What’s That in Your Hand?

I meet a lot of believers who feel like they simply don’t have what it takes. They say they would do great things for God if they just had more money … more time … more energy … or more people to help them.

The mistake such people are making is that they’re focusing on what they don’t have, when the Lord wants them to realize what they do have. By simply shifting our focus, we can trade in our frustration and receive a life filled with miracles and abundance instead.

Look at God’s incredible question to Moses in Exodus 4:2:
“What’s that in your hand?”

When the Lord asked this question, the only thing in Moses’ hand was a crude shepherd’s rod. It wasn’t much. Just a piece of wood. An inanimate object. A tool of
Moses’ trade.

God was commissioning him for the daunting task of delivering over a million Israelites from slavery in Egypt. And all Moses had in his hand was the wooden staff he had used for 40 years to tend his flocks of sheep.

Do you see how powerful this message is for you and me? Like Moses, we’re being called to do great things … supernatural things … things much bigger than we could ever accomplish without divine assistance.

Yet too often we think our problem is that we lack some important ingredient or resource needed for success. “If only I had this or that …” we complain.

But notice that God wasn’t asking Moses to give Him something he didn’t already have. Instead, He asked Moses, as He is asking us today …

“What’s that in your hand?”

Moses had been carrying around that ordinary piece of wood for many years, and nothing dramatic had happened as a result. But after Moses surrendered the wooden rod to the Lord, it amazingly became “the rod of God” instead of merely the rod of Moses (Exodus 4:20). No longer a mere piece of wood, this rod enabled Moses to part the Red Sea, bring water out of a rock, and defeat enemy armies.

What is in your hand, my friend? Money? Time? Possessions? Influence? Some kind of special God-given aptitude?

If you’re honest, the thing in your hand probably seems totally inadequate to meet the needs around you. However, you’ll be amazed by what can happen when you surrender it to the Lord.

Remember…

• Samson slayed hundreds of Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey.
• David defeated Goliath with a slingshot and five stones.
• Jesus used a young boy’s lunch — five loaves and two fish — to feed thousands of hungry people.

So go ahead and give God what you’ve been holding onto. It’s not doing you much good in its present condition anyway, is it?

You’ll discover that anytime you transfer what’s in your hands into His hands, He will perform miracles and bring increase. In all likelihood, He will give you back the rod you’ve surrendered — but this time it will be infused with supernatural power to change the world.

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I’d Like to Sow a Seed