The Awkward Outsider Who Toppled a God-King With Five Seconds of Guts
Moses and the Five Seconds of Courage: What a Stammering Misfit Teaches Us About building Heroic Habits
Put down the movies for a minute. Moses is not the guy you’d pick for your movie poster. Not at first.
He’s no Leonidas screaming at the gates. He’s not Aristotle with the right words at the right time. He’s not a Joshua able to lead armies.
Moses… is an odd duck. Chronically unfit for everything he needs to do, it seems. A man who, at every turn, seemed out of joint with the world he was supposed to lead.
Think about it. Born Hebrew, raised Egyptian. Too Egyptian to be trusted by his own people, too Hebrew to ever be fully embraced by the empire. He doesn’t fit. Perhaps he was always a token ‘bridge’ between two political groups. Perhaps he was assigned as a war general in hopes he’d die on the front lines. Or he was really good at it.
Sometimes it’s easy to be really good at all the things you shouldn’t be doing with your life. It can break you down and seem impossible to do the things you should.
Then he kills an Egyptian taskmaster, thinking maybe this is his shot at being the hero. And instead of rallying behind him, his own people spit the words back: “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” That had to sting. So he runs. Exiled to the desert. A man with a record, a temper, and no place to call home.
And when God finally calls him at the burning bush, Moses flat-out argues. He stutters, he pleads, he lists his flaws. He basically says: Pick someone else. I can’t speak well. I’m not your guy.
Imagine that. You’ve been waiting your whole life for clarity. You’ve been begging for purpose. And when it arrives, every cell in your body says: No. Wrong address. Wrong man.
That’s where the heroism starts. In the five seconds where he doesn’t run away. Where he agrees to walk into the presence of greatest military power of the time, open his mouth, shaky and stammering, and ask Pharaoh to shoot himself in the foot and scupper his economy. Oh, because God wants his people to worship him.
Psychologist Mel Robbins calls this the 5-Second Rule. She says the moment you have an impulse to act, you have about five seconds before your brain talks you out of it. Before doubt floods in. Before comfort seduces you back into silence. Count down: 5-4-3-2-1, and move. That’s it. The whole secret. Don’t let hesitation kill bravery.
That’s Moses’ entire life. A string of five-second decisions that look insane on paper.
March into Pharaoh’s throne room with nothing but a stick and a stutter? 5-4-3-2-1, go.
Hold that staff up over the Red Sea while an army bears down? 5-4-3-2-1, go.
Climb into thunder and lightning on Sinai when everyone else is trembling at the base? 5-4-3-2-1, go.
Half the time, Moses own people wanted to run away and return to slavery. He didn’t give rousing speeches that made them love him. He just kept showing up, awkward, unwanted, unfit, and doing the one thing no one else had the guts to do.
Let’s not pretend it was easy. Leadership crushed him. For forty years he led a crowd in circles while they complained, betrayed him, and kept worshipping golden calves. He’s a hot head. He probably got really angry. In fact, he made them grind to powder and drink stone powder of the first stone tablets.
God tests him with an out: I’ll wipe them out, start over with you.
Moses realizes that heroism isn’t harsh, Spartan-like violence. Instead, he stands in the breach, tells God flat out: If you blot them out, blot me out too. Who does that? Only a man who has been rejected so much himself that he can’t imagine rejecting every man, woman, and child in his care.
He’s willing to put his own life, even his hope for eternal happiness, on the line for them. That’s an incredible love from a main raised to be a pharaoh’s war general.
The Moses Challenge
Heroism isn’t about knowing the answers and a tidy ending. It’s about obedience in the moment. It’s about what you do with those five seconds between impulse and hesitation.
here’s the takeaway for us: the next time you see a need—don’t wait for the perfect words or the perfect moment. Count down 5-4-3-2-1 and move. Step into the awkward. Say the thing, lift the staff, take the shot. Because bravery dies in hesitation. But in those five seconds, even an odd duck can become a deliverer.
Practice doing the hard thing for one week. Time to get out of bed? 5-4-3-2-1, and get up. It works everywhere. Pretty soon, you can rewire yourself like an Olympic runner at the starting line. Even when they’re not in a race, runners in the bleachers practice an instant twitch response at the sound of a starting gun, so that no matter what’s going through their head, their bodies are always in a state of readiness to go when called.
You think you’re unfit? It’s ok. You’re right. Moses had a rap sheet, a stutter, a failed résumé. Moses belonged nowhere. You think people won’t accept you? Moses was rejected by both his people and his enemies, and even God came for him because he thought he could get away with things.
Moses learned how to show up. Over and over. He learned his lesson as best as he could. Even till the end, like Frodo, he gives us hope that we can fail forward, and be beloved of God, and hope to do the greatest good possible with our lives.
His end isn’t a triumph of processions and white marble tombs. He’s buried in the doorway to the Promised Land. A prophet who gutted the capitol city of its workforce, kickstarted a war between gods, and then never reached his goal. A failure, by all accounts.
But when we next see him on Mount Tabor, robed in glory and light, he’s sitting and consulting with Elijah and Jesus about the ways of Heaven and the will of God.
Who knows what heroic choice he made in the last 5-4-3-2-1 seconds of his life.
That’s the habit. Don’t seek to be the smartest in the room. Don’t battle for the bravest spot. Can you be the man who won’t run when called.
Because God equips the called.