ON A TUESDAY EVENING in April 2012, I was in the middle of my weekly thirty-minute prayer call with a friend Ifeytaya Bulow-Deck. There I was, sitting in the foyer of my parentsâ home with my eyes closed when, suddenly, images of the men in my family marched through my mind one after the other. My father. My uncles. My brother. My cousins. With them came an overwhelming sense that someone was about to die.
I panicked. Was one of them dying? Why was I having these thoughts? While I thought about what to do next, I prayed for my father, uncles, brother, and cousins. Soon, I sensed the Holy Spirit leading me to declare Psalm 118:17: â[They] shall not die but live, and declare the works of the LORDâ (KJV). I prayed those words repeatedly. At that moment it was all I could do. The intensity of my prayer took on a form of its own as God led me to confidently pray the Word with authority and conviction. All the while my mind raced to understand what was seemingly a supernatural God encounter.
Ifeytaya was supportive as always during our prayer times. She prayed in agreement with me that these men would not die but live. She also expressed her belief that God would protect my family.
I got off the phone with Ifeytaya puzzled and concerned yet trusting that God had revealed what the enemy had intended. What was intended for evil, however, would be turned around for our good (Genesis 50:20). I wanted to tell someone but didnât want to alarm anyone. Instead, I prayed daily for the protection of the men in my family.
In May, my mom told our family that my uncle Tony (her brother) had been diagnosed four months earlier with stage 4 colon cancer and had only just shared this news after she asked him why he was in the bed all of the time. He was fifty-three years old.
I was shocked. Mad at him too. Why had he held this information for so long? Why was he resigned to die? We could have done something! Also troubling was the fact that I wasnât sure whether he had a personal relationship with God.
It was then that I remembered my prayer to the Lord the month before. My uncle was the one Iâd needed to pray for!
My mom convinced Uncle Tony to allow her to make a doctorâs appointment for him at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City for a second opinion. As Mom and I stood in the oncology department waiting room at Mt. Sinai waiting for the doctor to return with his report, I scanned the room trying to process the desperation and despair on so many faces. How did we get here? What would my family have to endure?
The doctor returned and said the cancer was indeed stage 4.
âHow much time does he have to live?â I asked, a question I dreaded.
âSix months,â the doctor replied.
Six months! This canât be real! I panicked, tears flowing. Meanwhile, my mom remained calm and continued to ask wise questions about how we could care for my uncle. She didnât accept the timetable of death.
As thoughts of my uncleâs life, his children, and the rest of our family flooded my mind, the Holy Spirit reminded me that God alone determines when we live and die. So I prayed again, Lord, please spare my uncleâs life. Donât take him from this earth until I have the assurance that heâll be with you in heaven.
Uncle Tony received chemotherapy but continued to deteriorate. I felt so powerless against this disease. Though I was a minister in training, someone who was supposed to lead others, I was overwhelmed.
One Sunday after church at the home my uncle and grandmother shared, I looked at my uncle, now very gaunt and withdrawn, and I burst into tears. How full of life he used to be.
âItâs going to be okay,â Uncle Tony said.
But I knew that wasnât true. This was not okay.
Watching Uncle Tony die was one of the hardest things Iâve ever faced. It was even more devastating knowing that he didnât want to die and hadnât made peace with his condition.
We decided that Uncle Tony would receive hospice care in his home. But he needed more support than we could provide. Since he was too fragile to be moved, we asked God for grace and strength. We knew it was only a matter of time before he would pass away. He was barely talking and had stopped eating.
Feeling desperate and unsure whether or not Uncle Tony had ever talked to God about forgiveness, I asked my mentor, Helen West, one of the elders at my churchâBethel Gospel Assemblyâto come and pray for Uncle Tony. I needed to know that he would be with the Lord after he died.
My uncle lay there as Elder West entered the room. I watched and silently prayed that God would show his presence. Elder West talked to him and read to him passages from the Bible. After that, she asked him if he wanted to have a relationship with God, to acknowledge that the wrongs my uncle had committed had been dealt with when Jesus died on the cross. Because of that, he could have peace with God. If he understood that, he was to raise his hand.
I studied Uncle Tony intently for any sign of movement.
Nothing.
Had he heard her? Would God answer my prayer?
I prayed again. Slowly, his right hand moved, lifting off the bed. Heâd heard! He wanted to be at peace with God.
