Inner Work and Acknowledging Your Limits

Scripture — Exodus 4:10 (NRSV)

But Moses said to the LORD, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”

Devotion

When I was a boy, I loved the story of Moses at the burning bush. Why? Mainly it had to do with the miracle of the bush. I used to dream of what it would be like to watch a bush that burned without being consumed and to hear God speak out of that mysterious bush. I even asked God for this miracle, but it never came.

Today, I’d still love to have God speak to me out of an unconsumed bush. But now I am drawn more to the dialogue between God and Moses than I was years ago. So much about this conversation fascinates and moves me.

I expect you know the basic story. For centuries, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. One of their number, a man named Moses, fled from Egypt for fear of his life. For years he tended sheep in the wilderness. One day he came upon a bush that was “blazing, yet it was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2). When Moses examined the bush, God spoke to him, proclaiming the good news that the Israelites would soon be set free from their bondage in Egypt (3:7-8). Though God would do the main work of freeing the Israelites, God chose to use Moses in this endeavor (3:10). When Moses asked, “Who am I to do such a thing?”, God promised to be with him (3:12).

But Moses wasn’t enthusiastic about his new assignment. He needed reassurance from God that the Israelites would follow him and that the Egyptians would actually let God’s people go (3:13-4:9). In various ways, God sought to reassure Moses. But Moses was still not convinced. He expressed his reticence in this way, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (4:10). When the Lord promised to “be with [Moses’s] mouth,” Moses still resisted, asking God to “send someone else” (4:13). At this point, the Lord became angry at Moses, but offered nevertheless to send Moses’s brother Aaron as a sort of press secretary. Moses would do the leading and Aaron would do the speaking (4:14-16). Thus, finally, Moses accepted the assignment God had given to him.

Now, preachers often use the story of Moses at the burning bush to talk about our failure to trust God, and that is surely a point to be made here. If God were to speak to me from a burning bush, asking me to do a special task and promising to be with me, I would hope that my answer would be less like Moses’s and more like Mary’s in her response to the angel in Luke 1:38, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Moses didn’t exactly demonstrate exemplary faith in his encounter with the Lord.

Though that is true, I can relate to Moses’s resistance. There have been many times in my life when I have been hesitant to do what I knew God wanted me to do. Sometimes my hesitation mainly reflected a lack of trust in God, to be sure. But sometimes my reticence came from knowing my own limits. When Moses told the Lord that he wasn’t an accomplished public speaker, he wasn’t coming up with random reasons to reject God’s assignment. Rather, he knew he lacked some of what would be required on the job.

Once again, I see a connection here between Scripture and the insights of Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky in Leadership on the Line. They write,

Of course, the experience of going beyond your competence is also a necessary part of leadership. How can you possibly imagine yourself to have sufficient knowledge and skill to tackle the innumerable and ongoing adaptive challenges that will confront your business or community? . . . You can move courageously into new terrain even if you’re not convinced that you know what you’re doing. Acknowledging the limits of your competence is a way to stay open to learning as you blaze a trail” (pp. 173-174).

God was clearly asking Moses to go beyond the limits of his human competence. There’s no way Moses could set the people of Israel free by doing only what he was able to do well. It wasn’t foolish or even unfaithful for Moses to admit to the Lord that he was not adept at public speaking. Acknowledging the limits of his competence was potentially a good thing . . . if he was willing to stay open to learning and, I would add, to trusting the Lord who had promised to be with him.

A crucial part of the inner work of leadership is being realistic about our abilities, competencies, and gifts. Sometimes leaders seem to think they need to be omni-competent, able to do everything required of leaders. Plus, to be fair, sometimes the people they lead expect the same of them. But wise and effective leaders will have done the inner work of leadership, honestly evaluating what they do well and what they don’t do well. When we do this, sometimes this evaluation will lead to additional training and/or coaching so that we can grow in our competencies. But sometimes it’s right for us to say to ourselves and others, “I don’t do that very well. I need some help with this.”

Moses didn’t put it that way, however. He asked the Lord to send someone else to do the job of freeing the Israelites (4:13). When he said this, “Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses” (4:14). God’s anger makes sense to me, which makes God’s response to Moses even more unexpected. I can imagine that God would have rebuked Moses strongly or even withdrawn the invitation to free the Israelites. But God responded to Moses with gracious pragmatism. Moses would not fulfill his calling alone. Rather, God assigned Moses’s brother, Aaron, to be Moses’s partner. Aaron, who was skilled at public speaking, would become the spokesperson for his brother. This gracious response from God was enough for Moses, who left the burning bush to fulfill his mission from God.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: God’s Call to Moses (Exodus 2:11-3:22).

Subscribe to Life for Leaders

Sign up to receive a Life for Leaders devotional each day in your inbox. It’s free to subscribe and you can unsubscribe at any time.