I AM: Identity & Calling in the Life of Moses // Part 2 // Exodus 3 // Ryan Murphy

This week, Ryan Patrick Murphy shares a message from Exodus 3 as part of the series "I Am: Calling and Identity in the Life of Moses." Drawing on the moment God appears to Moses in the burning bush, Ryan explores what it truly means to receive a kingdom assignment — and why the revelation of who God is must always come before the call to act.

Ryan traces Moses's story from its earliest chapters — his near-death as an infant, his identity crisis as a third-culture kid caught between Egypt and Israel, his premature attempt to fulfill his calling through violence, and his eventual exile to the wilderness — to show that nothing in Moses's life is wasted. What God leads us through personally, Ryan argues, becomes the very thing he calls us to lead others through publicly. From there, Ryan turns to Exodus 3, unpacking three realities from the burning bush encounter: that God meets us in our ordinary lives, that the wilderness is where calling is forged rather than forfeit, and that intercession is the hinge on which the history of God turns. He closes with the revelation of the divine name — I AM — and the theological move at the heart of the message: before God tells Moses what to do, he tells him who God is, and that revelation transforms who Moses understands himself to be.

The theological anchor of this sermon is what Ryan calls "father identity" — the principle that our understanding of who we are flows entirely from our understanding of who God is. God is not a taskmaster issuing marching orders; he is a Father inviting his sons and daughters into a family story. When we know we have a good Father, obedience stops being obligation and becomes freedom. Every attribute of God — provider, healer, shepherd, king — carries a corresponding identity for us, and worship is the practice by which we realign with that reality.

Ultimately, this sermon is an invitation to stop waiting for a specific prophetic word before stepping forward, and instead to trust the posture of a child who knows their Father is good. For those sitting with unfulfilled promises, delayed dreams, or seasons of wilderness confusion, Ryan offers a provocation: bring those longings back to prayer, and open your hands. The Father who met Moses in his weakest and most disqualified moment is the same God who is ready to sweep you up into a story far bigger than anything you could self-help your way into.