What’s In Your Hand?

Gò0dNews from the Pastor’s Desk

What’s In Your Hand?

by Jeff Pitts

“What’s in your hand?” This is a simple question in an awkward moment of the biblical

narrative. Yahweh speaking to Moses, the chosen deliverer from the burning bush, offers this response to Moses’ question. Moses, barefoot on the holy ground of God’s mountain, poses a question to confirm what he is hearing the Lord ask is really real. So, Israel’s future deliverer asks the Lord, what if they don’t believe me when I said you sent me. Insert God’s question: “What’s in your hand?”

It is a question I think we need to ask ourselves. What is in our hand? In this particular biblical moment Moses was holding a staff, a tool of his season of shepherding. A symbol of the life he is currently living and reminder of the princely life he has left behind. The staff is a perpetual reminder of the life he left behind, the one he has lived since taking flight. In that moment, God demonstrates to Moses that what he has seen as insignificant, God sees as useful.

The Lord asks Moses to throw down the staff. Moses does so. The staff turns into a snake. God asks Moses to grab the snake by the tail. It returns to a staff. This supernatural demonstration was to prove to the people and Pharoah that God had certainly chosen Moses.

Throughout the Exodus, this staff in the hands of Israel’s leaders would continue to be significant in the story. It is used in delivering the plagues. It strikes the Red Sea and parts the water. It was most likely in Moses’ hands as Joshua fought the Amalekites. It strikes the rock to bring forth water in the desert. This staff was a central character in the narrative of the Exodus. God used what was in his hands.

This leads us back to the question: What is in your hand? I am fairly certain in the forty years of Moses’ career as shepherd, he never looked at the stick in his hand and thought, “I bet this is going to be significant.” There was probably never a day that he looked at that shepherding staff and thought, “I bet this will strike the sea and split it wide open.” I am fairly certain Moses simply saw the value as not much more than being useful for the season of shepherding.

How often do we look at what is in our hands in one season as insignificant when in the next, we find out it is something God wants to use for His good? What do you hold that in this season you think is not useful in the hands of God?

God wants to use what is in your hands even when we see them as insignificant, even when we look at them as a tool of simply the season we are currently living in. God sees what is in your hand as a significant resource to help others believe. So, what is in your hands?

About The Author Jeff Pitts and his wife Rachael are church planters in Cleveland, TN of The Collectives. He also co-hosts a leadership podcast called The Leadership Drip. He can usually be found sipping a cup of strong coffee.