Exodus 3:11 And Moses said unto God, Who am I?
Increasingly, I have come to the conviction that success in life does not come from having all the answers because no one can live that long. Success comes from having the right questions. If you answer all your questions but they are the wrong questions, you will end up at the wrong answers. Sighting land from the mast of your ship is not success if you end up on the wrong island.
Many people are a great success in the eyes of the world because they have answered every question they have asked, but they are answering faulty questions. You cannot get a good answer from a faulty question. When a faulty question is posed to God, God doesn’t answer it. He replaces it with a good question that can have a good answer.
When God told Moses to go before Pharaoh and to tell him to let God’s people go, Moses asked God, “Who am I?” That is a logical question if you are a person. “Who am I? I’m not able to do this.” But from God’s perspective it is transparently a bad question because it is one He never answered. God never said, “Moses, here is who you are.” If He had answered Moses, He would have said, “Moses, you are nobody. Just obey and I will take care of it.” Instead, what God tells Moses is Who He, God, is.
In verse 12 God says, “Certainly I will be with thee.” In verse 14 He says, “I AM .” In verses 17, 20, and 21, God says, “I will…I will…I will…” In other words, God was saying, “Moses, you are asking the wrong question. Your question is all about you, and the answer is that you are nobody. But, I am God, and if you will obey, then I will do what needs to be done. I will be with you.”
In chapter 4, Moses replaces his question with a declaration. Instead of saying, “God, who am I?” he answers his own question and says, “I cannot speak.” God answered Moses’ statement with a question. He said, “Who hath made man’s mouth.” So, Moses asks a question; God makes a statement. Moses makes a statement; God asks a question. There is a struggle here. Moses is focused on himself. He says, “God, who am I? I can’t speak.” God is focused on His power. He says, “I will…I AM…and I have made man’s mouth. I made the deaf and the blind and I made you.” I love what God says in verse 12, “I will be with thy mouth.”
Three or four times in this passage God says, “I will be with you.” Here, very specifically, God says, “I will be with thy mouth.” He is making this very narrow. Maybe today you are thinking, “God, who am I?” Instead you need to say, “God, please be with my mouth, mind, or hands. God, help me.” You see, at the end of the day you are not a success because you answer all your questions. You begin to head in the right direction when you ask the right questions.
So, don’t leave God out of your questions. “How can I make more money? How can I have more friends?” The devil will give you what you want, but it will cost you dearly. So, don’t leave God out of your questions. We should say, “God, what do you want? God, how would you have me proceed? God, what do you want me to do?” In short, a good question is one that figures God into the equation.