relational God. He wants to have a very close personal relationship with us, so much so that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16). This is still very important today as it means He will not break His covenant with us, a covenant sealed in the blood of Jesus our Lord.

Exodus 3:15 tells us that this is His name forever and is how He should be known to all generations. I believe that means that this is how we should know Him today: Eternal and relational. He is the everlasting God and He wants to share in a close relationship with you. Will you open your arms to “The LORD”?

See also:

What Did Moses See?

Biblestudytools.com

What Did Moses Hear?

In my last post I wrote about Moses’ mountain top experience and how God’s children have the opportunity to experience mountain top experiences daily because of God’s Spirit living in us. Knowing this helped me deal with being jealous of Moses as I realized there just might be something better than a mountain top experience. But I also have to admit that in Exodus 34 Moses experienced something truly unique. This was the second time that Moses went up the mountain to receive the commandments and what God revealed to Him is very important to all of us who want to follow the Lord.

Moses destroyed the original tablets when he broke them at the foot of the mountain after seeing the golden calf that Aaron and the people of Israel created (Exodus 32). In chapter 34 the LORD tells Moses to cut two more tablets of stone and to bring them up to the top of Mount Sinai, which Moses does. While Moses was on the mountain the LORD descended in a cloud and stood with Moses. The Bible says the LORD then “...proclaimed the name of the LORD.”

I hope to write a few posts looking at this proclamation. What did the LORD say and what does it mean? I think this is important as in this “name” God reveals His nature, helping Moses (and us) understand who God really is. I hope you will join me in this study as we learn who God is in His own words as He proclaimed:

“The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffereing, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”   Exodus 34:6-7