When Moses was a shepherd on the backside of the desert, he heard God call him by name and say, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Moses was not just hearing about God. He was hearing God Himself speak and declare the foundational fact of being, “I am.” It was as if God was saying, “I am the God you have heard about, and I am present here and now. I am infinite Being.”
When God told Moses that He was sending him to deliver the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt and to bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey, Moses responded, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). At this point in the dialogue there are two very different I’s doing the speaking. There is an eighty-year-old I filled with feelings of doubt and inadequacy, and there is the divine I confidently declaring His ability to deliver His people out of bondage and bring them into a good land.
God assured Moses, “Certainly I will be with thee” (Exodus 3:12). In the past, I understood this to mean that God’s presence and power would be with Moses every step of the way—that Moses would not be alone. That was true, but then one day I had a fresh, further insight into this statement. It came to me that when God said, “Certainly I will be with thee,” God was declaring that there would only be one I, one Ego, one vantage point, present with Moses and the children of Israel, and that the one I that would be doing all the talking, knowing, and seeing would be God, the great I am, not a mortal sense of I. In awe, I realized that a correct understanding of the I am, and of man as the expression or reflection of God, is what led the children of Israel out of the bondage of mortal selfhood into the Promised Land, or truth of being.
