Daily Devotion with Pastor Tong Liu: Today's Passage

Acts 7:17-29

"... Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, 'Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?' "But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?' When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.

After four hundred years of suffering from being enslaved by the Eygptians, God heard the prayers of the prayers of the Israelites and raised up a man named Moses. It did not take four hundred years of praying and begging by the Israelites before God heard them. God heard them immediately when they cried out to him. However, God had His own time in fulfilling His work.

Moses grew up in the palace and was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He had the best training undertake the task God gave him. When he was forty, he happened to find out that he was an Israelite. He saw how his own people were enslaved in Egypt, and wanted to use his position of authority to help them. One day he saw an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite, so he killed the Egyptians. He thought the Israelites should crown him as king after what he did for them. The next day when he saw two Israelites fighting each other, he tried to be the mediator between them. Instead, one of them said to him, "Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?" Although he thought that the Israelites will understand him and appreciate him, they did not.

Since then, Moses fled to the wilderness for forty years. God called him again out of the wilderness to save the Israelites. Moses said to God, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue!" God worked in the life of Moses during the forty years he was in the wilderness. Moses used to think he could do anything, but when he stood before God that day, he acknowledged his limitations. God said to him, "Indeed, you can't, but I can!" In our lives, we often need to be "pruned" by God. Serving God by our flesh is never effective. We need to learn to let God "prune" us, to rely on God, and to serve Him through His power.

Pray with Pastor Tong

Lord, we thank you because you are faithful and you are willing to help us. Forgive us, Lord, for relying on ourselves and our natural abilities. We pray you will take away our tendency to rely on our flesh, and help us to depend on you each day. We thank you and we pray in the victorious name of Jesus, amen!