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People often have a rather elevated view of leaders. They tend to regard leaders as persons who are larger than life. Leaders are thought to be people of unique talents presented with unique opportunities. Often people will say, "If only I had been born back in those days, I might have done something." "If only I had more physical strength, or more money, or more education, I might do something significant." I know that is the way people think about leadership, because I have felt that way myself. And I'm here to tell you that just isn't the way it is. Most people have what it takes to do something significant. They just don't realize it, and consequently, they discount what they have to contribute. There are others who really don't want the hard work of doing what needs to be done, and their suggestion that they lack something is only an excuse. I can say that because I have experienced both of those feelings, and yet leadership became my lot anyway. I think I can safely say that no matter what your experiences have been, God can use them.

My name is Moses. Let me tell you how it was with me. I think my experiences can have application to your life.

I was a simple shepherd out in the Arabian desert of Sinai. I was so poor that I didn't even have my own flock. I took care of the sheep for my father-in-law, Jethro, who, in addition to owning the sheep, happened to be a tribal holy man, a priest, who worshiped the Most High God. I only had the job because I had married one of his daughters, Zipporah. Jethro and I had a good relationship, and I was quite content to be out with the sheep day after day. The work was not demanding, I had few responsibilities, and I had a lot of time to think.

I had, in fact, been shepherding for a good many years in the vicinity of Mount Horeb, or Sinai, as some call it, when the incident I am about to describe took place. I was looking for a missing lamb on the slopes of Mount Sinai when I chanced to look up and see a bush that looked like it was on fire, only the bush didn't burn. It may have been the result of a small eruption, for Sinai was an active volcano and was often belching forth smoke. It was while I was observing this phenomenon that I felt overwhelmed by the presence of Something I could not explain. I felt that I had somehow intruded on holy ground. I felt as though I was carrying on a conversation with Something or Someone I couldn't see. I say I felt these things because I'm not sure whether I heard them with my ears or whether they made an impact on my mind in some other way -- but I am sure what the message was.

I was being asked to go to Egypt to lead the Hebrews out of captivity. Now you may not know what I am talking about, because I haven't told you everything about my background. You see, I am a Hebrew. My people had gone down into Egypt some several hundred years before and lived as a minority among the Egyptians. Eventually my people became slaves of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. We became numerous enough that Pharaoh feared what might happen if we ever joined forces with an enemy of Egypt, so he tried several means of reducing our population growth. One of his methods was to require that all Hebrew boy babies be drowned in the Nile. When I was born, that was supposed to have happened to me. Instead, my parents put me in a waterproof basket and put me on the river with my sister, Miriam, standing by. I was found by Pharaoh's daughter and raised as her own son. My birth mother managed to become my nursemaid, and she acquainted me with my true heritage.

I was raised as an Egyptian noble and trained in the wisdom of Egypt. My people were suffering cruelly, but there was nothing I could do. One day I saw an Egyptian taskmaster beating one of the Hebrews, and in my attempt to stop him, I killed the Egyptian. I tried to keep it a secret, but in no time the Hebrews knew about it, and since many of them considered me a traitor for living in the palace, I knew that it was only a question of time before someone would inform on me, so I fled Egypt in a panic.

I came to the area of Sinai seeking refuge, and Jethro, the Midianite, took me in. That is why I was quite content to serve out there on the desert in relative anonymity. You can understand, then, why I would not want to go back to Egypt. But the call was insistent; it wouldn't leave me alone. I protested that there must be others who could do it better. I said I didn't know enough. I didn't even know who I was talking to. The voice, whether inside me or outside of me, I don't know, said, "I am the God of your forefathers." I said, "The people will want to know your name." The voice answered, "I am Yahweh," a Hebrew word which might mean a variety of things, like "I am what I am," or "The one who brings into existence what is." I protested that the people wouldn't listen to me. I protested my lack of ability, my lack of eloquence as a speaker. Finally, I said, "I don't want to go. I'm comfortable here. Get someone else." But nothing would remove the sense of urgency; Yahweh was commissioning me to go, and in the final analysis I felt compelled to obey. I was not a volunteer; I was drafted. I was not a religious fanatic; I had scarcely paid any heed to God previously. I was not a political reformer; I really wanted to be left alone. But I was called, and if I did not respond, I could not continue to live with myself.

Now you may think I have forgotten my main point, which is to draw lessons from my life which might apply to you, but I haven't forgotten. For one thing, I am sure that there are still people in your day who need to be delivered, as Israel needed to be delivered in my day. Some need deliverance from physical hunger and poverty. Some need deliverance from slavery to dehumanizing habits. Others need deliverance from hatred and violence which kills body and spirit. Still others need deliverance from obsession with material accumulation which blots out spiritual values.

