“Friend, You Don’t Have Trouble! All You Need Is Faith In God”: On Exodus 3:14
Well, I’m officially an Aggie Fan! As a Penn State alum, I never thought I’d hear myself say that, but my daughter, Kali, decided to pursue her undergraduate degree at A&M, and I’ve now lived nearly two decades in the great state of Texas, so . . . . . Today is Kali’s first day of classes . . . . praying for her! She is awesome! Of course, that does not mean that I’ve abandoned my loyalty to the Nittany Lions–or the Baylor Bears (my doctoral institution), for that matter! After all, loyalty transferred is, effectively, disloyalty. So I prefer to look at my newfound allegiance to Texas A&M as “adding” loyalties, rather than “transferring” loyalty 🙂
My morning devotional reading could not have been more appropriate. In Exodus 3, God reveals Himself to Moses in the midst of a “burning-but-not-being-consumed” bush. The purpose of the theophanic encounter was to inform Moses that God INDEED did care that His people were suffering under the tyrannical mistreatment by Pharaoh. He was grieved, and was about to intervene on their behalf by bringing deliverance, and He was calling Moses to service for this task.
Moses immediately recognized he was not appropriately suited for the enormity of this undertaking. He feared that rebelling against Pharaoh would lead to undertaking on an entirely different “level” (pun intended). God needed only one word (in Hebrew) to assure him: “I AM!”
“I am” (Hebrew ‘ehyeh) is God’s answer to Moses question regarding His identity. In context this suggests that God is eternally existent and sovereignly independent, and His presence guarantees full protection and ultimate deliverance! To call God “Yahweh” (Hebrew 3rd person singular (“He is!”) of the same verb “I am!”) is a confident faith confession: God is willing and able to deliver me from the power, the penalty, and (one day) the very presence of Sin. In short, He will deliver us from the Evil One, just as Jesus Himself affirmed in the prayer He taught us to pray.
As my uncle R.W. Schambach repeatedly reminded his radio program audiences, “Friend, you don’t have trouble; all you need is faith in God!” So when we find ourselves beset with trouble, let’s affirm the Name of the Lord: YAHWEH—”HE IS!” God, be present with all of us today (especially my dear children Kali and Kaleb) in a healing, protecting, and delivering way!
