Any Old Bush Will Do

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At Bible College in New Zealand in the late 1970’s I was advised to read Major Ian Thomas’ book, “The Saving Life of Christ”, and in particular, his chapter titled “Any Old Bush Will Do”. I followed that advice and am so glad I did.

Let me share with you some of the significant impact of that chapter.

Major Thomas deals with the life of Moses, pointing out that he had every advantage to prepare him to be the Lord’s servant. He was raised with all the wisdom of Egypt. In terms of worldly preparation he was about as equipped as a natural man could be to do just about anything on the planet.

Moses was also prepared by his spiritual heritage to be a deliverer of the Israelites. Yet when Moses stepped out to do his thing, going to the aid of a fellow Israelite by killing an Egyptian, his whole life fell into a heap. Instead of being a deliverer he became a fugitive. Instead of rallying all his resources to serve God, he proved that he had nothing to offer, despite all that he had gained.

Moses burned out in one short blaze of emotion. At age forty, with decades of supreme preparation equipping him to be a leader par excellence, Moses burned it all in one hasty action.

For the next forty years of his life Moses was on the back-side of the desert, in Midian, looking after sheep in a remote wilderness region. He lost the dainty delicacies of Pharaoh’s household. He lost the pomp and circumstance of his stately position. He lost contact with the people he had hoped to save. He also lost his arrogance and even his self-confidence to be of any use at all.

Then he saw that bush. There, on the side of a mountain, was a bush that just kept on burning. It caught his attention until he could not resist going to inspect this phenomenon. What was it with this bush that it didn’t just become a heap of dusty ash? How could this miserable, scrubby bush blaze on with such persistence, for such a long time?

Moses had burned out in one blaze of failure. This bush burned and burned and burned. It was not burnt out in an instant, even though that what we would expect from a bush in the wilderness.

When Moses approached the bush, God called to Him from the flames and changed the entire direction of his life. Moses, the one-time self-assured and self-proclaimed agent of God, was now standing face to face with the presence of God. And in that blazing presence God gave him the commissioning that was all divine, and not motivated by the human breast.

Ian Thomas imagines a conversation between God and Moses, in which God answers the question that must have been in Moses’ mind. How could a bush of no real substance burn with such enduring flame and persistent blaze? What did that bush possess that it could perform as no other bush could?

God’s reply is, “Do you see that bush over there? That scruffy, scraggy looking thing – THAT bush would have done. Do you see this beautiful looking bush, so stately and fine – THIS bush would have done. For you see, Moses, any old bush will do – ANY old bush – if only God is in the bush!”

“Moses you learned all of Egypt’s wisdom and became confident in yourself. You thought you were some bush! But you burned out and have been a heap of ashes for 40 years.”

“If this bush that you admire were dependent on its substance to keep burning it would have burned out in no time – it would be a heap of ashes like you. But it is not the bush that sustains the flame, it is God in the bush, and so ANY old bush will do!”

Major Thomas points out that many of God’s men were prepared by failure. Their failure disconnected them from self-reliance. It was almost a pre-requisite, to erase self-confidence and ready them for reliance on God. So, even failure is not a problem for God. Rather, it is part of the preparation program.

Have you notched up a failure or two? Have you been faced with the cold reality of your limitations and ineptitude? Have you managed to burn yourself out in a short-lived blaze of hopeful ambition?

If so, then you are ready to go to the burning bush. You are ready for that life-changing revelation that it is not the bush that does the job, but God who empowers the bush. It is God who works in us, both to will and to do His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).

I have met some strange bushes in my day. Often those bushes are treated with suspicion by on-lookers. Even now there are people who are offended at Todd Bentley and the Lakeland, Florida Revival, since Todd and his team don’t match people’s expectations. I have met people who seem too pompous and others who seem too uncouth. I have met people who are too lacking in culture and education and others who are too preoccupied with both. Yet I have seen God move through all kinds of bushes.

You may be the strangest bush ever created, but if God is empowering you and burning through you, then you can have as much impact on a nation or generation as that simple bush had on Moses and the nation of Israel 3,500 years ago.

Enter the Zone on Your Own

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Being “in the zone” is where the top performers in sport, entertainment, business and so on get their professional advantage over the rest of us. In the zone is also where we each perform at our best and can make the most of our opportunities, talents and opportunities.

We have all seen top professionals be on top of their game, and we’ve all seen top professionals have an off day. When everything is flowing, with focus, concentration, timing, energy, enthusiasm and so on, we say they are “in the zone”. When they are distracted, emotionally challenged, uncoordinated and just out of it, we know they are having a bad day.

One of the tricks in getting top performance out of people is to get them into the zone. This is where sports psychology, motivational speakers, and other performance enhancing techniques (apart from steroids and other chemical contributions) can be worth millions of dollars to people in highly competitive environments.

How does a person enter the zone on their own? Is it possible to get yourself into the zone and ensure top performance? The answer is obviously “yes”, since so many top performers seem to be able to do it. So, what’s involved?

One issue is self-confidence. Cassius Clay the boxer (alias Mohammed Ali) arrogantly asserted “I am the Greatest!” His self-induced confidence was part of his persona, contributing to him being three-time World Heavyweight Champion. Clay would jive-talk his opponents in the ring, just as his hero, Jack Johnson had done in a previous era.

Top tennis players, golfers, performers and sales-people exude confidence, as a shield around who they are and as a weapon against their challenges.

Another popularised idea is that of focus. The saying, “Wherever you are, Be There”, demands that we push past distractions and things that keep us from being “in the zone”.

We have all seen top performers ‘psych themselves up’ (as we like to call it) by berating themselves, accessing the emotional energy of anger, and so on.

Many years ago, as a junior sales-rep, I was taken on the road by a rep who shared with me his secret. He subscribed to a particular sales guru who promoted the idea of the ‘magic neck-tie’. Now I don’t think that’s what they called it, but that’s effectively what it was all about. The rep would sit in this car, tie-less, for about 30 minutes, going over his objectives for the presentation, checking his paperwork, props, etc. He would do a mental rehearsal of the whole process and see himself coming out with the order in this hand. Once he had arrived at that euphoric point of confidence he would then put on his neck-tie and head in for the appointment. The whole trick was to get him into the zone. When I asked him how it was working for him he made some lame excuse about still working on it. What that means is it wasn’t making him much more successful than before.

Probably the most impressive example of saw of a person getting “into the zone” came from a sports psychologist who I once interviewed. He was on the support team for a woman who was running the Sydney to Melbourne Ultra-Marathon, over 864km. That’s a huge, multi-day race and it’s incredibly gruelling.

The gal kept being pepped up every time she felt like giving up, which was often. She had no hope of winning so her only ambition became to finish the thing. However, about an hour or so from the finish line she stopped completely. Her support team had used all their best tricks to keep her going, but she was totally exhausted, emotionally spent and completely done-in. She was weeping, cursing herself for ever thinking she could do it, angry with everyone and wracked with pain.

That’s when the sports psychologist came up with the line, “I guess he’ll just have to be disappointed.” She asked him what he meant. He told her, dismissively, that he had already flown her dad down and he was already standing at the finish line watching others make the distance. At that the woman turned her face toward Melbourne and pressed on, without a break until she collapsed in her father’s arms.

The point in these accounts is to show, as sports psychologists know, that we all have more in us than we ever access. Being in the zone is where we are in touch with that other something, avoiding the competing thoughts and pressures which undermine our best.

But being in the zone is also the way to access more than just our own talents and abilities. It is possible to also be in the zone, so to speak, when we are accessing divine experiences in our lives. That’s what I hope to get to next time we discuss this topic.