I awoke on this Monday morning with a lot of nerves, anxiety screaming through my mind. This is a hard week for me. Introverted by nature and happy to spend my days behind a screen with a keyboard, I find it difficult when I must play the role of an extrovert. Not that I’m complaining. I’m lucky there are people who want to be around me, who care about what I have to say.
But this week involves speaking publicly in front of about sixty people or so. With a microphone. In a suit. All very triggering for an introvert, even though I’m genuinely grateful for the opportunity.
Outside, the weather is beginning to change. Gone are the dog days of heated summer, and in their place comes that cool, crisp shift that always makes me breathe a little deeper. The air carries hints of wood smoke and the sound of leaves starting to rustle loose. I love fall, the way the world feels like it’s exhaling after holding its breath all summer long.
And maybe that’s what I’m trying to do too, exhale.
There’s a strange kind of grace in being asked to do something that scares you. It’s as if God says, “I know this isn’t your comfort zone, but I’ll meet you there.” The very thing that feels like weakness is often where He chooses to show His strength.
I keep thinking of 2 Corinthians 12:9“My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” I’ve read that verse hundreds of times, but this week it feels personal. Maybe courage isn’t the absence of nerves. Maybe it’s simply the decision to show up, trembling hands and all, and trust that grace will take over where confidence runs out.
So I’ll step forward, microphone, suit, and all, knowing that the God who paints the trees with color also promises to equip the people He calls. And when it’s all over, maybe I’ll find that courage was never about being fearless after all, but about being faithful.
The Reluctant Voice
The desert was quiet that day, the kind of quiet that hums with heat and wind and the far-off bleating of sheep. Dust swirled in lazy spirals at Moses’ feet as he guided his flock across the rocky hills of Midian, the sun heavy and relentless above him. It was an ordinary day for a man who had long since traded palace corridors for solitude, a man who had made peace with being unseen.
And then he saw it, a flicker of something impossible.
A bush, fully alive with fire. Not the dry crackle of desert brush going up in flame, but a steady blaze that glowed without burning. The branches curled and danced, yet never turned to ash. The light of it pulsed against the rocks, wild and holy. Moses stopped, squinting, the shepherd’s staff still in his hand. Curiosity drew him closer, a few hesitant steps across the sand, one hand shielding his eyes from the brightness.
Then came the voice.
“Moses, Moses.”
He froze. Every hair on his arms stood up.
“Here I am,” he managed to say.
“Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
And so he did, sandals off, bare feet pressed against the earth, standing before a fire that should not have existed and a God who had not spoken in centuries. The air itself seemed alive.
God introduced Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then laid out the unthinkable: Go to Pharaoh. Tell him to let My people go.
That’s when the panic started.
Who would want to go to Pharaoh and confront him? It sounded like a death sentence. But it wasn’t just the danger that terrified him, it was the familiarity. Moses had grown up in a palace just like Pharaoh’s, very likely the very same one. He knew the throne room’s cold stone and gold, the precise stillness of its guards, the way the air felt heavy with power.
The Pharaoh he was being sent to confront wasn’t a stranger, he was almost certainly family. Most historians believe this Pharaoh was Moses’ adoptive brother or at least a man from the same royal line. Moses would have known his face, his voice, his pride, his temper. He might even have remembered sitting at the same table with him as a boy, learning Egypt’s language and laws.
And now, after forty years in exile, God was sending him back there, to that same palace, to that same family, carrying the command to dismantle everything they stood for.
Worse still, Moses wasn’t returning as a hero. He was a fugitive. He had killed an Egyptian decades earlier and fled for his life. To walk back into Egypt was to walk straight into a place where he was wanted for murder. The fear must have been unbearable, the knowledge that obedience could very well cost him his life.
It’s one thing to be called somewhere new. It’s another thing entirely to be sent back, back into the place of your deepest failure, your greatest fear, your most painful memory.
Moses stood there, the desert wind tugging at his robe, the fire still burning steady. I wonder how long he stood in silence after God’s words faded into the air, how long it took for his pulse to slow, for him to catch his breath. Because when you’re asked to do something that scares you to death, time seems to stop. You hear your own heartbeat, and all the old fears come rushing back.
Moses found his voice again, though it came out small and unsteady.
“Who am I,” he asked, “that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
The question hung there in the heat, half disbelief, half plea.
And God’s answer came like a steady heartbeat in the silence:
“I will be with you.”
No list of credentials. No persuasive argument. Just His presence.
But Moses wasn’t done. Fear rarely gives up that easily.
“Suppose I go,” he said, “and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I tell them?”
And God replied with a name so vast it still echoes through every age:
“I AM WHO I AM. Tell them ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
The ground must have trembled beneath those words. Firelight flickered across Moses’ face, and still he hesitated.
“What if they don’t believe me? What if they say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”
So God gave him signs, the staff that turned to a serpent, the hand that turned leprous and then whole again, the promise of proof when his faith faltered.
But still, Moses stammered, “Pardon your servant, Lord… I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since You have spoken to Your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
And here, I imagine the voice of God softening, steady and patient:
“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.”
Yet even then, Moses’ fear clung to him. He looked at the fire, at the holiness that did not consume, and whispered the words we’ve all said in our own ways:
“Please, Lord. Send someone else.”
Scripture says God’s anger burned against him, but not the kind of anger that destroys. More the ache of a Father who knows His child is capable of more than he believes. So God offered a mercy: “Your brother Aaron can speak well. He will go with you. I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do.”
And that was it. The conversation was over. The fire still burned. The call still stood.
Moses had run out of arguments, but God had not run out of grace.
Holy Ground of My Own
By the end of the week, the moment had come. I had practiced my speech, rehearsed my points, and gone over the opening line in my head more times than I could count. Usually, when I stand in front of people, my nerves take over, my throat tightens, my hands tremble, and I can feel my heart pounding in my ears. But this time felt different.
I stood when my name was called. The sound of chairs shifting and murmurs fading seemed to stretch into slow motion. The microphone waited, tall, black, ordinary, but it felt like a mountain. I walked toward it anyway.
I took one long breath. Then another.
And when I spoke, I heard my own voice, amplified, steady, clear. The sound startled me for a split second, but then it grounded me. My voice filled the room, and somehow, I didn’t shake. The words came as if they’d been waiting there all along.
As I kept speaking, a calmness began to spread through me, not the kind that comes from confidence, but the kind that comes from Presence. I even found myself smiling, adding a few small jokes that earned some laughter. The crowd leaned in. The tension that had lived in my shoulders all week quietly dissolved.
When I finished, there was a pause, and then applause. A rush of warmth moved through me, but not pride. Gratitude. Deep, quiet gratitude.
What I said wasn’t earth-shattering, but what happened inside me was. Knowing that I can lean hard on God in the places where I’m weakest, that’s the miracle. That’s the lesson Moses learned long ago, and the one I’m still learning.
Most people in that room will never know how much I battled just to take those steps forward, just to face the microphone. But I know. And I know who was with me.
He saw me through it.
He is so faithful, even when we don’t deserve it.
Our God doesn’t just send us into hard places; He goes with us. And sometimes, the holy ground isn’t a desert glowing with fire. Sometimes it’s right under our feet, in a conference room, behind a podium, in a trembling heart that finally finds its voice.
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