Another way your life relates to mine is that you are called to help with the deliverance in your time just as I was in my time. You may protest that there are all kinds of reasons why you are not the person for the job, just as I did, but when all the pretense has been stripped away, you may be faced with the fact, as I was, that the real obstacle is simply that you don't want to get involved. All of us tend to think that there must be somebody else somewhere who can do more than we can to correct a bad situation, and so we claim that it isn't our concern. The fact is that most people who do something significant aren't necessarily more talented than anyone else, they just got in there and did what needed to be done, using whatever resources were at their disposal. If you wait around for the perfect person to show up to do a job, someone who has all the right qualifications, the job isn't going to get done.

I certainly didn't have much to offer, but I had been given a vision of the task to be done, and that became the call of God for me. And don't tell me that is where the difference lies between you and me -- that God spoke to me but he has not spoken to you. If you have seen injustice, and you can recognize it, if you have seen poverty, hunger, misery, illness, hate, war, fear, pain, and you can recognize these things as bad, then you have received the call to help correct them. A call begins with an awareness that things could be different. Of that much I was aware. So I was compelled to do what I could with the tools available to me. Those tools didn't seem like much, but God used them.

One of the tools, if you want to call them that, was my ancestry. I was a Hebrew, so I was already identified with the problems of the Hebrews. They were my people, and I had an obligation to help. That meant I had to be where they were. I couldn't help them without taking the risk of putting myself in jeopardy. I had to become part of their circumstances, even face possible arrest. Even when you feel called, there is a price to pay for the privilege of helping.

You, too, have an ancestry. It may be ethnic, national, religious, or simply your identity with all humanity. Where are your people hurting? That's one way to hear your call. But before you can help, you've got to identify with those who need the help.

I went back to Egypt. I lived among my people. My brother, Aaron, often served as my spokesman. I had to raise the consciousness of my people to a level where they were willing to act, and that often made me unpopular, even with my own people.

Another tool I had going for me was contact with the power structure. I had been raised as an Egyptian. I knew their language. I knew their organization. I knew some of their principal people in government. I knew what was likely to impress them. I went to them and told them that my people needed to be free to make a three-day journey into the desert to worship our God.

You may say that right there I had an advantage that you don't have: the opportunity to go to the top. But think that over. Aren't there ways for you to contact important people? In fact, isn't it possible for you to get involved in the process of putting people in the places of power? You may feel that they won't listen to you, but don't be too sure. It is important to speak out. They didn't seem to listen to me either. Even so, I engaged in a process of consciousness raising.

Still another tool I could offer in the accomplishment of God's purpose was my awareness of natural phenomena. I used this knowledge to bring our desire for freedom more dramatically to the attention of Pharaoh, his advisers, and the Egyptians in general. I told them that our God had called us to worship him some three-days' journey into the desert. Really, that was to help Pharaoh save face. Certainly, we had no intention of returning to slavery if we ever got away. I knew that, and Pharaoh knew that, but he would have had to be even more resistant to an outright demand to free my people permanently.

Periodically, in the past, the Nile River would crest high up at its source and tend to bring a red algae down from the mountains. This tended to turn the Nile red like blood. I had learned about this when I was tutored in the palace. I saw signs of that beginning to happen, so I said that Pharaoh must let our people go or the Nile would turn to blood. He refused to let us go, and shortly thereafter the river turned red. Pharaoh was not impressed, but I had at least gotten his attention.

There were also natural consequences of this reddening that I knew would take place: the fish would die; frogs would come out of the river; the frogs would die; this would attract flies; flies would infect animals and people, and so forth. Before each of these events took place I would seek out and inform Pharaoh in as public a way as I could, that he must let my people go, but each time he refused. My people, living in a different area, were not exposed to these plagues, and consequently, they were spared.

You may think that this knowledge of natural phenomena discredits God's involvement and takes things out of the realm of the supernatural. I say, not at all. All knowledge is from God. When ignorant people see something they can't explain, they call it magic. I prefer to call it "miracle." A miracle is something that we can't presently explain, but it has an explanation. God does not delight in ignorance, but in knowledge. The more we learn, and the more we use what we learn for the benefit of others, the more we are in tune with God's intention.

There was also something the Egyptians were doing which was having a devastating effect on their children, so that many of their children died. It was not so among us, and I saw that this contrast would finally force the Egyptians to want to be rid of us. So I told my people to get ready, to be packed and prepared to travel, because I didn't want to give the Egyptians the chance to reconsider, once they decided to let us go. Not knowing myself what caused the deaths of the Egyptian children, I told my people first to sacrifice a lamb, and then to make a mark on their door posts with the blood to signify to the angel of death that Hebrews lived there. The night before we departed we had a hasty meal, which we have subsequently repeated each year, to remember our release from slavery. We call it the Passover, for the angel of death passed over our homes.

