What Is That in Your Hand?

Read‍

Exodus 4:2-5 "Then the LORD said to him, 'What is that in your hand?' 'A staff,' he replied. The LORD said, 'Throw it on the ground.' Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. Then the LORD said to him, 'Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.' So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 'This,' said the LORD, 'is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.'"

Think

God is about to send Moses to confront the most powerful man in the world, and Moses is arguing.

He has already tried, “Who am I?” He has already tried, “They will not believe me.” And in the middle of all that, God asks him a question that seems almost unrelated. "What is that in your hand?"

Moses looks down. "A staff."

That is it. That is the whole inventory. A stick. A shepherd's staff, which in that world was the least remarkable object a man could be carrying, because it meant he did the job nobody wanted. Moses had spent forty years in the desert watching somebody else's sheep. The stick was the only thing he had to show for it.

And God does not ask him to go get something better. He does not send him to find a sword or a scroll or an official title. God works with the stick.

Throw it down. It becomes a snake, and Moses runs, which is one of the more honest details in the Bible. Then pick it back up by the tail, which is the wrong end and everybody who has ever been near a snake knows it. He does it anyway. And it is a staff again.

Here is what you need to know about that stick. From this moment forward, it shows up everywhere. It is in his hand when the plagues come. It is in his hand when the sea splits open. Scripture even starts calling it something different. It stops being Moses' staff and starts being called the staff of God.

Nothing about the wood changed. What changed is whose purposes it was serving.

So sit with the question, because it is being asked of you too. What is that in your hand?

Most students answer that question by listing what they wish was in their hand. I wish I were more outgoing. I wish I knew the Bible better. I wish people listened to me the way they listen to her. All of that is a way of saying, “Nothing useful.”

But God did not ask what you wish you had. He asked what is actually there.

Maybe it is that you are the one whom people end up telling things to. Maybe you are funny and people relax around you. Maybe you drive. Maybe you are on a team where nobody else is a Christian. Maybe you are just consistently kind in a hallway where that is rare. Maybe you have a group chat and the ability to type a sentence into it.

Those feel like sticks. They are sticks. That has never once stopped God.

And notice the order in the passage. God did not upgrade the staff and then tell Moses to throw it down. The staff only became something else after it left his hand and hit the ground.

As long as it stayed in his grip, it was a stick he used for sheep. Once he let go of it, it became the thing God used to split a sea.

That is the part nobody wants, because letting go feels like losing it. You are holding whatever you have carefully, protecting it, keeping it useful for you.

God is not asking you to have more. He is asking you to open your hand.

So what is actually in your hand, and what would it look like to put it down in front of him today?

Apply

Name your stick – One Night runs on the idea that God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things, and he tends to use ordinary equipment to do it. Students will get into that room on September 30 in somebody's back seat, through somebody's group chat, because somebody at a lunch table said come with me. Write down three things you have, including the unimpressive ones. Pick the one that could get a friend into that room and use it this week on purpose.

Pray

God, I keep telling you what I do not have. Today I want to show you what I do have, even though it is not much. Take it. Use it for something bigger than what I have been using it for. Help me open my hand. In Jesus' name. Amen.