You Won't Face This Alone

Most people, when they finally receive the assignment, immediately ask the wrong question.

Not because the question is bad. Because it is pointed in the wrong direction. The question "who am I to do this?" sounds like humility — and in some ways it is. But it is also a question that can never be fully answered in a way that produces enough confidence to actually move.

Exodus 3 records the moment someone asked that question — and the answer they received was not what anyone expecting a confidence boost would have been looking for.

God did not answer who they were.

He answered who He was.

And what He revealed about Himself in the verses that follow — a name, a declaration, a detailed account of exactly what He had been doing and exactly what He was about to do — is one of the most comprehensive statements about the nature of divine partnership ever recorded in the Old Testament.

Here is what most people miss about this passage — the assignment was not given alone. Before the person in this passage ever took one step toward what they had been called to do, they were given a specific name, a specific promise, a specific account of what God had already seen, and a specific description of what God Himself would do when the resistance came.

Not what they would do.

What God would do.

There is a word in this passage — the name revealed — that is unlike any other name in all of Scripture. Most people have heard it. Most people have repeated it. But most people have never stopped long enough to understand what it actually claims about the nature of the one who introduced Himself by it — and what that claim means for every person who has ever been sent into something too large for them to handle alone.

And there is something else. Something God described at the end of this passage — a specific outcome, stated before the first step was taken, before the first door was knocked on, before a single word of the assignment was spoken — that reveals exactly what kind of God sends people into impossible situations.

Not the kind that watches from a distance.