Moses was forty years into exile, tending somebody else's sheep, when he saw a bush on fire.

That part isn't the miracle. Bushes burn in the desert. The miracle was that it kept burning and didn't burn up, and Moses noticed. Then he did the thing the whole story turns on. He said, "I will turn aside to see this great sight."

He walked over.

Now, give this verse a slow read.

Did you notice? God spoke when He saw Moses turn aside. The call came after the curiosity.

Last Saturday we closed out seven weeks on vision. Many of you can now say yours in one plain sentence, even if the sentence is "I think I'm supposed to represent Christ right where I already work." Good. That's a real sentence, and it is enough to start with.

Here's what tends to happen next, though. You hold the sentence, and you wait. You wait for the confirmation, the open door, the undeniable sign. And while you wait, every question you have about the sentence starts to feel like doubt. "Is this really it?" feels unfaithful, so you don't ask it. "How can I move this forward?" feels presumptuous, so you don't inquire. You call it patience. Between us, a lot of it is standing in a field staring at a bush, waiting for it to come to you.

That's the flinch. Somewhere along the way we picked up the idea that faith means not asking. That the mature believer waits quietly and the one with questions is the weak one.

Then there's Moses, who walked over to look. And Solomon, who wrote a line I quoted a few weeks ago and will be repeating a lot going forward:

That says it all, doesn't it? God hides things. On purpose. And the glory He hands you is the searching. He is not insulted by your questions or your investigation. He set the table for them.

Jesus said the same thing with three verbs:

Ask. Seek. Knock. Every one of those is something you do with your feet and your mouth. None of them is something you wait for. And the one we all know by heart puts the order on it:

Seek first. Before the plan. Before the sign. Curiosity is not the opposite of faith. It is faith with its eyes open.

So that's the next few weeks. "Seek first" is a verb, and we're going to conjugate it.

Seeking, as best I can break it down, has four parts: you ask, you look, you inquire, and you try. Most of us are decent at the first one and quietly stop there. Asking is prayer, and we know how to pray. Looking means going where the answer might be. Inquiring means putting a real question to a real person. Trying means doing a small version of the thing and seeing what happens. We'll take them one at a time, pointed in different directions.

Which is where I should tell you where we're going. Dynamic Faith runs on four moves: Connect, Restore, Discern, Build. That's the whole manifesto, and if you've never read it, it's at tuckerwhit.com/manifesto. Over the next few weeks we're going to walk all four of them with one posture: curiosity. Curious toward the people you've been avoiding. Curious about what's going on inside you when something stings. Curious enough to actually test the sentence you wrote. Curious inside the job you already have. Curious about everything. Then, in the new year, we run.

But first, the posture.

Be curious about yourself. That's it.

Every week, I ask you to take some action to advance your vision, and your whole self really. If you've been following along faithfully, then you are in a good position to take advantage of the next few weeks of investigation and experimentation.

But if you haven't, let this be a week where you're truly curious about why. Not judgmentally, but honestly. Because, if the Word is true (and we know it is), then you're missing out on some glory by waiting, hiding, and delaying. And we have to wonder: what would've happened if Moses hadn't turned aside to look at the burning bush?

So what's really keeping you from searching things out? If it's fear, be specific. Fear of what? And what would help you to overcome it?

Write the answer down, one sentence. Next Saturday we do something with it.

Hit reply and tell me what you discover. I read every one.

This is the first of eight. Next Saturday: why you don't ask.