"What’s in Your Hand?"
Moses, the mid-life unraveling, and the God who calls us beyond our limitations.
“Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” – Exodus 4:12 (NIV)
Over the past few days, I found myself sitting with Exodus 4 longer than I expected. Moses’ conversation with God at the burning bush is one of those iconic moments that speaks across generations. But it carries particular weight in a season of transition.
Moses stands on holy ground, face to face with divine calling, and all he can do is protest. He names his inadequacies one by one:
“What if they don’t believe me?”
“I’ve never been eloquent.”
“Please send someone else.”
Moses isn’t being dramatic or feigning humility here. These are sincere, honest admissions. After years of failure and exile, he’s no longer the man full of fire and confidence he once was in Pharaoh’s palace. He’s become cautious, self-protective, and perhaps even a little jaded.
And I get it.
I’m currently navigating a season of change myself, having stepped out of pastoral ministry and into a new calling. As I work to build a new rhythm with unfamiliar responsibilities and shifting priorities, old insecurities have resurfaced in new ways. Imposter syndrome shows up more frequently. The gap between what I know and what I don’t has grown, and in that space, I’ve found myself focusing more on my perceived limitations than on God’s presence and power.
Not because I doubt God can use me—but because self-consciousness narrows what feels possible.
And I’ve noticed I’m not alone in this.
As a coach, I’ve walked with many men in the mid-life season, and this question of inadequacy almost always comes up. By this stage of life, most men have experienced at least one significant rupture, something that shook the confidence they once carried. For some, it’s a divorce. For others, a health scare, a career derailment, an addiction, or the slow, discouraging realization that despite years of striving, they’ve ended up somewhere they never intended to be. These experiences mark us. They reveal our limitations in ways that success and progress never could.
Like Moses, many begin to wonder if their best days are behind them.
It’s in that place where confidence falters and calling feels out of reach that Exodus 4 speaks so powerfully. It reminds us that God’s call doesn’t expire with age or failure. Even in the wilderness—especially in the wilderness—God still speaks. Still sends. Still empowers.
A Different Kind of Confidence
Moses’ new chapter doesn’t begin renewed ambition or achievement. It begins with surrender. He has come to the end of himself and recognizes that the task ahead is beyond his natural capacity. And in that place of limitation, something new begins to form—not a shallow confidence in his own ability, but a deeper trust in the One who says, “I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
This is where a different kind of confidence begins to grow. One grounded not in what we can do for ourselves, but in what God promises to do through us. One built not on the illusion of control and self-sufficiency, but on the reality of grace and God’s sustaining power.
As men, we often draw our confidence from what we can accomplish and from our sense of agency. But Exodus 4 invites us into something deeper—a confidence rooted not in our own strength, but in the revelation of who God is and what He’s calling us to.
The Soul’s Invitation
Psychologist Carl Jung observed that mid-life is a significant turning point. It’s a season when individuals often shift from building their outer life to confronting their inner one. Jungian analyst James Hollis calls this season The Middle Passage, describing it as a summons from the depths of our soul. It invites us to relinquish the ego’s assurances of youth and embrace the mature complexity of our “second adulthood.”
Rather than a crisis, mid-life can become a sacred threshold. We’re invited to move from external validation to internal integration, from surface-level ambition to a deeper kind of selfhood.
Brené Brown gives language to this shift in a way that’s both honest and relatable:
“People may call what happens at midlife ‘a crisis,’ but it’s not. It’s an unraveling—a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re ‘supposed’ to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.”
I would suggest that what Brown calls “the unraveling” can also be understood, in light of Scripture, as a divine sourced echo of Jesus’ call:
“If you seek to save your life, you will lose it. But if you lose your life for my sake, you will find it” (Matthew 16:25).
Mid-life often becomes the stage where we are invited into a more consequential kind of faith. Not a performance-based one, but a surrendered one. A faith that leads us beyond ego into the deeper waters of obedience, trust, and transformation.
The Mountain Pass Moment
Mid-life is like standing at a mountain pass. You’ve come so far, endured the climb, and taken some wrong turns. The air is thinner here, the path less obvious. But one thing is certain: You can’t go back, and you can’t stay where you are.
This moment demands courage. Not the courage to conquer, but the courage to let go. It asks us to be remade. To move forward with faith rather than force.
The Question Every Man Must Face
At some point in the middle years, a question surfaces. Sometimes it comes quietly. Other times, it roars like thunder. It’s the same question God asked Moses at the burning bush: “What is in your hand?”
And the honest answer, though we may hesitate to speak it aloud, is often: Not enough.
Not in the sense of personal worth, but in the sense that we’ve taken our gifts, our drive, our strength—our potential—as far as we know how. And somewhere along the way, we’ve found ourselves bumping up against the limits of what those things can achieve. There’s a humility in that. A kind of exposure. A holy discomfort.
It’s the feeling that your efforts, while not wasted, have left something unfinished. That despite all your effort, there’s still a quiet discontent. Something essential still feels just out of reach. And the tools and strategies you’ve relied on no longer feel sufficient for the road ahead.
But this is exactly where God does His most formative work. He doesn’t ask for enough—He asks for what you have. And what you surrender becomes more powerful in His hands than it ever could have been in yours.
It Comes for Us All
And it’s not only those who feel like failures who experience this unraveling. It often comes just as forcefully—and more surprisingly—to those who have succeeded in life’s first-half.
Some men reach mid-life and find themselves in the wilderness not because they’ve lost, but because they’ve “won.” They’ve achieved the goals they set out to reach. They’ve built the business, raised the family, gained the respect. And yet, they’re met with the same quiet but disorienting emptiness. They realize, in a moment that echoes the voice of Ecclesiastes,
“I had everything a man could desire...but as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 2).
This is the great leveller of mid-life. Whether through disappointment or success, the illusion of control fades. And each of us, sooner or later, must decide: Is this a disruption to avoid or a doorway to walk through?
A Pattern in Scripture
Moses is not alone in this kind of turning point.
Abraham was called at 75. Gideon was found hiding in fear, convinced he was the least qualified. Jeremiah, though young, felt overwhelmed and inadequate. Peter, following his greatest failure, was restored not through strength but through surrender.
Each of them had to confront their very significant and undeniable limitations. Each had to wrestle with self-doubt. And each discovered that God’s calling was never about their capacity, but His.
You may feel past your prime. You may be more aware of your flaws now than ever before. But none of that disqualifies you.
Moses’ story didn’t end in Midian. Neither does yours.
The wilderness isn’t the end of the road. It’s often where God begins something new.
Reflection Questions:
Have you experienced a moment or season that deeply altered your confidence?
In what ways do you feel like you're in the wilderness today?
What might it look like to hear God's “Now go” in this chapter of your life?
Are there old sources of confidence you need to release in order to receive something deeper?
If you're navigating a season like this and would value someone to walk with you, I offer pastoral coaching for men in transition. You’re not alone. Feel free to reach out if that’s something you’d like to explore.
