In this post, Tanya Godsey encourages us with the life of Moses, and gives us mile markers to help us move forward from disruption to transformation. It’s taken from her book, Befriending God: How We are Undone, Changed, and Made New.
If we live long enough, we will become well acquainted with disruptions and undoings, but if our hearts are aimed upward, we will discover unforced gifts carried on the current of those winds. When we study the biblical narrative, we see that the wilderness can be a formative experience where friendship with God is forged in the fires of dependence. We see wilderness silence as a teacher who helps us understand how to be alone but not lonely. In the silence of the desert, all that has distracted us from facing our inner life with God has been removed. It is the place where the silence can be filled with what Dallas Willard, in his book, Hearing God, refers to as a “conversational relationship” with God.
Prayer is that holy and honest space where God ceases to be a concept held only in our minds and instead becomes a person we talk to and engage with. There’s a critical difference between faith in a concept and faith in a person. The difference is relational exchange. In the sanctum of prayer, God invites us to shed the weight of performance and to simply enter just as we are.
I’ve always found it incredibly intriguing that in the aftermath of Moses’ own undoing he found himself on the back side of the desert in the long descent of humility. He had sojourned from the royal house of Pharaoh to the lowly position of tending sheep. Humility is the biblical prerequisite for greatness, and as Moses was surrounded by the bleating of sheep, he found himself in the epicenter of Meekness 101. With the sting of failure fresh upon his heart, he survived his own undoing. In God’s mercy, the end is the beginning.
Who is this who speaks out of the burning bush? God’s grand introduction as the Great I Am included signs and wonders.
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” Exodus 3:4
Disruption and undoing do not have to be in vain. They are frequently mile markers on the journey to radical encounter. Encounter is a fork in the road— the place where a conceptual brush with God is exchanged for a visceral experience with Him as a person. In the face of encounter, there is only one thing to do: respond. To be clear: One can choose to move on from the encounter without entering a relationship. Moses chose the other option. Moses took his shoes off because he was in the presence of a personal, almighty God. God radiates holiness. He is other, and He was about to change the trajectory of Moses’ life. This is what encounters do. This is how we know whether we’re immersed in faith in a concept or faith in a person. The difference is the moments that mark us through relationship. The difference is transformation. While the details of a transformation are unique to the individual, the path to it tends to follow this process:
Disruption → Undoing → Encounter → Friendship → Transformation
In Moses’ case, God introduced Himself and then invited Moses into the sanctum of friendship where he would be fully formed to live into the completeness of his God- given design for God’s glory, Moses’ own good, and the deliverance of God’s people. Every conversation with God would become a conduit for his own spiritual formation.
Tanya Godsey
Tanya Godsey is a worship leader, a speaker, a spiritual director, and the founder of Redeeming The Story, a nonprofit organization focused on spiritual renewal and personal development resources and gatherings. Tanya is the artist and voice behind four critically acclaimed albums that invite others into God’s transforming presence and serves as the host of The Unforced Gifts podcast. Tanya and her husband have been married for over twenty years and live in the Nashville area with their two children.