Note the difference of Moses in his intercourse with God at the bush, and what he was in Egypt—how entirely, when God is working by him, all questioning is gone. He is possessed and moves on in unhesitating energy every step, not so much thinking about the power as animated by it—having a just sense of what God was. The power was acting in him. God willed that his own state should be exercised, brought into question—brought out into his own consciousness. In Moses the power of circumcision predominates over a present God as to his heart; but God working by Moses, every trace of this disappears. Not that Moses was changed in this way morally—not necessarily so. But God had taken him up into his hand and was now using him.
The long sojourn in the desert was not the presence of God, which revealed and brought out all in his own sight between God and Moses, though it may be needed too. Nor was it his work in Egypt, for it had wholly disappeared before.
At any given time God may have us to pass on in peace, or in regular duty which requires absolutely His power and presence, without placing us in either of these cases. It is important to remember that the absence of the power of circumstances over us, and our power over them, is not necessarily our state if God is using us, though He may empty the vessel so to use it, as is indeed His way.