Four days later my uncle took his final breath. But I knew that death was not the final answer for him. He would be with the Lord for eternity. The joy and release that I felt were indescribable.
Elder West gave the eulogy at my uncleâs homegoing service. We chose to call the service a âhomegoingâ instead of a funeral because we believed that he indeed went home to his final resting place in heaven with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8).
I couldnât help recalling my prayer for the men in my family back in April. God had answered by showing the power of his presence during one of the most difficult times my family had faced.
Have you ever felt out of your depth as a leader? Another man felt way out of his league when handed an assignment. His name was Moses.
MOSES MAKES A PLAN: TAKE ONE
Mosesâ familiar story has been the subject of filmsâExodus: Gods and Kings (2014), The Ten Commandments (1956)âand novels such as Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston. It began with a problem that needed a solution.
For centuries the Israelitesâwho were then known as the Hebrewsâwere slaves in Egypt. Slavery was Pharaohâs chosen means of population control (Exodus 3:8-14). Their cries of anguish had reached God (Exodus 3:7-9), and he decided âto rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honeyâ (Exodus 3:8). But he would use a man to do it.
Moses was an unlikely choice for a delivererâthe kind of story Hollywood loves. He was born to Amram and Jochebed (Numbers 26:58-59) at the worst time for male babies to be born. Having survived Pharaohâs second method of population controlâkilling male Hebrew babies (Exodus 1:15-22)âhe had been raised by the current Pharaohâs daughter (Exodus 2:1-10). So far so good. But around the age of forty, Moses witnessed an Egyptianâs cruelty to one of his own people. Driven by concern for the oppression of his people, Moses saw this as his call to action. So, he murdered the man and quickly buried him (Exodus 2:11-12).
Not the ideal resume entry for the job of deliverer.
Moses had been seen and was forced to flee to Midian to escape Pharaohâs demand for justice (Exodus 2:13â15). Heâd blown it.
MOSES MAKES A PLAN: TAKE TWO
Youâve heard stories of celebrities who were downgraded from fame and fortune to anonymity and sometimes poverty. Moses, the celebrity of his day, had gone from being the adopted son of the daughter of Pharaoh to being a nobody in the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on his back. But there was a silver cloud on the horizon. After helping a group of shepherdesses (Exodus 2:16-17), he gained a wife, a new home, and a new responsibility: being a shepherd over the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.
Despite Mosesâ failed attempt and forced retreat, God still had plans for Moses. Forty years of seasoning as a husband to Zipporah and a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian had rendered Moses ready to lead. But in Exodus 3, Moses encountered Godâs presence in a unique way
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbellâs seminal work on the heroâs journey, one of the steps of the heroâs journey is the call to action. Mosesâ call to action was literally God calling to him from a burning bush: âAnd now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egyptâ (Exodus 3:9-10).
Imagine how you would feel if you heard the voice of God calling to you from a tree or a bush outside your home and giving you an assignment. What would you say first? Do first?
Keep in mind that Moses had never heard the voice of God. He wasnât exactly sure who was speaking to him. As Exodus 3:13 describes it: âThen Moses said to God, âIf I come to the people of Israel and say to them, âThe God of your fathers has sent me to you,â and they ask me, âWhat is his name?â what shall I say to them?ââ (ESV). Sounds like a stalling technique, doesnât it?
Moses felt completely unqualified and lamented to God that he was a man of lowly position. Look at his list of excuses in Exodus 4. How could he be the best for this assignment?
Mosesâ Excuse (Exodus 4) | Godâs Response |
What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, âThe LORD did not appear to youâ? (v. 1) | What is that in your hand? . . . Throw [the staff] on the ground. . . . This is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathersâthe God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacobâhas appeared to you. (vv. 2-5) |
I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue. (v. 10) | Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say. (vv. 11-12) |
Please send someone else. (v. 13) | What about your brother, Aaron the Levite?. . . . You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. (vv. 14-15) |
With every doubt Moses had about his ability to lead, God responded by showing Moses that he had already made provision for his journeyâthe provision of the Lord himself.
God showed Moses and us that he equips us with everything we need to effectively lead. Resources are already at our disposal, often already within us. We come to understand how the presence of God can be found in the promises throughout the Bible, the language of prayer, hea...
