April 19, 2026 - On the Back Side of the Desert
On the Back Side of the Desert
The Sufficiency of God
Introduction
Every servant of God eventually finds himself on "the backside of the desert." It's the place of waiting, of silence, where yesterday's dreams feel distant and tomorrow's promises feel delayed.
Moses knew it well. Once a prince in Pharaoh's palace, he had tried to deliver his people in his own strength — and failed. Forty years later, at eighty years old, he was tending another man's sheep in the wilderness. His platform had shrunk to a flock on the back side of nowhere.
But that is exactly where God showed up. Because the back side of the desert isn't where God abandons us — it's where He prepares us to discover that He is enough.
The Text
Exodus 3:1-10 (KJV)
¹ Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
² And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
³ And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
⁴ And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
⁵ And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
⁶ Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.
⁷ And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
⁸ And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good and a large land...
⁹ Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.
¹⁰ Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my children of Israel out of Egypt.
The Sufficiency of God
Look carefully at what God says in these two verses.
"The cry is come unto me." God doesn't ask Moses to point out the problem — He has already seen it, already heard it, already come down. The deliverance was settled in heaven before it was ever announced in the wilderness. That is the sufficiency of God. He is never reacting, never scrambling, never waiting on us to notice.
"I will send thee." He doesn't tell Moses to devise a plan or deliver Israel in his own strength. He says, "I will send."The sending is His. The sufficiency is His. Moses isn't the deliverer — he's the vessel.
This is the pattern for every servant on the back side of the desert:
God sees what we cannot fix.
God hears what we cannot answer.
God sends us — not in our sufficiency, but in His.
Moses would protest his inadequacy again and again. To every objection, God gave the same answer: "Certainly I will be with thee." The sufficiency was never in Moses. It was always in the God who sent him.
Conclusion
Maybe you're on your own back side of the desert right now — dreams feeling dead, years feeling wasted, the call of God feeling far away. Take heart. The same God who met Moses in a burning bush still meets His servants in the wilderness.
He has already seen. He has already heard. He has already come down. And when He sends you, He will not send you alone — because the sufficiency is not in you. It is in Him.