Once we left Egypt, God continued to help me to use my knowledge to keep the Hebrews free and to keep them alive. Our journey led to a shallow extension of the Red Sea called the Sea of Reeds. No sooner had we arrived there than Pharaoh's army showed up with the intention of bringing us back. He had changed his mind! We had no choice but to move ahead. The sea was shallow enough so that a strong wind blowing on the surface of the water made it possible for us to pick our way and proceed on foot. Pharaoh's heavy chariots and galloping horses, however, became mired in the mud and had to give up.

So, crossing the sea, we found ourselves in territory with which I was familiar. I knew where there were some oases for refreshment. I knew how to make bitter water drinkable by throwing a certain kind of wood into it. I knew where one could find underground springs with a little digging. I knew about migrations of quail which could provide meat. I knew about the secretions of the tamarisk tree which provided adequate nutrition: a food my people called "manna," meaning simply "what is it?"

What I had to offer was simple, just a shepherd's knowledge, but it was what was needed at that particular moment, and it kept my people alive. Do not think I am saying that "Moses did this or that." It was God who called me when I did not want to go. It was the God of nature who had created the natural laws that helped us. It was God's nearness to me that made it possible for me to put up with the never-ending complaints my own people had about all that I did. Undoubtedly you, too, have something God can use to advance God's purposes for the world.

The last tool I'll tell you about, which I had to offer for God's use, was my ability to make things simple. Sometimes people who are put into positions of leadership act as though their calling is to make an idea as unintelligible as possible. Nobody ever knows what they are talking about, and it is impossible to disagree with them. I, on the other hand, am a simple man, and I appreciate things being done or described in a simple way. After all, most of my life was spent as a simple shepherd out in the desert of Sinai. Now I was once again a shepherd, only this time my flock was people instead of sheep. In the years which remained to me I was to have the responsibility for taking a downtrodden people with little self-confidence and building them into a unified nation, with a sense of national pride and an awareness of their destiny. At the moment, however, they were fighting with me and with one another, and were completely unaware of any responsibility for their conduct or their future. There was stealing, lying, cheating, unfaithfulness, jealousy, and all manner of social evils that would destroy us quickly. Something had to be done to make us aware of our higher calling.

I had received my call in the vicinity of Mount Sinai, and it was to that area that we were slowly making our way. When we arrived there, after a journey of some months, the mountain was again erupting, and I told the people that was the way it had been when God had spoken to me before. The people urged me to go up into the mountain and to speak with God. I went up, and I spent forty days away from the camp. I needed the rest, I needed time to think, and I needed the quietness of mind, body, and spirit, which would enable me to hear the voice of God. As I spent time on the mountain, it became abundantly clear what my people needed. First, they needed to commit themselves unreservedly to the God who had brought them out of slavery. They needed to be aware that God is a spiritual reality who would be present with them wherever they might go. They needed to be aware that God had chosen them for a great destiny and that they were free to accept or reject that invitation, but that once they accepted it, they would be expected to organize their lives in a manner which God could approve. I set these thoughts down on stone in the simplest manner: just ten phrases to serve as an outline of the kind of life of which God could approve, the kind of contract that we would be expected to live up to. I don't claim that these concepts were new or unique with me, or that I am the only one through whom God could speak. All I can say is that as I humbly reflected on my people's needs, these were the ideas which God put into my mind. About all that I contributed was the simplicity of organizing them.

When I came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the law, I found that my people were already involved in breaking the very laws I had just written down! In anger and despair I smashed the two stone tablets together, symbolizing even more than I intended, the fact that they were breaking God's law. When they learned the nature of my message, they pleaded with me to pray to God for forgiveness and to ask that the law be put down once again. I did as they requested. God forgave; the law was written again, and the people accepted its implications for their lives.

There is much more I could tell you of our experiences as we learned to be God's people. But what I want you to be aware of even more than our story is how God can use the simplest characteristics you have to offer and make something of them. The key, of course, is that you have to be ready to use what God has given you. You need to ask yourself: What are the issues in my day calling for solution? What do I have that could contribute to a solution? What do I know, or need to learn, that would help? Is there something in particular that God wants me to be concerned about? And don't wait for a burning bush to catch your attention. That was my unique experience. You just listen, with your mind and your heart, and when you hear the call, be prepared to say, "Yes."