God Doesn’t Waste Our Wilderness Wandering

“Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him…” – Exodus 3:1-2a, NIV

“When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai.” -Acts 7:29-30, NIV

God does not waste our wilderrness wandering.

The story of Moses testifies to this fact. Here Moses is driven out of Egypt running for his life after murdering an Egyptian and being rejected by his own people. Talk about loss and anxious time for Moses!

Next, Moses settles into the life of a nomad and shepherd. He marries and has children. This life continues for forty years, and THEN God calls Moses back into service for the greatest chapters in his life. Moses is eighty years old when God starts to cash-in on Moses wilderness training!

I am confident both Moses upbringing in Pharoah’s house AND his forty years tending sheep in the wilderness served him well confronting Pharoah and leading God’s people in the desert. God did not waste a minute of Moses experience.

My point in this is to encourage you. The time for redeeming your wilderness wandering may be a few years out, or it may be at hand. It took four decades to refine Moses into the type of leader God had for His people. Who knows what the timeline is for your refinement?

Also, I suspect Moses thought his time with the Israelites was over. He had settled into a new life–i.e. a new life extending the same length as his old life in Egypt! The burning bush experience was a surprise, certainly.

So, do not give up hope!

God may have some redemptive surprises left for you as well!

If God could use an eighty year old man to lead His people and lay the foundation for His Bible, then God can certainly use you at whatever age you find yourself today.

The best is yet to come!